One Step Forward Two Steps Back – Part 3

This is a continuing story, so you may want to go back to Part 1 & 2 if you missed it.

After falling off at jump 4 in my first Welcome Stakes, in spite of being epically prepared and having a great warm up…… I had to regroup.

But first on the agenda was the move-up from 1.0 meter to 1.10 meter on the newest pony The Zebaysaurus. Our last few 1.0 meter classes had gone pretty well. So a move up seemed like the next logical step.

Of course I had just fallen off in the biggest class of my life the day before…..

When I fell (and amazingly landed on my feet) and started walking out, the crowd did that very kind “courtesy clap” and so I took a bow, and they all laughed.

You know, I am “The BadEventer”, always here to entertain & encourage through my <what seem to be never ending and continuous> failures.

I mean, they’re horses not motorcycles.

Sh*t happens.

But Saturday was a whole new day, and I started with my first 1.10 meter class on the new kid.

Once again, I seriously “won” the warm up. He warmed up great. We met the warm up jumps pretty perfectly, and I’m thinking, “it only took 40 years to finally not crash & burn in the warm up!”

That’s a big accomplishment.

And then we went in the ring,

and promptly,

and very unceremoniously,

got eliminated.

Well.

That was exactly not what I was expecting.

And I’m thinking, when was the last time I got eliminated 2 classes in a row? On 2 different horses?

Oh yeah, that would be the 3* in New Jersey. Where I drove 1200 miles just to retire on Cross Country with BOTH 3* horses!!!!

Of course this photo is Maryland, not New Jersey, that whole “retiring on XC” happened at more than one 3* star

But one HUGE advantage of jumper shows is if things go south in the ring, there’s often another class you can enter to regroup. Unlike an event where you’re just done for the weekend.

Luck would have it there was a 1.0 meter right after the 1.10m.

So I got a do-over.

We did a brief warm up, again, totally making that part look easy.

And I went in the ring and stopped again AT THE SAME %$#&*^ JUMP.

At this point, if I could have just walked out and headed outta there, I might have.

Except…

That if I didn’t get around this time, I think the Fearless Leader would probably have just left me in Mississippi….. to find my own ride back home.

And so after stopping AGAIN at the same jump, I hiked my big girl panties back up, rode him back to the exact same awful distance, but he was kind and we managed to jump around & finish the course this time.

So that was at least an improvement. We didn’t get eliminated again. We had the one stop but jumped around.

Hal-le-lu-jah.

Next was my regrouping effort with The Unicorn. I had fallen off in the Welcome Stakes the day before, and we decided just to put him in the 1.10 meter in the grass field to have a nice easy jump around to rebuild confidence for both of us. In comparison, those jumps look like “speed bumps.”

We started warming up, and then our warm up got interrupted by an official because they said I actually couldn’t jump in that class. I guess it has something to do with jumping (or rather I should say ATTEMPTING to jump) certain heights excludes you from others or some such. Honestly I have no idea how they do all that “Amateur” “Low” “Junior” “High” stuff. I mostly just show up at the ring when I’m told.

So now there’s this big question on whether I can jump around in the 1.10. But after some persuasion with the officials we got the go ahead for something like an HC round and off I went.

I honestly wasn’t worried.

This was 1.10 meter, which was itty bitty bitty compared to what we’ve been jumping for the past 2 years, and especially the last 6 months. I went in thinking it was going to be a nice, easy round and we’d both get our sh*t back together.

And then…………………..