Mike Jackson

End of the Season and Still in One Piece

Well - we’ve made it to the end of the season in one piece and ended with a great trip to Le Lion with Jagganath (Jack) and Wish Upon A Star (Wiz) for the Young Horse World Championships in France.

It’s a fantastic event with wonderful facilities and a real “championship” atmosphere. We were also blessed with beautiful sunny weather, which makes staying away with horses and a small child much more enjoyable…

The horses travelled to France on the Monday before the event with Lucy Jackson, a Kiwi rider, and family Jackson followed in a campervan. It was a long journey (which included several unscheduled detours) but luckily the horses travelled well and arrived in good spirits. We had a couple of days settling in before the trot up on the Wednesday, which is always nerve racking (being spun at the first inspection wouldn’t be much fun) but both horses passed and settled in well to life at the race course.

Wiz went first in the dressage on the Thursday and Jack followed with a lovely test on the Friday – finishing on 50.9 and 52.8 in their respective age groups. I did feel the judges were rather hard on Wiz - as did many of the other Brits who watched - which made me feel better.

The cross country course was impressive with the two star for the 7 year olds having some tough questions near the end, including a leap of faith off an imposing house to a “skinny”. I got to walk the course several times so I was able to walk the lines and see the fences in different light which was helpful.

But I wasn’t to worry - both horses sailed around the course on the Saturday although I did have one hairy moment in the water with Wiz after he landed rather flat-footed after the first element. However, he picked himself up and finished well within the time – despite it being over nine minutes long.

Both horses were lying in eighth position going into the final day. Wiz went first and sadly had a fence day and a couple of time faults which proved rather expensive. You never know how young horses are going to react in a large arena with thousands of people around it and he went rather “green” on me and backed off the fences. Hindsight is a marvellous thing and perhaps if I rode it again I would do some things differently - but he’s a lovely horse and he’s certainly learnt a lot from the experience.

Jack had a few down in the show jumping which sadly knocked me down the order a bit. At the time I was fairly gutted because he’s normally an excellent jumper but he is a future star and he’ll have his day soon.

So all in all a good trip – I’d like to thank everyone including my owners who came to support me in France and Louise (my head girl) for all her hard work this season.

Mike