CVI Geel, Belgium
May 2011
The lorry weighed in at Dover at 7.92, Julie for once was spot on !!!!! There was Julie, Suzi, Sara, William, Megan, Lydia, Paige, Ellie, Marcia, Go Fast and Willium on board ! Suzi's sandwiches at 3am were excellent at keeping Julie awake and we arrived at Belgium at 8.30am. The ponies were glad to unload and with all those pairs of hands Julie and Suzi managed to get two hours of sleep at 11am.
The following mornings trot up was uneventful, thank goodness - Julie stayed on her feet ! We had a short warm up with Willium in the competition area and Julie shot off to the Chef d'Equipe meeting to ask Lucy to change the lunger for Paige and Ellie, much to the dismay of Suzi - it's now or never said Julie, so Suzi had the pleasure of lunging Paige and Ellie at her first International competition. She was of course excellent, the girls did a stirling job for her and out of 33 vaulters they were placed 17th and 19th respectfully. Willium was the real star, he was perfectly behaved and Julie was very proud of him.
We were very happy to have Graham, Fiona, George and Emma arrive in plenty of time for George to do his compulsories. George went to Belgium to try and get 5.5 in the first round which would enable him to go to the Europeans, he did the nicest set of compulsories this year and got 5.9 for his compulsories ! we were amazed, we knew his freestyle was his strong point so he relaxed and just performed. He finished on 6.2 !! not only enough for the Europeans but he was also qualified for Aachen - well done George ! Willium once again was a star, bless him, consistantly high marks from all of the judges.
The team had to follow the Swiss. The team here consiosted of Emma Runge, Lydia Barham, Paige Brown, Sara Shortland, Ellie Cundy, Megan Bignell and William Jenkins, they made a few silly mistakes in the compulsories and still finished less than a mark below the Swiss, we were quite happy with this. The Swiss freestyle was amazing, follow that said Silvie ! ! we did try and considering the level of the freestyle due to injury we didn't do a bad job, we pulled a place up and finished in 5th place. This gives us a pretty good guide on how much work we have to do as Holland, Denmark and the Swiss were above us, Holland and Denmark being withing easy reach. Plenty of food for thought.
Joey and Hannah lifted the pairs trophy, Joey the Individual and Hannah 4th, the Great Britain Junior Team were 2nd, SSS Juniors 3rd. Stacey Macpherson got her qualifing mark for the Europeans in the junior class. Andrew was 4th individual Junior and our George 7th. An amazing competition for British vaulters once again, well done everyone.
The lorry was packed before prizegiving, just needed the ponies to get on, we made a quick exit to avoid traffic and catch the early ferry. We failed ..... and sat at the docks for half an hour before Joey came hairing round the corner !!! we all boarded the 11.15 ferry and finally got home to Northampton at 3.45 Monday morning. Very tired but satisfied, well done everyone and thanks parents for your support.
