Angie Thompson

Qualified for the Royal International

October has been a very successful and busy month with my novice horses. My two Grade A horses are in the field having a holiday until next year.

Meanwhile, I have been competing on a horse called 'Jameson' for a good friend called Annie Holloway. He is a nine-year old bay gelding who Annie bought from Ireland 'off the bog' as a three-year old. Annie has been eventing with him for the last two seasons, but she loves watching me compete with him showjumping.

Jameson who is known as 'Jim Jam' to his friends has been a little star for me. He has a big heart and always tries his best. At the beginning of October, we went to Solihull's big Premier show and we won the Derby House Winter Novice class and qualified for the Final, which will be held at The Royal International at Hickstead next July. It was a great win as there were 95 competitors in the class. This was a three-round competition, which resulted in 18 riders going forward to the jump off against the clock. Th jump-off course was very big for novice horses, a couple of the jumps looked about 1m40 in height, but Jameson and I set a fast pace which nobody could match. In the end, there were only two of us who jumped a triple clear round out of 95 starters! Neddless to say, we were all very excited in the Thompson camp!

I have since taken Jim Jam to two more shows and we have won three more classes, including his first ever Foxhunter class. We went to Hand's big Dazzler show on 31st October where Jameson was 5th in the Foxhunter Performance class, which qualified us for the Blue Chip Championships to be held at Hartpury College in April 2009. There were 70 competitiors in this qualifier and 39 went through to the jump-off against the clock, which was extremely fast! I was really chuffed with him. He jumped his little socks off!

I also qualified a five-year old dark bay mare for the Blue Chip Finals called Glen Hurick, who is owned by Lynne Deakin. I have been competing Glen Hurick for the last five weeks due to Lynne being out of action with a shoulder injury.

Marfurlong Magic who is a five-year old grey gelding by Russell has started to show some good potential this month. He has won a couple of Newcomer classes and has jumped in his first Foxhunter competition. We did have a big fright with him at Hand show the other week when he got his front legs stuck on the feed bins and flipped himself over backwards in the lorry. He was extremely lucky to come out of that with only superficial cuts and grazes. Sadly, we did not have the same luck when we had to put a lovely two year-old gelding down that we bred ourselves, after a freak accident in the field, which broke his leg. These events demonstrate the endless 'ups and downs' of working with horses!!

Angie

Oct 08