HTSG Scholar Laura Collett - July Round Up

Barbury International Horse Trials was first up for Laura in July with 5 horses in action.  Two top 10 results in the CIC2* and an excellent 9th in the Event Rider Master CIC3*.

After Barbury Laura had a quick trip to Tweseldown and then onto Jardy in France with three horses, one in CIC1*, 2* and 3*.  Star of the three was London 52, finishing in 11th place in the Event Rider Masters CIC3* class.

Back on home soil Laura had a successful visit to Dauntsey Park with two young horses both winning their classes...

dAston Le Walls was the next event for Laura and again another busy one with 5 horses competing, 3 in the Advanced, 1 Open Intermediate and 1 Novice.  Laura's successful month continued with another double win, with Hanson DHI in the Novice and Dacapo in the Advanced 8/9 yr old class.

Sadly after this successful weekend Laura had some sad news to announce, which was that her recently retired four star campaigner Grand Manoeuvre (Milo) had been put down aged 14, just a few months after being retired.

Laura said she was “totally devastated” by the loss of “Milo”.

“It was such a hard decision to make but ultimately it was quite black and white,” she told H&H.

“He picked up an injury in his hoof, which is why he was retired in April. Milo had always had odd feet, but we were always able to manage them.

​“We hoped he would have a year off and then come back to do some low-level dressage as he needed to remain active to keep his brain happy. He had been turned out during the day, but his soundness didn’t improve.
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“When the ground became hard due to the weather, we decided to put him on box rest for a month to six weeks as he had become increasingly sore. Unfortunately even on box rest he became more and more lame, so it became clear that the kindest thing to do would be to put him to sleep.”

The month was rounded out with British Eventing updating their leading horse and rider tables and we were very pleased to see that Laura had moved up to 5th in the rider standings and Mr Bass continued to hold onto his number one position.