SILVER MEDAL BABY!

WOOOOHOOOOOO! Region 7 Juniors won the SILVER MEDAL!
Here's how it happened:
Each team is composed of 4 riders- the Region 7 Junior team is myself, Stephanie Early with Panash, Genay Vaughn with Waranja, and Jamie Pestana with Winzalot. Today, we rode the FEI Junior Team test- the average of all four of our rides is taken and compared with all the other teams, and WE WON THE SILVER MEDAL! There are 9 Junior teams from the U.S., but I don't know how many Canada had, and Mexico doesn't have any Dressage teams.
So I rode today at 10:35, thankfully before it got dreadfully hot. Nash was a star. He has been cheerful and confident this entire week, and he brought it straight into the show ring. We had about a 45 minute warm-up, which was crazy- there were like, 8 other horses warming up with us in one Dressage court. Of course he handled it very well, a complete gentleman. I could tell he was getting fatigued at the end of our warm-up so we did a lot of lateral movements at the walk, trying to save energy. I was a little worried about my left lead canter- every time I sat in to collect he would immediately break to trot, despite my attempts to hold the lead, but I knew I couldn't let it ruin the rest of my ride, I would just have to work with what I got in the show ring. My ride time came, Lyn walked us down the chute to the stadium, and in we went.

I cannot describe the absolute and overwhelming excitement I felt going around the outside of the ring. I probably had the silliest grin on my face, Nash was flinging out his toes, it was great. And, the judges all said "Good morning!" back to me! I remember my first CDI, I go around the outside and cheerfully say "Good morning!" to the first judge, who looks up and glares at me. It was very intimidating. But these judges were nice. So I was pretty excited, pretty overwhelmed, but when I entered at A I knew Nash would be tense if I didn't ride in the same mindset I did at home so I did my best to get down to business.

Honestly I don't know how my rides look or what the score will be when I'm showing, so I don't know how to share my actual ride with you other than posting a video (which will come soon I promise, it's not finished converting into an uploadable format). It was a solid ride, our only mistake was picking up that stupid left lead canter at A. I cued probably too strongly as I was worried about getting it and he hesitated and we had to cut the corner, but it was contained to one movement so didn't hurt our overall score too much. Oh, and there's a huge electronic scoreboard at the end of the stadium that is updated with your average score AS YOU RIDE. It was so hard not to look at it during my ride, but I didn't want to see a low or high score and psyche myself out. As we were exiting the arena however I stared at it- 64.321%!

So the ride, apparently, went very well. I have yet to watch it, it's almost 12 hours later and I'm still savoring this indescribable feeling. Happiness, relief, pride, I don't know what it is but it's very very nice.

Stephanie and Genay put in solid rides at 64.000% and 63. 622% respectively, and Jamie and Winzalot had a stunning ride with 69.?? %. I don't remember exactly what our overall average was. All of us did really well, and it's been such a fun time getting to know these girls and bonding as a team.

At 2 we had the awards ceremony. Our team got to stand on a podium and have our national anthem played, it was all very grown-up and official and FUN! I don't think I stopped smiling the entire time. Nash was adorable, I haven't ever seen him preen so much. He definitely deserves the attention. It feels like it's been such a long journey to get here, to qualify, to medal. But in reality I met Nash (and started Dressage) 2 years and 8 months ago, and I guess in the grand scheme of things that's a relatively short time. Nevertheless, it has been quite an experience and I couldn't possibly have asked for better results. Nash is an amazing horse who I've come to love and appreciate, a constant and unconditional best friend, and I'm looking forward to picking a new goal with him once this Championship is over.

Alright, I'm exhausted and feel like I'm rambling a bit. All the details that I missed in this blog I'll be sure to add tomorrow, which is thankfully a day off for us Juniors. On Friday we ride the Individual Test, and the top 15 from there go on to the Freestyle on Saturday.

OH! And an update about that left lead canter- he's developed tender bumps on his back snce we've been here, mainly on his spine and left side, which explains why he would pop up his croup when I'd sit into him- it would hurt! So we had an FEI vet come and look at it, he approved a dose of Dex, and the bumps have disappeared. We'll see if the problem is fixed when I ride tomorrow.