A Sunday trip to Aston le Walls with just Hiarado (Jools) for Jonelle and Viscount Viktor for Tim. Cosby Green was along for the ride with Jos Ufo de Quidam (Ufo) and she did have a good day and even squeezed into the prize money (although she wont be making any large purchases soon with it, more of a ‘I’ll get the pizza” type of deal).
Jonelle was delighted with her bouncy tiger as Jools pinged around the influential showjumping clear and relished the new arena. To say Jonelle didn’t share quite the same enthusiasm for the cross country track would be a bit of an understatement but Jools didn’t mind one bit that it varied from easy peasy to proper 4 star question and she gave Jonelle a super ride. Jools is really quite special over a fence and when you love your job as much as she does life is good.
Vikor was a victim of the tight time in the showjumping…Tim turned up short fence 2 and it came down but he jumped the rest with class. Its a definite tick for the new arena from both the Price team as the surface seems to really work which was never quite the case for the old jump arena.
Now lying right up there after the dressage and showjumping with Viktor meant Tim was under a bit of pressure to put Aachen behind him and have a bit of a crack. He and Viktor were having a great ride on super ground and Viktor answered all the tricky questions with ease. They jumped into the second water really well and then Viktor tripped and went down on one knee which ejected Tim straight into (and under) the murky depths of Aston’s water. It’s a busy site and the water isn’t exactly crystal clear! Tim said he had water in both ears and got a proper drenching and with heavy sarcasm said “it was just what I needed to get me back on the road after Aachen” and I imagine it was a fairly long journey back to Dorset after that for his fellow travellers.
So there you have it. Tim is still World no.1 but you wouldn’t have forecast that within 2 competitions and the first week in July both Price’s would be sitting in the water minus their horses. I’d like to say better things are coming but its Tweseldown with the babies on Monday so I’ll save that comment until the end of Monday!