The Petplan Winter Area Festival Championships saw close competition in the elementary silver under-21 class, with Alice Lamburn emerging victorious by a mere 0.29% margin over Brooklyn Daw in second place. Alice received a score of 70.539% on the Linde WS, and as the test went on, her scores improved. For the first working trot, she started with 5.5 and finished with eights.
Alice, 20, described the eight-year-old as a "chestnut mare, and she can be quite tense and spooky, but she coped really well." "It's my first time awarding prizes, and she handled everything nicely.
“She was very green and weak when I bought her as a five-year-old, but I loved her immediately and have brought her up the ranks myself.”
Alice intends to bring Linde to university with her the next year when she pursues her studies in human biology and anatomy at the University of Liverpool.
“This year she’s been kept ticking over by Jade Deter, and I come home for the holidays and try to do the best I can,” Alice continued, expressing her inability to imagine her "life without horses." "During my gap year, I worked at Catherston Stud, and I really enjoyed it."
In second place was 17-year-old Brooklyn Daw, who was riding 18-year-old Roulette MKM. After a traumatic year in which she unexpectedly lost her Connemara pony to cancer.
“He’s really helped me since losing my pony, which I’d had since I was nine,” she said. “Rou is very different to my pony – going from a 14.2 hand horse to a 17 hand horse warmblood, and it’s taken time to get used to the gears as he has so many!
“It’s the best test we’ve done so far. He has a good brain on him and he’s taught me a lot. I am hoping we can go up to medium this year.”
In the preliminary bronze, Sophie Bellamy, an event rider, finished victorious with a remarkable score of 72.36% aboard her eventer Drumnaconnell Goody Bag, ridden by Ricardo Z. The two are trying to advance to 100 after winning a BE90 after the previous season. Sophie is a relatively new dressage competitor.
The more she practised, the more she liked her dressage. "I realised that your dressage has to be so good if you want to have a chance of being competitive in eventing," she said. I have no complaints about him today; he was amazing.