Olympia December 2009

Olympia was a great experience for the whole team, including our German trainer Steffi and horse GoFast. We did two demonstrations every day and when we weren’t in the ring we were training!! When we arrived on the Wednesday we found out that the finale we were going to be in had a pirate theme. We were confused at first but it was about to get weirder, after we finished vaulting we had to stay in the ring and do a little pirate jig and then sing a Christmas carol! And although the demo itself was a little weird we had a great time.

We stayed in a really cosy, little hotel and had all our meals at a really great café called “George’s”. The guys that ran it were really lovely (including the manager Nick who Julie called George all week) and the food was just what we needed. We spent each morning at Olympia doing body conditioning work with Steffi; we worked so hard we were stiff by day two. We did get some time off to look around the shops though and we got to see so many famous faces just wandering around. We got to see some of the best show jumpers perform in the ring as well; Ellen Whittaker even spoke to us in the toilets!!! It was great when we got to meet Camilla Parker Bowles, she was walking around the stables and seemed really interesting in vaulting. We also got to meet the Lords Mayor of London.

Our demos went well in general but we had the occasional slips, and GoFast was a really good girl on account that the crowd was HUGE!! The Scottish team were there as well and performed simultaneously at the other end of the arena. And on the final evening we were all live on telly (including our little jig). What was really cool though is that Paige and Sarah both had their birthdays while we were there, Steffi even gave them half an hour off!

Overall Olympia was a great week for us all and we got to watch one of the biggest and best horse shows in the world. We even came out the other side with a brand new freestyle!

Lydia