British Riding Clubs National Championships 

Lincoln 6th and 7th September 2008   

With some nerves but also excitement of what was to come, some of the Deben Riding Club Junior squad set off from Suffolk on the journey to Lincoln.  For most of the juniors this was their first time competing at the Championships.  Having worked extremely hard to qualify in the first instance we were looking forward to stabling our ponies and horses away from home and sleeping in horseboxes or in tents.

On arrival at Lincoln in torrential rain we were soon to discover that the bad weather was here to stay - all weekend!  With most lorries getting towed on to the lorry park, then trying to locate stables and loos etc, the tents and gazebos were being erected as best we could.

We fielded a Junior Dressage team who finished 16^th overall with individual placings of Posy (10^th) Grace (11^th) Isaac (18^th) and Alice (20^th).  This team included our youngest ever junior Alice who is the grand age of 8, the mud came past Gwen’s knees so no wonder she wasn’t too happy.

Grace also competed in the dressage as an individual doing Prelim 13 in which she was placed 5^th.

We also had two Riding Test Teams, the Red team were placed 16^th overall with Isaac being placed 9^th in his arena, Alice 13^th, Joe 14^th, and Grace 14^th.

The Black team ended up with 20^th place and the team consisted of Joanne 12^th, Annabel 11^th, Carrie 17^th and Rosie 17^th.

The Style Jumping team fared much better despite having three team members having never taken part in this competition.  The team were 7^th once the scores had been posted, with Joanne, Rosie and Grace getting super scores in the 170’s but Joe had the highest individual score of 187 giving him a placing of 13^th.

Grace and Isaac also competed in the Pairs Dressage  class and ended up 4^th overall.

The Senior Teams, though just as important had a great weekend with the results as follows.  Although the weather was absolutely atrocious they did themselves proud, especially with substitutions due to lameness and borrowed equines.

The Riding Test Team were place 5^th overall comprising of Sally, Jo, Jess Zampi (5^th as an individual) and Abi (3^rd as an individual).

The style jumping did extremely well considering they only had 3 competitors, this team was made up of Abi, Jess Zampi and Jess Mace (this team had 2 borrowed horses out of 3).

The team ended up being placed a creditable 14^th against some very stiff competition.

I would like to thank all the Juniors who rode superbly, but more than that for the way they conducted themselves over the weekend, team spirit and fun were at the top of the agenda.  Deben Riding Club has a Junior Squad they are extremely proud of.

Thanks also to all the helpers, mums, volunteers on the day, you were all great.