Yep. Foxhall didn’t go as planned. I could write a play-by-play on each and every fence. And trust me, I’ve been doing that in my head for the past five hours. But I’m only going to list through the first eight jumps.
Fence 1, went really well. Jack took off a bit on the landing side and passed our team leader but she was ok with it so we took over the lead spot to Fence 2. Again, he jumped super well. Then across the stream and to our first road crossing and combination. He backed off a tiny bit jumping into Fence 3 but he was just being careful. He had never been asked to jump across a road like that before and there was mulch on the road to make it a safe crossing. He jumped out well and was nice and straight under me as we headed to Fence 5, which must have gone well cause I don’t remember it. Then we had this super insane turning question from Fence 6 to Fence 7. He jumped 6 super well but very big and bold and I couldn’t get him back fast enough to turn to 7. No big deal, I just circled and my teammates headed over Fence 7 and I followed right behind.
And that is where I made my mistake. Jack was pissed. Pissed that these two slightly slower horses were now in front of him. He galloped on fast to catch up to them, started to pass when one spooked into him and knocked him a bit off of stride. I nearly fell off since we were bumped so hard. Lots of apologies said by all and they encouraged me to take over the lead spot as we headed up the hill to Fence 8. But I was flustered, Jack was flustered and about one stride out I realized I had no leg on and was still looking back over my shoulder. So what did I do? I just kicked, which, had I kept me shoulders back when I did it, would have worked out fine. But yep, you guessed it, I chucked my shoulders at the jump as I kicked a stride too early and Jack, in slow motion, said “ah, there is an extra stride there mom” so I popped/flipped over his shoulder, landed on my feet right in front of the jump holding onto the reins as my two teammates jumped it right next to Jack and I.
It must have been a pretty spectacular sight cause I heard my teammates say “oh no!” as they sailed passed and the jump judges go “oh my god are you ok?” followed by “what do we do!?” I just said I’m fine and lead Jack to the fence and then got back on and jumped it and off we went again. But I now had doubts in my horse’s bravery and he had lost a bit of trust in me.
The rest of the course was a bit of a mess in my opinion. I rode way to tight and too defensively, which made Jack super nervous. But, he jumped anyway. Even with me hanging in the back seat, he jumped. The only problem though is that he had to jump even bigger since I was so tight. Thus, he jumped bigger, I got tossed higher in the air and then we’d land in a heap. I know it looked horrible. Well, I think it looked horrible cause it felt horrible but I did have some of the spectators oohing and ahhing over him when we finished (comments like “he has such a great gallop” “what a balanced horse” “super athletic horse”).
One of my teammates (who has done a 2-star before) said after wards that I just needed to let go in the air. Duh. I know that and it was good to hear someone say it out loud. I’ve practiced that a hundred times. But when you are in that situation, galloping at insane speeds over big ass jumps and your horse has just stopped cause you as the rider was stupid, you hang on.
It was a rider mistake, I know that. And I also know that my horse is a brilliant powerful jumper. Now, I just need to remind myself that he is also a safe jumper and that I do know what I’m doing out there. Our heads can be our worst enemies at times.
Jack will get the next two days off. Then will have a light walk hack and some flat work towards the end of the week. I’m going to see if there is any place where I can go and practice jumping at speeds with other riders over the weekend. Green Spring is in two weeks and I need to decided by next Monday if I’m doing it. My gut says to do it, my head right now says to skip it. Will see how I feel in the morning. Hopefully my gut takes back over.
korizzoinc 