Photo credit James Good
Dreary grey and wet was the order of the day in Pau today which is a shame as Pau is beautiful when the sun shines and there has been much chat about the footing on the cross country as the ground was already wet before this week commenced. They moved a fence before the last water today to put it on drier ground and there is talk about whether a loop may have to be removed prior to the start tomorrow.
All about Jarillo (Milo) today though as he did a tremendous job of his first attempt at a 5 star test. The arena is actually place of calm for Milo as it is the warm up which is his nightmare with him being so horse shy. Tim was trending in the lead at the start of the trot work and there were some beautiful extensions and flowing lateral work. Three out of the four changes were awesome, the second one was just marked down when Milo was a bit behind Tim’s aids but for a horse that has never been asked to put together a 5 star test in a big atmosphere it was a credible effort and a real hats off to Milo’s trainability and, of course, Tim’s talent in prepping this horse all the way through the grades.
They sit on 27.2 and in 9th position, within a rail of 7 off those ahead of them. Ros Canter and Izilot DHI are in a league of their own on the flat and backed up their winning Burghley dressage with a 19 here today but there is a reason Izilot didn’t get very far at Burghley…he takes quirky to a new level! He did win at Pau in 2023 though so maybe he likes it here.
Cross country starts at 11.30 tomorrow (CET) and hopefully Pau TV is better than it was on Thursday when most of us could not access the livestream at all. It was good today though so fingers crossed for tomorrow.