Local rider Jo Thomas Badminton Bound

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April/May 2016

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April/May 2016 • VOLUME XVI NUMBER 3

from across the South East

In the Spotlight: Badminton Bound Jo Thomas

04

Localrider Magazine

ENDURANCE • POLO • SHOWJUMPING • EVENTING

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SPOTLIGHT Jo Thomas and Kruja Roslyn finished on their dressage score of 28.5 in the BE90 Regional Final at Littleton Horse Trials, to qualify for the Mitsubishi Motors Cup

Jo Thomas and Rosie Jo Thomas’s pony, Kruja Roslyn, Rosie to her friends is a 14.2hh feisty chestnut mare, who knows how to dig deep when it matters, which is exactly what she did at the BE90 Regional Final at Littleton Horse Trials, last October.

Jo has owned Rosie, since she was two-yearsold and over the last 20 years they have had enormous fun together, representing Sevenoaks Riding Club, jumping at Championships and qualifying for the Mitsubishi Motors Cup at Badminton.

Rosie pictured as a two-yearold when Jo first bought her

A

registered Welsh Section D by Glantraeth Welsh Treasure, Jo said Rosie wasn’t the easiest to break and initially Jo spent more of her time on the floor than on Rosie. Jo credits Angie Whittington for helping her to finally spend the majority of her time on board Rosie and has continued having regular lessons with Angie ever since. Jo’s path to Badminton hasn’t been the easiest, particularly as Rosie had an extreme dislike of ditches to start with, but since Rosie discovered that going cross-country actually is quite exciting the pair have had enormous success together.

Here we share their inspiring story.

Jo said: “In her younger days Rosie found cross-country rather scary and wasn’t that keen on dressage either, so we mostly show jumped, initially at small unaffiliated classes and for Sevenoaks Riding Club, and then built up to and joined British Show Jumping. We competed in BSJA classes for a couple of years and got as far as we could with that alongside competing in Team show jumping with the Riding Club, as well as trying our hand at dressage, riding test, hunter trials and horse trials.

Around that time we also competed in the Unaffiliated Trailblazers Show Jumping series, and having qualified for the Championships at Stoneleigh I was elated to achieve First Reserve Champion in the senior 95cm class.”

Rosie may have taken to ridden life and been extremely successful in the competition arena, but she still challenged Jo on a regular basis, particularly if there was a ditch in view.

Jo continued: “Throughout her early years Rosie took a great dislike to any jump with a ditch underneath it, in front of it, or anywhere near it, so quite often our round came to an abrupt end, with her having tossed me off. Derby show jumping courses were also a no-no if they contained water jumps or ditches.

Eventually, after much practice over such scary holes in the ground and a good amount of hunting, Rosie overcame her fear and we were well away.

We had many fun years competing at Riding Club qualifiers and championships including achieving second placed team in the Riding Test Championship class at Lincolnshire Showground, being placed in the summer and winter Show Jumping Championships, Combined Training, Hunter Trials, Show jumping at Royal Windsor Horse Show and Kent County and our favourite pastime, Eventing. Rosie and I competed at the Riding Clubs Horse Trials Championships initially at Novice, then at Intermediate and were placed individually and quite often as a team at every event.

Our best placing was third at Offchurch Bury in Leamington Spa along with team first and individual second at the London and South East Horse Trials Championships at Rackham in Pulborough.

Pic by Spidge Photography

are Badminton Bound

All change at British Eventing Approximately 11 years ago British Eventing held open days around the country to encourage more people to join and compete. In the previous few years they’d reduced the minimum height of horses from 15hh to 14.2hh and introduced the 90cm Intro class. So I decided to give it a go and joined up in 2005.

We competed in one Intro class and then went up to Pre Novice (now BE100), thinking that we had done a lot of unaffiliated at 1m height already. Well, what a shock! 1m at BE was quite different to 1m unaffiliated. But we muddled along and got on really well, dipping back to Intro to regroup when required.

In 2008 Rosie and I finished fourth in the South East Eventers League Pre-Novice section and won a plethora of prizes and had a lovely evening at the Ball.

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Every so often we joined British Dressage, taking advantage of their winter eventers’ membership and gained a better grounding in flatwork, combining the competing with dressage lessons from Martine Weber. A bit of hunting with the Coakham Bloodhounds across each winter gave us our cross-country fix!

We had a few quiet years not doing much eventing, mainly due to the rest of my life being busy, but we always managed to fit the odd event in here and there.

During this time we gained a Regional Final place towards the Badminton Grassroots Championship, unfortunately I fluffed it!

Cross-County Starter, Chris Kirby giving Jo and Rosie a ‘pep talk’ at the start of the cross-country.

Pic by Stephen Bartholomew

Time for flatwork

New beginnings

In 2013 I moved house, and Rosie moved to a new yard with wonderful hacking and a school, neither of which we’d ever had before. With renewed enthusiasm to get back out there, I rejoined BE for their 2014 Autumn Membership, and, given Rosie’s age, and my lack of match practice (nerves), we have stayed at BE90. We competed in six events and got placed in them all, including a win in the BE90 at Borde Hill.

Borde Hill seems to be Rosie’s favourite place as we’ve had three affiliated wins there, one in BE90, one at Pre Novice/BE100 and one at Pre Novice Plus/BE100+, and two Riding Club Area Qualifier wins to boot. I can only imagine it is because she can see and hear the cross country course from the dressage warm-up. She always does a good test there, plus loves the interesting and bold cross country courses.

Rosie finished fifth in the South East Eventers League Veteran Horse section in 2014 which was a lovely culmination to our season and for her aged 21.

We re-joined BE for a full year in 2015 with the plan to compete in the three Regional Finals we’d qualified for in 2014.

We gained another qualifying place at Borde Hill in May (2015), so my aim was to try and qualify for Badminton - my dream!

Lots of adventures

No longer having my own transport, Rosie and I were reliant on lifts from friends to compete at the Regional Finals. My friend Nicki Robinson took Rosie and me to Solihull Riding Clubs Horse Trials Regional Final in August with her own horse Gizmo, who was competing at BE90 level too. Nicki camped in her lorry and I borrowed a tent. While Rosie and Gizmo had lovely stables with deep shavings beds and plenty of grub, Nicki and I walked to a pub for dinner.

We walked the course the night before the competition and I had laid awake all night because I couldn’t remember half of the cross-country course, so we had to re-walk it again in the morning. On the day, Rosie and I gained a double clear and a 33.3 dressage which left us in 13th place. A 32.3 score would’ve seen us qualified, but there were eight competitors on scores between 32.3 and 33.3, that’s just how close it all was.

Regional Final number two was at a more local venue, Munstead in Godalming, where we’d been many times before. On

this occasion we travelled up with Harriet Baillie and her horse Woody, who was also in the Regional Final. Our dressage mark of 34 and a double clear left us way down the order. Another failed trip as far as qualification was concerned, but a lot of fun for Rosie who loves tearing round the jumping courses, even the ditches!

It was a trip to Little Downham in Ely, Cambridgeshire for Regional Final number three, in Sue French’s lovely car (with heated seats). We set off before dawn to ensure we got past the M25 before the traffic built up. If only I’d managed to read the map properly we might not have headed 15 miles in the wrong direction off the M11, but all was well, and we arrived on time.

At Little Downham the dressage was the 20m x 60m championship test, which made a nice change from the BE95 we’d been doing all year. I was rather upset with our score, but that was nothing to the 20 penalties on the cross-country for overshooting the water jump and missing the ‘A’ part, and having to turn back to re-present. Poor Rosie, I’d blotted her copy book.

Sue and I drove home trying to be positive, that we’d had a lovely day out and that Rosie had been a star as usual – just a shame about the rider.

Tears of joy at Littleton

Now feeling a little glum that I’d left it too late to start having dressage lessons again (with Debbie Reed this time), and that we really were too old and decrepit to achieve that magic qualifying mark, Rosie and I set off to the new Littleton Horse Trials in Reigate with Gizmo and Nicki.

We walked the course and got our bearings (my problem, not Nicki’s) and trundled off to warm-up for dressage. The warm-up was right next to the all-weather gallops, which formed part of the crosscountry course, which was great for Rosie - a horse galloping past every 90 seconds really gee’d her up!

Rosie did her best in her test, as she always tries to do. I personally think she just had that little bit more pizazz this time and it felt really good.

Rosie pictured at the Welsh Pony & Cob Society Show as a three-year-old

We didn’t have time to go and look at our scores so it wasn’t until we were warming-up for the show jumping that a friend came over and said we’d got a really good dressage mark of 28.5. Oh joy of joy! I just had to try not to fluff it now.

The Show jumping was in the sand arena, an up to height course with banners all around and Rosie jumped a lovely clear again.

Cross country, well, my nerves were in a state. A good pep talk by the brilliant cross-county starter, Chris Kirby, and off Rosie and I went. We sped round the course cutting corners where we could, as we always have to do to make the time. We had a wonderful smooth round, and I didn’t ruin it this time. My clear round came up on the score board, but it seemed to take an age for the cross-country time element of the score to go up. Nicki rang me from the scoreboard when I was back at the lorry attending to Rosie and Gizmo. We’d finished on our 28.5 mark, had gained third place and qualified for the newly named ‘Mitsubishi Motors Cup’ Championships at Badminton Horse Trials next year. I could have cried with elation. Actually, I did a little bit.”

The countdown has begun

Having had a good break over the winter, Rosie is back in work and the countdown has begun to Wednesday 4th May and the Mitsubishi Motors Cup, which is taking place at Badminton, the day before the four-star competition begins.

We would like to wish Jo and Rosie, and all of the other riders heading to Badminton the Best of Luck!

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