Festival Focus - The Cabin
GDG @ The Cabin hosted another musical Area Festival! The competitors incredible music choices got the judges awarding the scores needed for those all important championship qualifications!
Lea Gray rode Hopefull B to the win in the Advanced Medium Silver at The Cabin Summer Area Festival. Lea spoke to us about the wonderful atmosphere at the event, “the Area Festival at the Cabin was really lovely. It's my local venue but everyone was there supporting and enjoying the two days of competition at all levels and delighted for those that have qualified to the Championships. The organisation of the competition was excellent. The volunteers all had smiley faces and the judges provided excellent constructive remarks on the tests. It was also lovely to be able to catch up with friends that you don't regularly see.”
Lea has the experience of competing at the Area Festivals for “many years now” with a previous horse placing t the Winter Area Festival Championships at Medium and Advanced level. Her current gorgeous bay mare, she brought as an unseen three-year-old from Holland, Lea explains, “it was very challenging in her early years, but nearly nine years later we are still together and loving our dressage experiences.” Early in the young mare’s dressage career Lea tells us why the Area Festivals were the best option for them, “it was where we fitted and was less pressure for me and her but still gave her experience of bigger shows.”
Due to not being able to make the Summer Area Festivals last year despite qualifying at Medium, Lea decided to compete at the Summer Regionals, “the Area Festival experience has been beneficial for her as we have been placed in both Winter and Summer Regionals and qualified to compete at the Winter Championships at Addington.” Following the Winter championships the pair have been working on their flying changes and since qualified for the Summer Area Festivals at Advanced Medium, “the changes are definitely still a work in progress.”
After trotting up lame at the Scottish Summer Regional, causing the combination to withdraw, Lea tells us their preparation was not ideal for the Summer Area Festival, “we headed home not knowing what was wrong and whether we would be able to compete, fortunately seems she was being a bit of a drama queen and was 100% sound after a few days rest. Our aim was to finish the test and maybe get one flying change - goal achieved - and the bonus of a sash!”
“I'm just delighted to be enjoying our partnership together. It's been a rocky road but we keep knocking down the barriers and improving with the help of my wonderful trainer.” Lea explains, “I love dressage as it's a team effort, a partnership between horse, rider and trainer. The tiniest of changes can mean huge improvements and when you crack an issue it's so rewarding! But I think we might be a while until we crack those pesky changes! Pity we can't do piaffe, passage and pirouettes instead as we are quite good at those!”
Ruth Marshall and First Edition had an incredibly successful Summer Area Festival at The Cabin, not only winning the Elementary Silver with a score of 68.24% but also finishing within the top five in three other classes! A second place in the Medium Bronze Freestyle, another second place in the Elementary Silver Freestyle and finally fifth place in the Medium Bronze.
Ruth explains, “I love competing at the area festivals, they are so friendly and welcoming, this would be my third area festivals so it’s really nice to get the results I did.” In preparation for the event, Ruth and “Indi” travel around an hour and a half to train with Eilidh Grant at Caskiben Dressage, “we go as often as we can and Eilidh know just how to get us to where we need to be.”
The combination had a busy two days at the Area Festival, with the challenge of riding four different tests, “the four tests over two days was a lot for us, the most we have done so far so I was in a bit of a panic I’d get them mixed up and start riding the wrong ones but thankfully that didn’t happen.”
Ruth and Indi have “loved stepping up the levels” and achieving results like this has been “so rewarding.” Having owned Indi for six years, Ruth shares their journey together, “Indi is my first horse, I bought her when she was 6 and she is 12 now so we have come a long way together, she hadn’t done much at all when I got her so being able to produce her myself has been so rewarding.” Competing in the freestyle classes has been something Ruth has really enjoyed, “I love my music, for my elementary music It is taken from Bridgerton, so it’s modern music but strings. And then for my medium music it is all Taylor swift which I absolutely love and I’m sure Indi loves it too.”
Now with three tickets to the Summer Area Festival Championships at Arena UK, Ruth is looking forward to travelling down for that and will also spend the winter ahead training.