Tim drove to France overnight on Wednesday and met up with his horses on Thursday morning. Two very smart young horses as well, both making their 3*Long debut. Gloire de Marchenval (Louis) and The Highlander (Ivar) are in France to tick the MER box as you cant progress to 4*L without checking the 3Long box first. It is a milestone in a young horses career and it generally marks the start of their international trajectory! Well, that is the plan……..Making it to this stage without being on the transfer list is a big step and once they are here and done it is usually a good sign that Chedington will have all the chances of being a forever home.
French events have, in general, always been most accommodating with requests from Tim even if they don’t consider speed of reply to be at the top of the agenda. There are just 32 starters in the 3Long at Jardy but when Tim asked if he could have both horses on Friday afternoon to allow him a little more time to prepare them they were most obliging.
So Tim kicked off Friday afternoon’s 3 star dressage section at 2pm CET with Louis who was his usual obliging self and did a lovely test to take the lead on 27.5. And then close to the end of the class Ivar also did a lovely elegant test to sneak ahead of him on 27.2 which is pretty classy! Interestingly the judge at C had Ivar in the lead and Louis 2nd and the judge at B the other way around so barely a smidgeon in it for class pet today.
Hot in the north of France as well as the UK… we are set to hit temps of over 30 degrees on both sides of the Channel. Tim has cross country tomorrow then showjumping on Sunday and I would bet that Jonelle will be heading for the beach with Otis and Abel this weekend.
Live scoring on https://jardy.winjump.fr/concours/13165/jardy-eventing-show-2025