Was royalty spotted at Windsor?!- Molly N
As I’m sure you have seen, the RHS equestrian team got a shout out on the school Instagram for their performance in the Royal Windsor Horse Show. What an honour! With Windsor being perhaps the biggest event of the year for us, we were of course fully prepared having not competed as a team for 6 months and had a new addition, Thomas G. The official title of the event was The Kingdom of Bahrain Services Team Jumping, which is just a fancy way of saying it was inter-military and sponsored by the King of Bahrain. This meant we were up against teams such as regiments from the RAF and Army, as well as the Bahrain Defence Force (so some easy competition!). Since RHS has military links, we got a free pass to compete in the event.
After completing the difficult task of getting permission from Mr Dixon to leave school on Friday, we headed to Windsor. What may seem like a fancy event was not so nice behind the scenes as it was so muddy, horse boxes had to be towed into the parking area by tractors. The next morning we woke up early to compete in the first round. With Martha knocking just one pole and Thomas and I getting clears, we made it through to round 2. Following this success, we had some free time to have breakfast, shop, check the leader board (constantly) and for Martha to lose a riding boot!
Waiting to do the parade was very chaotic to say the least: geese tried to cross the arena, my horse got into scraps with another team’s horse and the grass was churned into mud. Finally, we walked into Castle Arena in front of hundreds of people to salute Prince Edward and the Prince and Prime Minister of Bahrain. Next was round 2, in which I competed and unfortunately knocked a jump down. Despite this, we came 5th in the unmounted section (I also don’t really know what that means!), and we went back into the arena for the rewards ceremony. After getting in the background of photos with Prince Edward, music was blasted onto the speakers for us to find out we were about to do a lap of honour. Amidst the excitement, Martha and Thomas’ horses crashed into each other and mine reared.
Despite the chaos, it was a fantastic experience and we got some good photos so was definitely worth it!
Finally, I wanted to add what I thought to be some of the best names of the horses that competed: Pinball, Mr Chris, Reet Petite, Stormtrooper, Wee Famous Seamus, and my personal favourite, Mr Cool Dude.
P.S. if anyone is interested in joining the riding team who does show jumping of 70cm upwards, please email me (8nichom@royalhospitalschool.org)
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