Meet our competition winners

We would like to thank everyone that entered our competition to train with Piggy French, we had hundreds of entries but could only choose three lucky winners. The training weekend begins tomorrow, we would like to introduce you all to the winning combinations that will be taking part.

First we have Emily Dunstan, Emily is 21 years old from Cornwall, her horse Newbridge Lady is also 21 years old and these two have had a long standing partnership together. Emily is very excited to have qualified for the 2017 Grassroots Championships.

Emily told us “Sprite is my horse of a life time! She was bought as a happy hacker for £1,500 as my first pony after longing for one for so many years. We’ve gone from a 10 year old with a picnic in my back pack hacking around the countryside for hours on end to Badminton Grassroots. We did our first BE90 last year (August 2015) where we won our section on our dressage score of 23, this gained us a Regional Final Qualification for this year and that was my main aim for the whole year!
Last year we had fun participating in a Quadrille dressage team, we qualified for the final which was held at Olympia in December. The team was dressed up as Wizard of Oz and I was the one wearing the red shoes! Harry Meade was among the judges and on the comments sheet said ‘Dorothy’s horse was a highlight’!

Highlights of our 2016 season:
1st-Lanhydrock Horse Trials
1st-Chepstow BE90
1st-British Riding Club Area Horse Trials (team and individual)
3rd-Launceston BE90

Then more recently we entered our regional final at Pontispool BE90, the placings were very tight but we achieved our goal and have qualified for Badminton Grassroots 2017, I still can’t quite believe it! This training opportunity would be amazing in preparation for Badminton.”

Rachel Holden is 37 years old from Grimsby, the horse that Rachel will take to training is her horse called Martel, he is 11 years old and this combination have successfully stepped up to BE Novice level together.

Rachel described her competition achievements so far to us, she told us “I am currently eventing 2 horses, Cuttack at BE90 and Martel a homebred that has just moved up successfully to BE Novice, winning on his last outing. We have also competed in the BE100 final at Badminton and won the Yorkshire Challenge at Frickley Park last year.”

Kimberly Barclay is our third rider, Kimberly is 29 years old and is heading down from Inverurie, Scotland. Her lovely horse Bea is 11 years old and together this combination compete at BE 100. Kimberly gave us a brief description of her achievements so far with Bea “We are currently competing at BE100, hoping to move up to novice in the near future. Also compete at elementary dressage working at medium at home and BS discovery.”

we would like to wish all our riders the best of luck and look forwards to following their progress as they enjoy their training weekend.