The Olympic Test Event - Tokyo 2019

So I had a very excting phone call to say I ahd been selected to represemt Team GB at Toyko, Japan for the OLympic tets event. Both myself and Halltown Harleys owner, Suzanne are absolutely over the moon and excited to be sending this golden superstar over to Toyko. I want to say a massive thank you to Mimi who was very busy in the run up to Toyko, working tirelessly behind the scenes getting everything ready for myself and Barbie Pony!!

The flight and journey over all went to plan and I was very happy to be re united wiht Harley, aka Barbie pony when we got there. We had a great few days in Tokyo in the run up to the first day of competition, exploring the local area, the old olympic venue of 1964 and of course, Disney land wiht my boyfriend Toby and my owner, Suzanne and family.

The first day of competition, starting with the trot up!! Both Harley, and William Fox-Pitts horse, Summer, flew through the trot up and afterwards we went through their tests in preparation for their dressage tests the following day!

The stables and the whole venue was incredible. The weather certainly hit us all moer than we thought, but for the horses they were in incredible no expense spared stables with air con. The arenas were great, huge areas with a good surface that the horses worked well on.

Dressage day and Harley was a super star. He is not a falshy mover but he is always very accurate and rideable in his test, enabling you to get every mark out of him. he scored 30.1 and lay in 7th after all the horses had been, and this including the likes of Michael Jung, Andrew Hoy and several of the Japanese riders on their olympic horses!!!

Next was XC day. The Xc was at a different venue from the dressage and SJ and all the horses travelled over the night before, again the stables and facilities were amazing and perfect for the hroses. We had walked around the course twice and were quite happy with it, some of the distances walked quite low but they were consistent through the course and encouraged bold riding.
So of course, he flying Barbie Pony does it again!! He jumped a super Clear XC - 5 seconds inside the time!! After the XC there was plenty of ice and water to cool the horses and both Harley and Summer recovered and cooled down quickly and once settled, all the horses were then transported back to original stable base for the Show Jumping the next day!

Early morning and Harley flew through the trot up ready for the SJ
What a superstar!!

Nearly but not quite...... Harley jumped an amazing foot perfect clear round to move up to 4th place, not quite a medal this time but we could not be more impressed with how he has coped all week!! Certainly an event to remember! A massive thank you to the whole GB team, we could not have done this without you! 

Overall a great week and I couldnt have asked more from Harley. He is sucha  super star and we have all learned a huge amount the take home to Team GB to hopefully allow us to bring home Team Gold next year at the real thing!!!