Local eventer Kaila Wharton made the trip south to Albury over the weekend to compete at the Albury/Wodonga International Horse Trials.
There was a great roll up of riders with just under 400 horse and rider combinations competing across the seven grades available from EvA60 right up to CIC3* classes.
Kaila competed with her two horses, Clicquot in the EvA105 class and Reflecting King in the EvA95 class.
This was Reflecting King’s first start back at eventing in over seven months and also Kaila’s first time competing with Clicquot.
(While the pair have already started competing at show jumping competitions this season, it was the first eventing competition for both, and Kaila’s first eventing competition riding her new horse Clicquot.)
Kaila came up against some of Australia’s top riders in her classes including Rio Olympics bronze medallist Stuart Tinney.
Both of Kaila’s mounts completed their Dressage phase on Saturday with Clicquot producing a lovely test to put them well in contention in 15th place.
Reflecting King also performing a good test to leave them in 25th place going into the Jumping phases on Sunday.
On Sunday Kaila was having a good Cross Country round with Clicquot until he took a dislike to the very last fence on course.
They finished the course but the last baulk had added a lot of penalties to their score and saw them drop down to 26th spot.
Clicquot jumped a lovely Showjumping round after that to hold their spot and they finished in 26th place.
Reflecting King performed a fantastic Cross Country round adding only 0.4 penalties to his Dressage score after finishing just one second over optimum time, which moved them up to 14th spot on the leader board.
A clear showjumping round saw Kaila and Reflecting King finish the competition in 13th place.—contributed
