Winners at Lincoln

The Polnoon team beat 26 other teams to win the Senior Novice Show Jumping Championship at Lincoln on Saturday 8th September. They handled the atrocious conditions best and were clear winners after 2 rounds on 4 penalty points, clear of the second team on 12 points. Critically, they were the only team to go clear in round 2. Team Member Kirsty MacGillivray said "We are absolutely delighted with this win. Winning in good conditions would have been fine but to win in these tough conditions is extra special". Kirsty was 2nd overall and Clare 4th both on double clears, of which there were only six in total. Lisa was a creditable 8th.

The team story is quite a tale. Sheona McNeil had been tearing her hair out with the various withdrawals and horse injuries. Her phone bill to Stoneleigh will be massive! The club owes her and the team a huge thanks for their efforts. We must not forget the qualifiers, Elizabeth Brown and Trisha Hunter, who were unable to make the final. Another person to thank is Lorna Hillhouse, who allowed her horse to travel south with a scratch rider. Thanks also to Kirsty's Dad who acted as Chef d'Equipe - who said the press-gang was dead!

Apart from the not-so-simple matter of getting a team together for the trip, there was the small matter of the doubling in the price of diesel. This was resolved by the team members selling football cards and by Angela Mulhearn getting £100 per lorry from Gavin Duncan. Thanks Gavin, you're a star!

Then there was the simple matter of getting there. Clare's horse Yashi escaped from his paddock on the Friday morning. It took over an hour to find him and bring him back= and he had cut his knee on the fence. Lesley and Lisa found a panicking Clare when they arrived in the lorry and quickly bustled horse and rider onboard. Then they had to stop half way down the road to get the exhaust welded back on the wagon, then as they were waiting at passport control, Yashi tried to make a last break for freedom and knocked the window out of the horsebox on top of the passport checkers! The lorry had to be towed in to the stables as the ground was a quagmire and the horses spent the whole time in their outdoor rugs because the rain was driving into their boxes.

Clare Higgins, a first-timer at Lincoln, says it all: "I'd like to give special mention and thanks to the club and my team mates for getting me and Yashi to Lincoln in more or less one piece. Left to me and more importantly my horse, I wouldn't have gotten on the lorry in the first place, let alone round the course in the teaming rain. After antics on Friday that wouldn't be taken seriously in a fiction novel, I was hoping for a nice boring day on Saturday. However tales so tall warrant a happy ending and we got ours. It was a great weekend, I think we all did each other, our horses, the club and Scotland proud. And as we changed out of soaked, mud covered clothes into damp, slightly less muddy ones and tucked into one of the most welcome meals of our lives, there was definite talk of the horse trials next year! Looking forward to it."

Lisa Grant said "By the time we came to jump we thought for sure the gods were against us!! But several Jodhpur changes later and we were the outright winners!! (oh and I managed to fall down the hill at the secretaries tent as well, in the mud, in my cream jods) so I had to change AGAIN!! Oh and then the photographer managed to miss my last round of jumping so no decent pictures at all (apparently he went for T at 4.30pm!!)"

And it was not only the show jumpers who had success. Angela McKinna on Fergal II was 2nd in her dressage test and 4th in her riding test. Kirsty might well have had a result in her riders test but Sheona, who seldom errs, gave her the wrong test to learn!