The day everything went wrong at a prelim event
Some event days begin with a nervous horse, a tired rider, or a forecast that looks less than promising. This one managed to collect nearly every possible complication before we even reached the start box. Archie and I arrived at the prelim event with a plan, a packed lorry, and the reasonable hope of producing three steady phases. By lunchtime, that plan had been thoroughly rearranged.
The trouble was not one dramatic mistake. It was a chain of small problems: a rushed journey, an unsettled warm-up, a dressage test that unravelled early, and a show-jumping round in which I stopped riding as positively as I should have. Cross-country then demanded more concentration than I felt able to give. I came home disappointed, embarrassed, and exhausted, but the day proved more useful than an easy clear round might have been.
It also reminded me why eventing is such a revealing sport. Dressage, show jumping, and cross-country ask for different skills, yet they are tied together by the rider’s ability to stay organised under pressure. When the first phase goes badly, the answer is not to panic or mentally abandon the day. It is to make the next decision correctly.
A difficult start before we reached the venue
The problems began at home. I had allowed what should have been a generous amount of time for loading Archie, but he was unusually suspicious of the ramp. He walked up, backed out, circled around me, and inspected the lorry as if it had appeared overnight. There was no genuine crisis, but every extra minute made me more aware of the schedule.
By the time we set off, I was already watching the clock. The journey itself was uneventful, although traffic added another delay. Instead of arriving with enough time to settle Archie, walk the courses, and quietly prepare my equipment, I pulled in feeling as though I was late before the day had properly started.
Archie picked up on my tension immediately. He was not dangerous or unmanageable, but he was busy. He called to other horses, fidgeted while I tacked him up, and carried his head high when I led him towards the dressage warm-up. Those signs should have encouraged me to slow everything down. Instead, I tried to make up for lost time by becoming more efficient, which mostly meant becoming more hurried.
I have written before about how much preparation affects my riding, and the earlier event notes are a useful reminder that the hours before a competition can shape the whole experience. On this occasion, I had prepared the equipment carefully but had not prepared myself for a disrupted timetable.
The dressage test disappeared almost immediately
Our dressage test started with a tense entrance. Archie went into the arena looking at everything outside the boards, and I could feel him waiting for an excuse to look away from me. I tried to ride positively, but my aids became stronger and less precise. Rather than creating a relaxed rhythm, I was working around the tension.
The first centre line was crooked, and the halt was more of a shuffle than a proper square stop. I knew it was not the beginning I wanted, yet I responded by trying too hard to fix the next movement. That made the transitions abrupt. Our circles became the right size but not particularly round in shape, and the connection in the rein disappeared whenever Archie spotted something interesting.
The moment I most remember was a medium movement across the arena. Archie lifted his shoulder, lost the line, and drifted towards the edge. I corrected him too late, then spent the next few strides thinking about the error instead of riding the movement in front of me. That mental delay was costly. The test continued, but I was always reacting rather than preparing.
The marks reflected what I already knew. There were flashes of decent work, but the overall picture was tense and hurried. I left the arena frustrated because the result did not show the schooling we had done at home. It was tempting to label the whole phase a failure, although the more accurate description was that I had failed to create the conditions in which Archie could show his training.
A score does not tell the whole story
Looking at the dressage sheet later, I could see patterns rather than a collection of random bad marks. The lower scores appeared where I had allowed the rhythm to become inconsistent or had ridden a correction instead of the intended movement. The comments repeatedly came back to tension, balance, and preparation. That was difficult to read, but it was also useful.
The score was disappointing because prelim is a level at which accuracy and relaxation matter enormously. There is nowhere to hide when a simple transition is late or a twenty-metre circle becomes a vague shape. At the same time, the sheet did not say that Archie was incapable of the work. It showed that my riding had become hurried under competition pressure.
I walked away from the arena with two choices. I could spend the rest of the day defending the result by blaming the traffic, the atmosphere, or the warm-up, or I could accept that those factors had exposed a weakness in my process. They had made the situation harder, but they had not forced me to rush every decision.
That distinction became important for the jumping phases. I did not need to transform into a different rider between dressage and show jumping. I needed to return to basic habits: breathe, look ahead, keep a consistent canter, and make a plan before entering the arena.
Show jumping became a test of decision-making
The show-jumping course looked fair when I walked it. There were several related distances, an oxer that appeared wider than the others, and a turn that would reward a balanced approach. Archie is careful when he has confidence in the canter, so my task was to maintain a positive rhythm without chasing him at the fences.
Unfortunately, I carried the tension from the dressage arena into the warm-up. I worried about making another mistake, which caused me to micromanage every stride. Archie became flatter and less adjustable. At the practice fence, I added a stride that did not need adding, then approached the vertical without enough forward momentum. The jump itself was not disastrous, but it was a warning that I was not riding the canter I had planned.
In the competition arena, the first part of the course was acceptable. We jumped the opening fences with plenty of room, although the rhythm was not as fluent as it needed to be. Then I lost focus before a related distance. I looked at the second fence too early, allowed the canter to shorten, and failed to make the correction until it was too late. Archie stopped.
That refusal was mine as much as his. He had not been naughty; he had arrived at an unclear question. I circled, represented the fence, and jumped it, but the stop added faults and damaged my confidence. At the next combination, I overcorrected by riding too aggressively. We got through, but the round felt like a series of emergency decisions instead of one connected performance.
Cross-country asked for a reset
By the time we reached cross-country, I had already spent much of the day criticising myself. That is a tiring habit, and it does not improve a horse’s confidence. Archie needed me to be clear and committed, especially over the solid fences, so I decided to treat the phase as a separate ride rather than a final opportunity to repair the results.
The course included a mixture of logs, steps, a water complex, and a few questions that required a measured approach. I walked the distances carefully and identified the places where I needed a stronger leg and a straighter line. My plan was simple: establish the gallop, keep my eyes up, and make each fence its own question.
The opening part went better than I expected. Archie found the rhythm, and I began to feel him travelling forwards rather than waiting for my next anxious instruction. We jumped the early fences cleanly and arrived at the first related question in a much more organised balance. For a few minutes, the day felt manageable again.
The water was less smooth. Archie hesitated at the entrance, and I had to ride firmly to keep the momentum. We made it through, but I came away aware that I had approached the question with too much internal doubt. Later on, I became tired and allowed my upper body to tip forwards. Archie remained honest, yet the ride lost some of its polish.
We completed the course, but not with the efficiency or confidence I wanted. There were time faults, and the overall result was nowhere near competitive. Still, finishing the phase gave me the clearest lesson of the day: a difficult start does not have to dictate every later decision.
| Phase | What happened | My main responsibility | Useful lesson |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dressage | Tense test with inconsistent rhythm | I rushed corrections and lost preparation | Ride the movement ahead, not the mistake behind |
| Show jumping | One refusal and a hurried round | I allowed the canter to become unclear | Keep the rhythm positive and make the plan early |
| Cross-country | Completed with hesitation and time faults | I rebuilt focus but tired late on | Treat each fence as a new question |
| Overall day | Poor result but valuable information | I needed a better reset routine | Separate phases mentally and stay process-focused |
What the result taught me about preparation
The most obvious lesson was that preparation needs to include the rider, not just the horse. I had checked boots, tack, numbers, clothing, feed, and paperwork. I had walked the courses and studied the times. Yet I had no proper plan for what to do if loading took too long or the timetable became compressed.
A useful competition schedule cannot be based on everything running perfectly. I need a buffer for loading, traffic, finding the secretary’s office, and giving Archie time to look around. I also need a short personal routine that can be completed even when the morning becomes chaotic. That routine might involve drinking water, checking the order of the day, taking a few quiet minutes to breathe, and choosing one riding focus for the first phase.
The second lesson concerned warm-up discipline. I used too many transitions and corrections because I was trying to produce a finished performance before entering the arena. Archie would have benefited from a simpler warm-up: forward walking, a regular trot, a few balanced transitions, and enough time to soften without being drilled.
The third lesson was about reviewing mistakes accurately. “Everything went wrong” was how the day felt in the lorry park, but that description was too broad to help. Some parts did go wrong. Others were ordinary, and some were better than expected. Separating them allowed me to identify practical changes rather than carrying home one large feeling of failure.
A better plan for the next event
I do not expect the next competition to be perfectly calm. Horses will still look at strange banners, roads will still become busy, and my nerves will still appear when the number goes up. The aim is not to eliminate uncertainty. It is to create a response that keeps uncertainty from controlling the day.
My revised plan is deliberately uncomplicated:
- Arrive with enough time for Archie to settle before I tack up.
- Walk both jumping courses before focusing on final dressage preparation.
- Choose one warm-up priority instead of chasing every small imperfection.
- Reset fully between phases, including changing the mental goal for each discipline.
- Review the score sheet after cooling down, when disappointment is less immediate.
I also want to practise competition-style interruptions at home. That could mean changing the order of exercises, allowing a short pause before repeating a movement, or schooling after a busy day rather than only when everything feels ideal. Archie and I need experience returning to work after a distraction, because that is a normal part of eventing.
The hard part is accepting that good preparation cannot guarantee a good score. It can, however, improve the quality of the decisions I make when the score starts slipping away. That is a more durable measure of progress than expecting every outing to look polished.
By the time I loaded Archie for the journey home, the sharp disappointment had softened. He had tried throughout the day, and I had learned exactly where my riding became less effective under pressure. The result was not one I wanted to display proudly, but the experience gave me a clearer training target than a routine clear round would have done.
I am taking the next event one phase at a time, with a calmer timetable and a more useful definition of success. Archie does not need a perfect rider; he needs a rider who notices when the plan has gone wrong and can make the next instruction clear. That is the lesson I am carrying forward from the day everything unravelled.
Follow Party Pony Eventing for more honest reports from the warm-up ring, the dressage arena, the show-jumping course, and the cross-country track as Archie and I keep learning together.