Lancaster vs York (Equestrian)
The Lancaster University Equestrian team cantered their way to victory after defeating their York rivals by a 57 point margin.
Once each rider had drawn their horse, the competition began with the dressage. The Lancaster A team, which include Theodora Hopkins, Catherine Mclearie, Nina Boex and Gwawr Davis, appeared strong and in control from the start when performing the dressage test involving movements such as working trot, medium canter stride and pre-walk on a long reign. The York A team rode ineffectively in their dressage test incurring 16 penalty points to Lancaster’s 3.
The Lancaster B Team, who were competing in their first competition of the year, widened the gap between Lancaster and York by only receiving 15 penalties to York’s 34 giving Lancaster a strong lead going into the show jumping competition. The B team, which comprised of Ros Mogridge, Eleanor Lett, Helen Whittaker and Claire Todd, proved major competition for the York A team as well as the B team.
The jumping event was made up of 8 fences in total and despite a refusal by Linda Lidbourg from York to ride her horse, once again both the Lancaster A and B team proved the stronger of the two. With a minor mistake by Lett at the start when fence 7 was knocked down, the York team’s nerves seemed to override their performance after knocking down a total of 5 fences whilst the Lancaster team rode their lines accurately achieving excellent marks for their position. The Lancaster A team scored the highest with only one penalty mark, with joint second being award to the Lancaster B and York B team with 29 penalties. The York A team came in last with a distant 44 penalties in total.
With a combined score from the dressage and the jumping, Lancaster A team were awarded the red rosette for a clear first place win, followed by the Lancaster B team in second place. York B team in third and York A team in fourth. The individual scores saw Lancaster win 5 out of a possible 6 rosettes with team captain, Hopkins, winning the red rosette with zero penalty points and a collective score of 96.
After the competition, Hopkins commented “it has been amazing to finish on a high after two years as captain, as both teams have won by a large margin. The B team have never been able to compete before, due to a lack of funding, and it did not faze them at all and they stepped up brilliantly to the challenge”.
