Well it was all about HS Chiara at King’s Forest last weekend and it will be all about Fantom at Euston Park this weekend. Both horses have been striving to complete their 160km 3* qualification for the Europeans.
To this end Chiara and Fantom (ridden by the amazing Di) have been doing three or four full training sessions per week, varying the work between cantering for a good distance along the beach and developing a rhythm, cantering around the sand track around a nearby field to practice balance and change of leg on the corners and the interval training sessions up and down the dunes. We then introduced canter work sessions on the grass of the nearby cross country course which was quite testing with spooky horses and many twists and turns but was also a useful workout.
Chiara was training really well and even settling into her work rather than trying to go as fast as possible all the time. As soon as we finished exercise she had a long drink every time, in fact she was looking for her drink. However she was not finishing her feeds and had little interest in eating after training. Her grass was reduced and haylage fed to her instead which she didn’t really relish but I felt we had done as much preparation as we could and she enjoyed a physio session about 10 days before we left for King’s.
A couple of weeks before Chiara’s 3* both horses had to have a rest while I went off to help at the Golden Horseshoe ride on Exmoor. Again the weather was good for this amazing event but even so the hills and tough going caught out many people and, indeed, there were no finishers in the iconic 100 mile over two day Golden Horseshoe. However the other classes were well supported and the awards and amazing prizes were presented to the deserving winners. Thanks must go to Feedmark for the generous prizes in the three main classes.
Our journey up to King’s Forest, whilst being relatively uneventful, resulted in Chiara not drinking anything and only picking a little at her hay. We had one clear day before the competition but Chiara spent most of this mooning at a horse in the next corral or pacing around. We made valiant attempts to get her to eat and drink but were mostly unsuccessful.
Race day was hot, hot, hot even though we started at 6 am it soon warmed up and in the forest the only breeze was that felt by the forward movement of the horse and the humidity was high. In retrospect we went out too fast on the first loop although I did make some attempts to slow the pace but Chiara simply didn’t agree with me and the first vet gate was a nightmare with her pulse dropping quickly to 60 bpm then in the vetting spiking to over 80! We represented in due course and were able to go out on the second loop. This time I controlled the pace riding largely on our own although Chi still wasn’t eating. At this next vetgate, after having completed over 70 km I decided to call it a day after eventually passing the vetting. Thankfully Chiara soon recovered from her exertions and calmed down a bit to eat a little at long last. Lessons to be learned here I think!
Well this coming weekend it’s down to Fantom and I have been carefully preparing him in the last two weeks with some good training sessions followed by tapering and he has been coming in at night and off the grass for the last week. Everything is now packed into the trailer, Fantom just needs to be washed (he’s always dirty) and we need to salute all the magpies and not walk under any ladders and maybe everything will be OK.