NORTEN HARDENBERG  19 – 21 JUNE 2009 – A very successful show this weekend at the beautiful and prestigious show in Norten Hardenburg.  Corvette is coming into his own and I competed in the middle tour and was delighted with a double clear round earning 3rd place from over 50 starters.

Cassiano Z qualified for the 1.55m Grand Prix on Sunday and had a clear round, thereby giving me my Qualification to the World Equestrian Games in Kentucky 2010.  He had a pole in the jump off but was the fastest 4 faulter to finish 5th overall.  A fantastic result!!

I have just returned from Balve, Germany where I took my own youngster, Corvette 21 to compete.  Corvette has been competing at International shows in the Youngster Tour with fantastic results – infact at Hagen International recently after two faultless rounds he qualified for the final and came 4^th in the final there – this is a very prestigious show and a good testing ground to see how Corvette coped with the pressure – which he did magnificently.  Anyway at the show I decided to up my game with Corvette and entered him in the first two small tour classes which he handled well with only one pole down in each.  So I took him on the final day into the medium final and had two perfect clear rounds – this is thrilling as it looks like Corvette is certainly able to hold his own and I must be careful not to be too ambitious with him as he shows such terrific scope.  Crocket has successfully had his stem cell treatment and we are only keeping him for the big ones once he is back on track.  Goofy has had a well earned rest and is now coming back into work, he had a disappointing GP in Balve but we are hoping it is because he needs to get back into the swing of things and does have to watch as he struggles with soft back tissue damage.

 In the meantime I am riding two of Ludger’s young 5 year old stallions and last week took them to a Bundes Qualifier – both qualified for the prestigious Championship later in the year so Ludger is well chuffed, as they were not overly optimistic the horses were upto it.