Australian International 3 Day Event – Preperation

tedlandyEquestrian

We leave for the Australian International 3 Day Event in Adelaide on Monday and I could not be more excited! This is my first time competing at the AI3DE, and having heard so much about it I cannot wait to see for myself! I will be competing in the CCI 2** and Young Rider class on my horse ESB Golden Zone.

In the lead up, all the recent wet weather has caused so many events in South Easter Victoria to be cancelled, and so it has been difficult to get a run, however what we have done has gone very well! Candlebark HT became a Combined Training Day but I decided to go nonetheless and Zone came away with a 4th place in the 2**. The following weekend I went to Ayr Hill Show Jumping, where Zone was super and won the 1.10m class, making it 4 wins from his last 4 show jumping shows! He won the 1.10m at Geelong SJ Championships, the 1.15m at Sale Show, the 1.25m at the Australian Show Jumping Championships, and now this 1.10m class at Ayr Hill too. He is becoming quite the show jumper! Our final pre-Adelaide event was the Tooradin HT. This is always a special event for me given it is held at Tooradin Estate, the wonderful property where I live and train. The weather was unbelievably bad with the property being wetter than I have ever seen it before, but thankfully our sandy soils meant we were able to run the event regardless. It was the perfect pre-Adelaide run for me, with Zone finishing on his dressage score in the CNC 2** to take out 2nd place. He was the most ridable he has ever been in the dressage phase, and then zipped around the cross country clear and under time. He gave me such a great ride, making it feel very easy! To finish off we jumped a lovely clear round in the show jumping. Overall it was a great confidence boosting run for both of us before Adelaide.

This week we have been focussing on fine tuning the dressage, as well as doing a few jumping exercises and our final gallops. Some of my best friends, owners and supporters surprised me with a set of my favourite PEI cross country boots as a good luck present which has made it all seem very real. Thank you so much Kristy, Iliana, Catie, Ruby, Vanessa and Sally, you guys are amazing, your support is incredible and has allowed the dream of competing at Adelaide to now be realised.
I am very much looking forward to beginning the journey on Monday with Ruby my amazing groom who will be coming with me. We will be keeping everyone updated with a behind the scenes album on my facebook page ‘Sophia Landy Equestrian’. I think it is going to be quite relaxing having just one horse to look after compared to the nine in work at home!