Brookside for an Evening

Bacantos soaring high

This past saturday night turned out to be a good one for FCF!  Heavy rain earlier in the week wreaked havoc on the Brookside footing, causing us to continually change our plans for competing.  Each morning was started with phone calls and updates on what was happening with the footing and schedule and each morning was a story of postponement.  The trusty Brookside managing staff opted to  hold off on jumper classes until saturday, ensuring safe and durable footing for us competitors.  The decision was made, we tossed our boys Bacantos and Conamour on the trailer and off we went saturday afternoon.  Now this was a first for both horses: neither had been to Brookside and neither had experienced walking off the trailer and directly into the show ring for a big class.  Upon our arrival, we got checked in, gave the boys a little tour of the warm-ups, tied them back up in the trailer and went to walk our course.  Originally, the $10,000 Jamie Alder Memorial Derby was meant to be a speed class.  Since the footing was good, but not yet great, management made the call in the name of safety to hold the class as regular return jump-off format.  This being done in the hopes of avoiding mass slippage while turning and burning, going for the win (which was fine by us!).  After walking the inviting 1.30m course, we ran back, threw our tack on and trotted out to the warm-up.  With our ever-fearless leader, Dusty, as designated jump-setter, Chelsea and Giana warmed their mounts up and headed to the ring.  Bacantos and Chelsea were up first, producing a beautiful clean round to return for the jump-off.  Not to be outdone, Giana and Conamour headed in and were clean themselves, ensuring they were the last to return in the jump-off.  Bacantos was a superstar, galloping to the jumps and making a fabulous turn that no one else dared.  Unfortunately, his style of jumping so impressively high over the fences is not the most efficient and it left him just short of the top 2 and in 3rd.  Conamour also jumped his heart out, not rubbing a single fence.  One navigation error left them with a 4 fault score and a 7th place finish.  After all this excitement, the boys meandered back to the trailer, got untacked, loaded back up and we all headed home.  Not bad for an evenings work!  We're so lucky to have such amazing horses.  Next up: Capital City Classic this coming weekend, hopefully we can recreate this wonderful experience (not to mention win a little money along the way!)

Good Boys!