Jumping Jumping Jumping

As the name suggests this is what we’ve been doing a lot of as of late.

First of all a couple of weeks ago it was Newmarket Open Weekend. We had a lovely time, if not a tad cold on Saturday but I got to meet Jilly Cooper (who is absolutely lovely by the way) but also see my old Boss William Haggas, as well as Hugo Palmer on the gallops on Saturday morning for some running commentary of their strings on the gallops; much to the joy of visitors braving the cold and rain!

On Sunday yards were open, and while everyone was milling about behind the scenes, Georgie was getting Beanie ready for a rather exciting occasion. We’d been asked by Jennie Simcock, wife to top trainer David Simcock, if  she could borrow Beanie for the Clipper Logistics Racing Personality Show Jumping, which is the grand finale in the Open Weekend.

I finished work at 12 and after a quick bite to eat and a sit down I made my way down to Hamilton Road to David Simcock's second yard Revida Place to meet Georgie and Mum to get B tacked up and prepped. We were very kindly given a lovely numnah by the Retraining of Racehorse as they wanted to feature Beanie in a write up of the weekend’s events that featured the ROR.

We went full prep and decided to plait him; I mean he does looks super smart plaited and he was going to be in front of a very big audience so we figured 'Why not?’.

Once at Reveda we unloaded B and popped him into a nearby stable so we could saddle him up and get him ready. In no time at all he was ready and making his way over to Stuart Williams yard at Diomed Stables to borrow their school for a little warm up. In the nearly 4 years we’ve had Beanie he’s only really had Georgie jump him, so after a few lessons he got used to having Jennie ride and jump him so we had one final work in to check he wasn’t too frisky. He was going to be in front of hundreds of people after all!

Kirsty Williams and her friend had tacked up too and it was lovely to watch a chestnut, bay and grey hack over to the racecourse so they could see their surroundings.

Once we arrived everything was in full swing and we could hear the football match over the loud speakers; it sounded all very exciting and we were hoping B would keep his cool. Luckily as he’s been to a number of big county shows he’s got rather used to loud noises so he was pretty chilled, and the ride over helped settle him in.

We made our way into the make shift warm up arena to pop B over some fences and take it all in. It was rather busy in there with trainers, jockeys and grooms warming up their borrowed mounts!

Jennie got on B; he was in a really good place in his head, he knew he was there to do a job and he had game face on. Under the watchful eye of David Simcock his jumping was assessed to make sure he was happy with his wives mount. B jumped beautifully and didn’t put a foot wrong, so everyone was happy.

The ring at the racecourse was small, but then again it’s a racecourse not a show jumping arena and the ring had to make do. It was small for big horses so that was our only real worry. You see, B likes to jump big and bold! Put a short one in? Nah, go big and take a stride out if necessary! He likes to jump rather forward, so containing him and turning were going to be the main obstacles.

He went in there cool as a cucumber and did a nice round, although the lack of space did show and from photo evidence he really did jump the course big. Sadly by jumping big he did reduce the strides coming up to the next fence and got in a little tight and the result of which he sadly had 3 poles. But he got some very nice comments from the commentary team who commented how beautifully turned out he was!

We watched as the rest of the racing personality competitors competed and were very excited to find out that Jennie’s team gathered enough points to be the team winners, while the individual winner went deservedly to Pat Cosgrove!

Thank you to our new Eastern coordinator Chantal for the support and photos

For our next ‘team’ outing and in keeping with the ROR Georgie had booked on the Bed Hobday jump cross clinic organised by our other Eastern Region rep Lucy Watson at Finchingfield Equestrian Center. Obviously Ben is the cool eventer every girl swoons over (me included, duh) but he is also a great rider so Georgie was keen to see what she could take away from a lesson. We arrived to see the final stages of the group before us and it looked very promising.

Once in the school Ben introduced himself to each rider and found out a little about each horse; what they’d done and what height they were jumping currently.

Ben had the girls warm up and instantly started assessing and giving advice to each rider. With a good warm up done the lesson began and I really must say how seriously impressed I was with Ben’s teaching. He was clear in his instructions on what he wanted everyone to do, the jumps and the aim of why he was asking them to jump in that order.

I especially liked that, while he send one rider off with instructions on how to ride the line and so fourth, he didn’t just ignore the other riders. He used how they were riding, how their horses were jumping to educate and help the other riders learn.

It was really refreshing to see, as so many instructors tend to focus solely on that rider jumping and neglect the other riders waiting. But instead he utilised what he was watching and broke it down so the other riders could learn from it!

He was also very positive, he encouraged everyone even if their horse didn’t get it quite right and asked them to go and repeat the exercise until everyone improved and got it spot on.

Towards the end of the lesson, about two thirds of the hour through, it was clear to Ben and those of us observing that all 3 riders had come on leaps and bounds and were making good progress; so up went the jumps. They were, as we later found out, up to 1 meter 25 cms and 1 meter 30 cms, which is the biggest Georgie or Beanie had ever jumped.

These fences, as you can see from the below photos, were big upright oxers that were indeed full up in height.

As I’ve mentioned before Beanie is a very very clever horse, he has one hell of a brain in his head and he tends to like to do things 100% his way. So when he approached these jumps at this height I think it dawned on him that they were rather large and he was going to have to listen to Georgie for instruction. Having one of the oxer’s front poles down the penny dropped and after slowing down and listening to Georgie he absolutely flew it! Not bad for a flat race horse I don’t think!

As Ben repeated ‘Power not speed’ which is something Beanie is going to have to work on. He likes to bowl on into fences and jump them a little flat, which of course is not ideal in show jumping as if you do jump them flat and hit them, they fall out the cup.

Georgie walked away from the lesson really very pleased at their achievements in just 1 hour.

I really cannot praise Ben Hobday enough, he’s not just a good looking face! He’s a very good instructor too and I recommend that if you get the opportunity to have a lesson with him I’d grasp the opportunity!

Baileys had also come to Finchingfield so we took the opportunity to have Beanie’s weighed (bearing in mind we got beaten at Suffolk County's autumn show for ‘not having enough condition’ we wanted to check how B’s weight was. He had gained 6 pounds since his last weight in a few weeks before and was on target weight for his breed, and size. Katie Grimwood was there to expertly advise Georgie and kindly gave us a goody bag!

We’ve had a lovely couple of weeks of jumping and long may it continue!!

We’ve got some exciting events coming up that we cannot wait to write for you about so keep your eyes peeled!!

Until next time,

Sophie