10/06/2024
Thank you Kick On Events for a great weekend of eventing at Hopetoun House. Phoebe and I had a great day on Saturday popping round the BE90 – our dressage is slowly improving. I had a mixed day with Tallulah on Sunday in the BE100 – good dressage and brilliant XC, but a few poles in the SJ.
But… this post is really about Wills Oakden Eventing. Wills has given me a handful of SJ lessons (all brilliant, fun, super-helpful lessons). In my class at Hopetoun, BE100, he was riding FOUR horses – there were only about 30 of us in the class so he was flat out busy. He says ‘hello’ to everyone AND he REMEMBERS peoples’ names – including mine, which shows such generosity of spirit. And then…. get this… he watched my SJ round (WOW) and, while we were trotting up to the XC he gave me feedback on my round (WOW), he gave me the confidence to crack on with the XC (after not very good SJ)… THEN… he whizzes off, has a millisecond of warm up before he has to start his XC and during his warm up he manages to help and chat to the other competitors. I'm guessing a good number of the riders will have had lessons from him. Unbelievably kind. Not an ounce of solipsism in that man. Oh… and.. I forgot.. in the SJ warm up he was checking that us mere mortals had jumps at the height we wanted.
And, of course, Wills came 1st, 2nd, 6th and 10th in the section!!!! That’s a fine bit of multi-tasking!
Thank you Wills Oakden Eventing – you are an outstanding example of horsemanship, generosity and thoughtfulness and you showcase all that is wonderful in our friendly, fun, kind and THRILLING world of British Eventing.
Lovely to see so many friends. And thank you Karolina Świrgoń for coming with me on Saturday - thank you for being fab company and so helpful.
