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Catch up on what eventer Georgie Spence has been up to:

Welcome to the first monthly diary from young event rider, Georgie Spence. Georgie (19) is based near Chippenham, Wiltshire, and is currently on the World Class Start Programme for future potential Olympic British team prospects. She was a member of the gold medal- winning team at the Young Rider Europeans at Blair Castle in 2007 and received an award from British Eventing for being the rider under 21 years of age gaining the most points in 2007. In 2008 she is aiming to compete in her first 4* event - like Badminton or Burghley!

Georgie and the gorgeous Song For Gull, all smart and ready for a dressage test.
Photo thanks to Alex Colquhoun

“Happy New Year to you all! I spent Christmas at home with my family and so the day to day routine with the horses continued as normal. I am starting to get them fit for the 2008 eventing season and so I began by bringing them back into work using the horse-walker every day for the first week. I then started hacking them out before schooling.

I have got a few new horses to ride. One of them is a five-year-old mare called Libby and is owned by a lady called Judy Graham. She hasn’t done much at all apart from a few little shows and is quite a shy horse but is starting to come out of her shell a little bit now. We have only had her about two weeks and so she is still settling in. She had a few spooky moments hacking out, as do most youngsters, but is now schooling nicely and is well behaved. I am hoping to compete her in some five-year-old classes this season.

Along with the other new horses plus my own youngsters and my three top horses, Song For Gull, Trenear and Running Brook II, it looks as though I am going to have plenty to keep me busy in the run up to the event season. The next job is clipping them out as they all still look like woolly bears!”

Georgie at Blenheim with Running Brook II.
Photo thanks to Alex Colquhoun

Click on www.georgiespence.com to find out more

Welcome to the second installment of Georgie Spence's diary. Georgie (19) is and eventer and is based near Chippenham, Wiltshire. She is currently on the World Class Start Programme for future potential Olympic British team prospects. She was a member of the gold medal - winning team at the Young Rider Europeans at Blair Castle in 2007 and received an award from British Eventing for being the rider under 21 years of age gaining the most points in 2007. In 2008 she is aiming to compete in her first 4* event.

Georgie writes:
“We have now started to compete at some shows in preparation for the event season starting. I took three of my young horses – Henry, Ollie and Sophie - to a dressage competition for the first time.

Henry behaved really well and put in scores over 65%. Ollie was still a little fresh and excited to be at his first competition but I was still pleased with his results which were over 60%. I took Sophie in the Novice and she also behaved very nicely although everything came up a bit quick for her but overall I was delighted with them all. The more experienced horses have also been out doing some dressage and have all done well. Libby and Kiki both got over 65% and I was particularly pleased with Gull as he scored 73% in both his tests.

Back at home we have started their canter work and some of the horses have been cross country schooling. They all jumped everything well and George and Trenear were delighted to be back doing cross country.

I have another new horse to ride for Judy Graham. He is called ‘Best of Spirits’ and was previously ridden by Oli Townend. He is 11 this year and won the British Novice Championship in 2005 and I will be aiming him at Houghton Hall CCI**.

Later this week I am off for some World Class Start training and I am taking Kiki, Tom, Henry, Sophie and Libby. We will have showjumping lessons with Peter Murphy on the first day and then on the second day, Jeanette Brakewell will be doing some cross country schooling with us.

All the horses are well and are almost ready for the new season which starts in less than four weeks!"

With the new season coming up quickly, Georgie is making sure her horses and tidy and ready to go!

To find out more about Georgie please visit www.georgiespence.com

Welcome to Georgie Spence's next monthly diary installment. Georgie (19) is an eventer and is based near Chippenham, Wiltshire. She is currently on the World Class Start Programme for future potential Olympic British team prospects. She was a member of the gold medal - winning team at the Young Rider Europeans at Blair Castle in 2007 and received an award from British Eventing for being the rider under 21 years of age gaining the most points in 2007. In 2008 she is aiming to compete in her first 4* event.

Georgie writes:
I've had a very busy February with lots of things going on in preparation for the start of the new season. I went to the Jump and Style (JAS) at West Wilts with two of the new horses, Minx and Kiki, and also Trenear and Tom. It is a great way to get them going before we start eventing properly. They all went really well - Kiki finished 10th in the Open to qualify for the final, Trenear came 4th in the Open and Tom won, so quite a successful day!

Georgie has still been finding time to jump baby Ollie at home.

The following Sunday we took eight horses cross-country schooling to Boomerang. Because we only have a four-horse lorry, it meant doing two trips with four horses each time and so was quite a busy day, but they all jumped superbly. The younger horses are becoming very confident, and are jumping pre-novice and novice type fences quite happily now.

We took four horses to the JAS at Hoplands on the 16th and Daisy won the Pre-Novice and the Novice classes and Gull won the Open with a double clear. At Hartpury on the following day, Daisy won again and was second in the Pre-Novice! We also took three of the ‘babies’ (Henry, Sophie and Libby) along and I took them round nice and slowly. We finished with lots of time faults but I couldn’t have been more pleased with them. They are still quite green and were very tired the next day.

The following weekend, at the JAS finals, Daisy had a pole down in the Novice but won the Pre-Novice Championship with a double clear. Gully and Tom had one fence down each in the show jumping and finished 3rd and 5th, so I was very pleased with them all.

Tom competed well last year and Georgie has done lots of preparation for this season.

This month, I have also had quite a few dressage training sessions with Pammy Hutton and the horses seem to have all improved, so, fingers crossed, I will be able to keep the standard up for the whole season!

To find out more about Georgie please visit www.georgiespence.com

Welcome to Georgie Spence's next monthly diary installment. Georgie (19) is an eventer and is based near Chippenham, Wiltshire. She is currently on the World Class Start Programme for future potential Olympic British team prospects. She was a member of the gold medal - winning team at the Young Rider Europeans at Blair Castle in 2007 and received an award from British Eventing for being the rider under 21 years of age gaining the most points in 2007. In 2008 she is aiming to compete in her first 4* event.

Georgie writes:
At last the event season has started and I am very pleased with how the horses are coping, especially the youngsters. It has also been another very hectic month!

The first event was Stilemans and we took Song for Gull (Gully), Trenear (Trin), Skylight (Kiki) and Downleadon (Minx). Gully and Trin were both excited to be out, but a little rusty after the winter, and Minx didn’t feel her normal self so we withdrew her after the cross country. Kiki was super. She did a 30.5 dressage test, jumped double clear and won, so I was delighted.

Trenear (Trin) was a little excitable on his first outing of the year.

The next event was Tweseldown where I had six horses to ride. It was Sophie’s first outing and she was very wobbly and green. She stopped at the first showjump but then flew round. We had two down but I was delighted with her performance. Running Brook went superbly in the Open Intermediate, and Kiki pulled out the stops again and came 3rd in the Open Novice. Gully jumped a great double clear and finished 7th and Daisy came 5th in the Open. Trin jumped really well, but we didn’t quite jump the right side of the flag at the first corner fence in the cross country and so were eliminated for error on course.

Aldon was extremely muddy to say the least, but the horses still jumped amazingly with Gull and Tom placed 4th and 5th in their classes. Gatcombe was cancelled so we took the youngsters to Munstead to do the Open Intro.

Henry was very excitable and kept looking around at everything. Ollie was awesome and lots of people commented on how nice he is and we finished in 10th. Both he and Henry jumped perfect cross country rounds so I was thrilled with them.

Had another good day at Somerley and finished 4th on Tom, 6th on Running Brook and was delighted to win the Under 21 prize for the second year running. We also had good result at Portman and Henry really came into his own with a 34 test and a double clear. He was amazing – I can’t believe how confident he is for a five-year-old!

Goring was also cancelled so we finished off the month at Portman, where I competed on Ollie and Sophie and went round hors concours (non competitively) on Hamish and a new ride, Neremptah, who is owned by Eugenia Chapman Campbell.

Ollie and Sophie finished in 4th and 5th and the other two would have won had we not been hors concours, so it was another good day.

Georgie is hoping to ride Running Brook II at Badminton.

I am now waiting nervously in hope that I will be able to take Running Brook II to Badminton. This will be our first 4* event but with record entries this year, we are in 8th place on the waiting list. The first four riders have been accepted and so we just need four more horses to be withdrawn to allow our entry to go through. Fingers and toes are crossed!

To find out more about Georgie please visit www.georgiespence.com