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South
Essex Insurance Brokers/PSOA Trailblazers
Faruk's
Championship Win Proves He's Alive and Well!
More
than 1,400 riders fight for national titles
For
Tallulah Hall, the 2003 Trailblazers championships will long be
a day to remember. The day her horse came back from the dead!
Last
year her 12-years-old Arabian, Faruk, developed strangles, but after
a six month battle, veterinary surgeons were admitting defeat and
suggesting the horse be put down. As a desperate last measure, three
hairs were taken from Faruk, sent off to the operators of a radionics
and crystal "black box" and five weeks later the strangles
was beaten.
Tallulah,
17, from Gillingham, Dorset, spent another six months getting him
fit again, and then celebrated at the Trailblazers final by winning
the dressage senior Elementary championship.
More
than 1,900 riders had qualified for the South Essex Insurance Brokers
Trailblazers final, which is organised and run by the Permanent
Show Organisers Association at 43 of its member centres around the
country. About 1,400 eventually made the journey to the National
Agricultural Centre, Stoneleigh.
"This
has been our third year of competition," said PSOA chairman
Norman Bargh, "and undoubtedly the best so far. The response
has been so enormous over the year and we are so sure that the series
will become even more popular that we are extending the 2004 championship
meeting to four days."
The
competition is designed to appeal to the estimated 200,000 riders
who choose not to affiliate for dressage or showjumping - like Jenny
Reeve, from Aston,, Sheffield, who was at her first Trailblazers
and "big competition" with her horse Oscar and rode him
into first place in Preliminary dressage.
"It
is also a good series for juniors to cut their teeth on competition,"
says Mr Bargh. And that is exactly what 13-years-old James Payne
from Horndon on the Hill, Essex, did. James, who says he WILL be
a professional showjumper and he WILL one day beat the puissance
record, rode his 14-years-old New Forest mare, Montanna Mindy, into
the 85cms showjumping title.
The
105cms junior showjumping title went to the smallest pony in the
class, the 13.2hh Mini Madam, owned by 13-years-old Hayley Windsor
from Bexleyheath, Kent.
"It
has been a real national competition, with people travelling from
far and wide to be here for the three days," Mr Bargh comments.
And that was proved by Suzanne Corlett, who travelled her horse,
Conrhenny Treat, for four hours by sea and seven in a horsebox from
the Isle of Man to become the senior 85cms showjumping champion.
And
the senior novice dressage champion, Shelly Harriss, travelled from
Brecon, Powys, with her 18.2hh Thoroughbred/Shire cross, Cosmic
King, for her first Trailblazers final.
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