Here is Victoria Bax Eventing Racehorse Retraining October blog post. Those of you who own ex-racehorses may well know of her retraining of racehorses clinics in Essex. Victoria is one of Aloeride’s sponsored riders.
Next up was Alberta’s Elegance, who performed a safe test in the dressage but sadly the judge didn’t agree and scored us very high leaving us towards the end of the section which I was very disappointed with. We then moved onto warm up for the showjumping which is a little awkward at this event as they only allow 5 riders in the warm up at a time due to the size of the arena, so this caused a few problems for some horses, including me! I did the best I could but was clearly not good enough as we managed our worst show jump round to date with 2 stops and a number of poles. The arena was on a surface with banners surrounding and a huge crowd of spectators watching on the surrounding bank, all of which proved a little too much for Alberta’s Elegance to cope with. The decision was made following that to withdraw and save her for another day.
So plenty to like during the events she has completed this season but still much to work on over the winter too. One last trip onto a cross-country course followed the following week with Alberta’s Pride aka Frankie who has been off games for a little while due to a couple of injuries he has picked up which ended his season a little earlier than I would have liked, but that’s horses! As he has already enjoyed a few weeks off, he has been back in work and is fully fit again so I thought I’d take the opportunity while the weather is still dry to remind him of the cross-country phase before winter. Well, we had no problems there at all. He remembered everything he had already learnt and more including jumping some decent 3 and 4 fence combinations and jumping into and out of water. He is definitely one for next year, I am so excited! So with most of my horses on holiday I have started up my winter training clinics for others which are proving extremely popular and have been selling out within the hour as soon as they are advertised, which I am very grateful to everyone for supporting!
I will have a little time out myself now but will come back stronger next season after a winter of more training.
I can’t wait!
Until next time…
Victoria Bax (Victoria Bax Eventing Racehorse Retraining)
Header image courtesy of Victoria’s very talented husband Jason Bax.