What a weekend for #teamselwood rider Janou (Nui) Bleekman at the FEI Young Rider European Eventing championships in Millstreet Ireland. The venue played host to both young riders and juniors and provided a back drop for some thrilling competition.
Nui and the 16.1hh gelding Granntevka Prince arrived safely in some rather wet weather conditions. However they sailed through the first trot up and performed well in the dressage section scoring 42.4. This left them in tenth place going forwards into the jumping.
A fantastic cross country day for the European Championships and a clear round for Nui with just 1.6 time faults. This meant the super pair moved up into eighth place individually. Final trot up came the following day and Prince showed no signs of fatigue or injury from the previous day. He passed and went on to show jump amazingly. They moved up to third place and secured the individual bronze medal position! Nui was delighted and the Dutch team finished in silver medal position overall. A great weekend all round!
Great to catch up with some previous #teamselwood riders
Bubby Upton and Phoebe Locke also had a great European competition at Millstreet. Bubby secured individual gold and was crowned junior champion and Phoebe finished fifth indivdually and the British team took silver overall. It’s lovely to see our previous team riders continuing to do so well and enjoy well deserved successes.
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Meanwhile one of our other #teamselwood eventers Tim Price has been busy in AAchen for the CCIO 3 star. Tim had Ringwood Sky Boy and Cooley Showtime. Ozzie performed a great dressage test; nice and relaxed with some good work, but a harsh score as they were early in meant that the good work wasn’t quite rewarded as such. Eddie was a little more excited about his dressage and started off fresh but calmed to produce some nice work later on. At just eight years old this is a big stage for him!
The jumping went well with Ozzie keeping tidy apart from a slight struggle through the triple where two rails fell. Eight faults for Tim and Eddie was a great score, again given the horses age this is a super result. For cross country, the weather was good and the ground holding up nicely. Tim and Ozzie started with determined positivity and took fast straight routes, they came home safely but with just 7.2 time penalties. Tim and Eddie started well with confidence but sadly Eddie’s over confidence at the house fence disappeared mid air and his decision to come down on the fence meant Tim was ejected and hit the deck! Overall though, the NZ team finished in fourth place so just missd out on a podium place but had a great time nonetheless!