And away we go!

Friday morning came early and I decided to trust that Quincy's behavior would be best if I didn't do a "pre-ride" before my test. Instead he went for a nice long hand graze before being tacked up to hack over to the main area at 8.  Well he is no fool and did realize this time it was for real so decided to add a little spooking and bolting into our hack over for good measure... He stayed a little more up for the beginning of my warm-up but I proceeded with the routine that had been working the previous 2 mornings.  When David arrived he instantly changed the program since he could see we had a slightly different horse.. I went along with the plan and after about 10 minutes things were feeling good.

We went through a few movements, got a few reminders, and we were in.. Jeff got the test on video since it did not appear that the professionals had arrived so sorry for the lack of zooming ability (slow to upload so adding soon).

I came out of the test thrilled with our performance, which is very rare for me, but reserved my excitement until they announced my score.  But when they did, 44.8, there was a celebration!  I've never gotten better than a score in the 50's with International judges and to be below a 45 was awesome. I instantly pointed out to David that it meant we had score better than all 7's :).

Quincy went back to get lots of carrots from his first wave of admirers..more would be arriving later in the day...and I was off to walk the course again since now it was really on! On my third walk I started to get a good feel of the track of the course, the terrain and turns and approaches to the fences, and began to solidify my plans for the combinations.

For lunch Jeff and I were invited into the sponsors marquee to join the UK Shires Equestrian group.  We had a great meal and interesting conversation much of it based on the differences in spectators and sponsorship between the US and UK.  One take on the difference in the number of spectators that come out for events in the UK was simply that eventing is one of the only really exciting sporting events in the UK that is a family friendly outing while in the US eventing is competing with so many more exciting sports... Many people I spoke with didn't really even know what the competition at Blenheim was all about.

Another course walk in the afternoon with Jeff just to review my plans left me feeling good and we were off to the local pub to grab a bite and get some rest...