Posted
Last week was the week of the championships. Having only competed twice at Inter 2 I decided to go to a competition at Wellington on the Monday before the Championships to familiarise myself with it again. It was very beneficial and gave me a few pointers to remember to work on in my warm-up.
Friday morning Paul and I drove up to Arena UK ready to perform my test at 14.30. It was very windy when I got on to warm up and Bugatti was feeling a little ‘spicy’ as I walked him to the warm-up arena! A few times I wished I had my neck strap on as he leapt in the air! This meant I had to restructure my warm-up a little in order to get Bugatti thinking forward and not putting his back up and trying to buck!
In the test he was phenomenal! I was quite nervous and felt I let him down a couple of times, however watching the video back he really had my back as you couldn’t see that at all. We scored fairly well and ended up 2 points in the lead on the first day. 
The following day was the music freestyle day! Bugatti felt very calm and bouncy in the arena familiarisation in the morning, which was lovely.
Bugatti did a beautiful test apart from the two lines of changes. We finished 4th in the freestyle by 1%. Once the sores were added together we still came out on top meaning we were the winners!
I am over the moon with Bugatti who has gone above and beyond trying for me this month. We had a steep learning curve and he really helped me pull out all the stops! To think we have been crowned silver Middle Tour champions for 2023 makes me feel very very proud! The videos of the two tests are on our Team Tapner Facebook page.
Bugatti will now have a holiday for a few weeks.
- Georgina Tapner - Tapner Eventing Team - Sponsored by PE
