After meeting up with other members of the group on Tuesday evening for a great Italian meal near the cathedral in Heidelberg and a sleep most of the effects of 24 hrs of flying started to fade. Our first visit was to Brookhouse stud where Emma Hindle, her family and business partners stand 10 stallions. Emma was the most successful rider at WEG 2006 from the British dressage team. Emma showed us some of her younger stallions including Curator(pictured in the indoor school) a 3 year old by Conteur out of a Weltmeyer mare. Emma and Andreas Muller answered many questions for our group about selecting horses for breeding and competition. Thank you Emma and Andreas, we know that you delayed leaving for a show to host our visit.
We arrived on Day 1 of the competition to watch part 1 of the FEI Junior teams test. 25 countries are repesented so the teams class takes 2 days to complete.
The riders in oour group are going to ad some comments on thier impression of the quality of the horses and the standard of ridiing in the next few days so have a look at the comments section after this blog.
1st and 2nd place in part 1 went to German riders Jill de Ridder and FBW Disco Boy 70.60% and Fabienne Lutkemeier on Bouton 2 70.55% .
Austrian rider Christopher Erdmann and Belmondo 110 in 7th place on 64.70% (see the picture).
Trade stands were also a draw card; how about the truck Emily H & Tricia are inspecting with pop up grooms quarters in the roof, push out wall for entertaining, automatic drinkers for the horses plus much, much more- only 380000 euro.
4 comments:
Well, our first few days have certainly been an eye opener for me. When we visited Emmas, i was in awe of the amazing facilities and horses Emma has, not to mention the understanding she had about the breeding and way of handling horses. It was a great morning and i learnt alot.
Then at Young Riders it stepped up a notch again. Seeing how well the riders prepare and compete at such a high level is amazing. The horses that the riders have are AMAZING!!! I have been amazed at the quality and professionalism of the riders over here in Germany and the other competitors. The quality of every thing is great actually. Its hard to explain the experiance, i think you just have to see it for yourself to understand.
Overall trip is great and im guessing you will keep hearing more about our travels.
Cheers Robs
I think we certainly have the talent in our young riders to be able to represent Australia at an over seas competition but I think we really need our horses to match that.
Unfortunately many of the young riders don't have the finances to afford the high quality horses. It would be great to see the YR's on horses that have been lent to them, either an older FEI school master type of horse, or preferably a slightly younger horse with talent that is ready to move up to FEI.
I was quite shocked with the set up that the Dutch YR & Jnr teams have, they each are given a car and they have financial support in the form of an allowance so they can train full time. They are very well looked after and supported.
It was amazing that so many people would come to watch the YR's, and even though many of them had some sort of relationship with the riders, there was a large number of them. All the different teams watched each riders test and would clap, cheer and go wild after their test, each of them waving their national flag, it was great to see that encouragement!
It's definately all very exciting and I can't wait to watch the rest of the competition, and I'm looking forward to our riding lessons next week.
Tschüss!
Emz
WOW this trip is amzing!!!!!
A huge thankyou to all who put their time and effort into making it possible!
the first thing i noticed at the show was taht all the riders had so much style. They all had colour coordinated gear and clothes. Even when they weren't riding they looked great! it was very cool.
Of course as anyone would expect the standard here is extremely high. Every horse is engaged, forward moving and into the bridle. there are a few that are quite tense which get scored quite low, but the relaxed horses get really good marks.
I have also seen that just because a horse is flashy and looks beautiful, it isn't always correct in its movements. I was quite suprised when the final scores came up for the flashy ones as they were only in the 60-65%, then i took a good hard look at them and realised that they didn't have enough bend, not completely over the back etc.
This trip has already taught me more than i could have imagined. Jenny is being so great and helpful!
Casey.
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