Success for Imperial College Equestrian Teams!
Rachel Gregory describes the action
On the 11th December 2013 both of Imperial’s Equestrian teams had their second competitions of the year. The first team was hosting their competition at Trent Park Equestrian Centre and the second team were visiting Southampton.
Despite a few mishaps in the morning before the competition, the first team was ready for the start of the competition on time. The team warmed up the dressage horses for the other teams to see. Franklyn, Hope, Lucy and Samba were all impeccably behaved and so the first riders on each horse began their allotted warm-up time. Andre Wilmes, a returning team member who had unfortunately sprained his ankle two days before the competition but was determined to ride, rode Samba beautifully and they achieved the best score of the whole day. Team Captain, Rachel Gregory, riding Lucy and Natasha Woods-Kreisler riding Hope also managed to ride the best dressage tests on their horses. Our fourth team member, Leila Royle-Davies rode a beautiful test on her horse Franklyn, but was unfortunate to only be placed second on her horse. Once the dressage tests were complete the jumping course was put up, whilst the scores were counted. We were in the lead after the dressage, on a score of 19 penalties, with our closest rivals Royal Holloway on 62 penalties. The jumping course was as big as the rules allow, and again the team warmed up the jumping horses before Rachel was the first to compete on Maximus, Andre was second on Brazil, Natasha was third on Avignon and Leila was the last to ride Teak. Andre was judged to have ridden the best on Brazil on so he won overall. Rachel came second on her jumping horse and was placed third overall. Natasha scored 9 penalties on her horse and was placed sixth, and Leila scored 22 penalties. The team results were announced as well, and with all four riders’ scores counting, we had won on 55 penalties. The University of Kent was second on 108 penalties, Royal Holloway was third on 110 penalties and LSE were fourth on 302 penalties. After this competition, Imperial is leading the mini-league, with Rachel individually second and Andre third.
The second team’s competition at Southampton was run under exactly the same format, with the dressage tests in the morning and jumping in the afternoon. In the dressage Sara Wieclawska was the first to ride her horse, Becky Salen was second to ride her horse, Sorin Popa third and Lucie Walder fourth. All the dressage tests were ridden extremely well, and the team was in third place after dressage. In the show-jumping Becky rode a fantastic clear round, Sara was unlucky to have one fence down and both Lucie and Sorin unfortunately had two refusals. Overally, Becky was placed 7th, Lucie was placed 8th and the team was placed third overall, an improvement on their first competition.
If you would like to try horse-riding, we are holding a Give It A Go session for beginner riders on 29th January. For more information email riding@ic.ac.uk.
