We've come home with a haul of ribbons, rosettes, sashes and a champion's rug from the North Island Para Equestrian Championships this weekend, our first event of the season, and we're the 2011/2012 North Island Grade 1a Champions!
It's a fantastic start to our season. I'm still on a high from all the passion, excitement and adrenaline from the weekend! We left Tauranga on Thursday for Showfields Equestrian Centre in Te Kauwhata where the championships were held from 16 - 18 September. We rode 4 tests over 3 days which in itself is a challenge for me because I tire really quickly. But it was a bigger challenge than usual because I had a fall two weeks before which interrupted my training because of badly bruised and painful ribs. Not really great timing!
Tech and I have been training hard through the winter and working on the feedback we received from the judges at Horse of the Year. We've both come a long way and our scores this weekend showed that. We took on board all the judges' feedback from each test this weekend, and consistently improved our scores by 2% in each test we rode to finish on 66.88% for our musical freestyle. That's a personal best for both me and Tech so I'm really pleased with that!
Exhausted but happy after the busy weekend, I'm looking forward to the rest of the season and plan to continue improving our scores. Our next competition is the 38th Mitsubishi Paralympic NZ Nationals in Cambridge in November. It will be hard to follow such an amazing start to our season but we'll certainly hope to pick up a few more marks and take our scores higher again. We both still have so much to give and Tech has so much scope to go further - it's really quite exciting! He's come a long way in a relatively short time. I'm so proud of him!
I'm also very proud of my support crew - without them I couldn't do what I do. I have the most awesome team around me, supporting and guiding me through training and competitions, as well as training Tech and helping me with the horse care side which would be impossible for me to do on my own because of my physical weaknesses. Horseriding is often seen as an individual sport but that's just not true for me - my coach, family, helpers and sponsors have all got Tech and I to this point. I feel so lucky to have such fantastic support and I hope we do you all proud when we're in the arena competing and working as hard as we can.
I appreciate my support team and sponsors so much. Without you I couldn't do what I'm doing so I would like to say a big thank you to all of you!