Most, if not all, of the horse shows under the Cyprus Equestrian Federation are held about a 30 or 40 minute drive from our house, in a town called Lythrodontas in the foothills of the Troodos Mountains. Apparently, they used to happen at Lapatsa (where I ride), but there was a dispute between the owners and the Federation and that is no more. That’s a shame, because not only would it be cheaper (trailering to and from the show is 40 euros), the weather would also be better!
The horse shows in Cyprus are obviously small, and nothing like they are in the United States. Saturdays are dressage and Sundays are jumping. Instead of having dozens of jumping classes, there is an equitation class, and then Categories F-A based on fence heights. The lowest class is 85 cm and the highest is 1.2 meters. My first show was supposed to be in January, but Lythrodontas apparently has a very temperamental microclimate and it started pouring rain halfway through dressage day. The rest of dressage and all of jumping the next day was canceled.
After aborted attempt #1, we tried again on February 7. It started off as a beautiful day– I found Amay tied up and waiting to get tacked up. The show only had one competition ring, but it was a little hard to track what class they were on because the announcements and people’s names were in Greek which I obviously cannot understand. They also lose a ton of time totally changing the course for every class and spending too much time on awards ceremonies and course walks. But, when there are only 40 or 50 horses competing the whole day, I suppose they can get away with this.
The show had a small narrow warm-up ring, and this was just about the worst part of the show. First, there was one trainer who had six people in my classes and they all warmed up at the same time and they were ALL OVER THE PLACE. Part of the problem is that in the United States I can hear trainers telling their riders to jump this or jump that and steer clear, but here they were shouting in Greek, which I don’t speak! The international standard is to pass left shoulder to left shoulder, or call out if you are violating this understanding for some reason. This group was clearly not used to sharing the arena. It was just a lot of disorder and chaos, which frankly I’d rather just jump three jumps and go in the arena then get riled up.
I was showing in Category C (which in Greek is “Gamma”) (1.0 meter, or about 3’3″) and Category B (1.1 meter, or about 3’7″). I think compared to the United States, the courses were built pretty big (wide square oxers) and frankly I think they were set higher than advertised. Also, while the arena seems big from the photos, there were a lot of short corners which meant coming at forward lines and combinations after a three stride corner– a lot like an indoor ring. Amay has a short stride so it required a lot more of an aggressive ride than I am used to in big Californian jumper fields!
We jumped the Category C and had a clear round– in the United States, this would mean we would go directly to a jump-off following our round. I lingered in the arena waiting for the bell to ring until someone informed me that is not how they do it here. After everyone has gone, they raise the jumps and do the jump off after. Good to know! We took the scenic route in the jump-off but had a clear round and I ended up getting 3rd out of 9 or 10 people!
After that, I had my sea legs and was ready to go! They put the jumps up– pretty high, given we’d been riding indoors often on account of all the rain– and though Amay tried to stop at the first jump I hung tough and we got around clear again. I will say at this point the “old me” was starting to emerge again and though I said I was going to take it easy, I rode a pretty aggressive and quick jump-off, surprising my trainer and even myself! We ended up 2nd again out of 8 or 9 people. Though the show was a lot less effort than American horse shows, I was more exhausted than I’ve ever been.
I went to a second horse show two weeks later. Rain was in the forecast, but we decided to go ahead with shipping the horses to Lythrodontas. The morning weather was actually great, perfect weather for horse showing! However, it took a long time to get through the morning classes and by the time I got on it was “spitting rain.” I warmed up and walked the course. It was drizzling and that point, but still OK. The first horse went on course (I was supposed to go second), and it started pouring. All the Cypriots suddenly decided to leave the warm up ring, somewhat shouted at me in English to take cover, and by the time I made it to looked like someone had taken the hose to us. It began thundering and hailing, and after 20 minutes of raining buckets, the stewards called it and canceled the show.
A make-up show was scheduled for the end of February. Unfortunately, this was the same day we had a big ship visit an hour away in Limassol. Determined to do both, I headed down to do a second (third) horse show in five weeks! I would have been better off jumping in the rain– my eye was really off and the course designer had put together some legitimately tough courses. Amay is a great horse but he is not particularly scopey, and he has a very small stride. We had a clear round in the Category C but in the jump off I took a super tight turn to a one-stride. He lost propulsion in the turn and added a stride, which cost us valuable time. But we ended up second! I was a bit concerned about Category B, which had been set at 1.15 meters and had some pretty hard lines, big wide oxers, and a liverpool filled with water set entirely in front of a tall vertical. We jumped around the first tough 8 jumps pretty well, but Amay likes to add strides and buried himself in an oxer going into a combination. We got out of it OK and galloped to the biggest, widest jump on course, but Amay had lost his confidence and stopped. I knew at this point it was over, so I took my time to reapproach and in spite of meeting the jump perfectly, Amay just didn’t leave the ground and we got eliminated 🙁 It wasn’t the best way to end, and his propensity to add these little tiny strides in very tight places between pretty sizable jumps is a little worrisome. There are three more shows before the season ends in May, so we’ll see how it goes.
