An update from DBF Ambassador Mari as the 2020 Olympics draw ever closer. The competition is obviously hotting up and, as ever, Mari is finding ways to enable herself and her equine teammates, Sky and Bear, to give their best performances, and getting very promising results as you will see. With her inspiring determination and commitment, not to mention ingenuity, we feel sure that she will reach her goal and be competing for Team GB in 2020.
We wish her continued success with her preparations.
As Tokyo is fast approaching yesterday marked 300 days to go my aim is to campaign both horses; with selection officially starting next year (still awaiting selection policy).
The last few major competitions with Bear have not gone to plan for one reason or another. He has qualified for the Winter Para Dressage Championships in just two outings. He also has two scores over 73% in the team and Individual test. Bear has shown people his potential and we have had some very positive feedback.
The British Dressage Nationals was Bears first major show there is nowhere else that has the same atmosphere as the Nationals not even the Europeans. Bear was a really good boy but got a bit tense and a jog cost us the win; we still came 2nd!
Then onto Keysoe CPEDI3* Bear did three super tests and we were all delighted with him and the work we produced; sadly the judges didn’t agree. But that’s dressage for you and the subjective nature!
Due to my Ataxia I find having a stable contact and keeping my hands still extremely hard but we were really marked down on this at Keysoe. So we have worked really hard and found a way that seems to be able to stabilise my hands and as a result Bear is a lot happier and walking out so much more as he has stable connection to walk into. I just need to get the classifiers to agree the adaption and then we will go out into competition and see what the judges think.
I took Sky to a local competition it was a winter qualifier but he has already qualified as he has a bye from competing at the Europeans. He felt on top form and scored 72.5% to take the win beating a triple Paralympian on both of her horses!! A great way to start our campaign with even more to come.
(Mari Durward-Akhurst, Para-Dressage Rider and Inspirational Speaker)