Oh wow, Kristina

-
What an amazing Olympics she had. She so deserved her medal: fantastic riding on all three sections. I'm glad Hinrich and Marius won - I do love that horse. And what a gripping final.

My daughter, who is getting progressively more anti-horse with each passing week (can't imagine why, when she has my example to follow), was curled up elsewhere in the room when I turned the showjumping on. "You're mad," she informed me, witheringly, as I groaned my way through Mary King's round, crouched there with my head in my hands, barely able to look as she went down that final line. However, the excitement got to even her, and she joined me, hanging in front of the telly, actually keen to see what happened.

I did love Ian "Voodoo" Stark's commentating. Everytime he said something about another team's rider, crash went a fence, and although he was a tad partisan, he made me laugh. And of course I was not sitting there myself, guiltily wavering between willing those in front of Kristina to have a fence down and wanting them to do their best for their horses. Phew....

Comments

Anonymous said…
Apologies for the fact that this comment doesn't relate to your post, but as you seem to have a vast knowledge of classic pony stories I wondered if you could figure out the title/author of a book I remember reading as a child. I remember the story fairly well but can't remember what the book was called or who wrote it...

Anyway, the story was about a young girl (who is also the narrator) and her best friend, Angela who are both horse mad but who are despairing because they aren't good riders. The book starts out at the beginning of the summer holidays so the girls have a school-free summer. A posh new riding school has opened in their village that's run by someone called Mark if I remember correctly. The narrator has a spaniel dog. Anyway, she and some friends are complaining about their lack of riding skills and her father overhears and gives them a speech about how they are "jellyfish" and "if the tide washes them one way, they go that way" etc. So they decide to do something about it by practicing riding and they somehow end up being schooled by Mark and I think they also work in his riding school and at the end of the book there's a competition or gymkhana with another riding school.

Other details I remember from the book are Mark ending up having dinner at the narrator's house and they eat mince and potatoes, and Angela is a bit of a princess, and at the end of the book I seem to recall the narrator gets a job at the riding school.

Any ideas? And sorry again for randomly picking your brains about pony books :)
14 August 2008 at 16:03
winnie said…
I think this book is Riding Course Summer by Pat Leitch but I could be wrong.
14 August 2008 at 20:56
Jane Badger said…
Surfragatte - Winnie may very well be right. I'm afraid I can't remember, but I do have this book so will look it up and see if it rings a bell. The thing I do remember about the book is that the heroine does not have a pony at the end of the book, which must be something of a record!
14 August 2008 at 23:13
Susan in Boston said…
surfragette...I'm pretty sure winnie is correct, and it is Leitch's Riding Course Summer....I have a copy, so I'll check details and post again. Hopefully it is, as it's an easily obtainable book! (Not expensive, either!)
19 August 2008 at 16:25
Anonymous said…
Gosh, thanks for all the responses to my question! I have a feeling that you're all right and it is indeed "Riding Course Summer" as the title rings rather a loud bell and fits my memory of the plot. I live in Israel where it's next to impossible to find this sort of thing in a second hand bookshop but perhaps I can find it on Abe Books and have it shipped. It'd be great to re-read it...

It's great to find a source of pony-book knowledge :)
19 August 2008 at 16:44
Susan in Boston said…
Have copy in hand, and the book in question is definitly Riding Course Summer. Angela is nicknamed Angy, Mark does indeed run the local stables, and buys them in the end.

Check out the two possible covers on Jane's site....the Seagull one is marginally better...the Children's Book Club edition, though the cover art isn't bad, is a picture cover that tends to have a very poor binding. (Self destrucitng really).
22 August 2008 at 20:56
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Rollkur and the blue tongue

-
I've been meaning to write about this all week, but reading the exclusive in Horse and Hound about the controversy tipped me over the edge. For my non-horsy readers, rollkur is a training/warming up technique used by some dressage riders. It basically involves riding the horse with its jaw pulled in virtually to its chest, in order to increase suppleness. Patrik Kittel , a Swedish competitor in Odense was videoed riding his horse in this way. If you watch the video , you'll see the horse's tongue hanging out - blue. It takes a while before the rider notices this. When he does, he stops, puts the horse's tongue back in, and carries on. There are two things which bother me about this. Firstly, I am fully aware large sections of the dressage world, and some of its brighest stars, consider rollkur perfectly ok, but the FEI guidelines state this practice should only be for short periods, allowing the horse to rest. Patrick Kittel apparently rode the horse for two hou
Read more

Archibald, don't eat the bedclothes

-
Image
My friend Louise sent me this picture today. It's from a children's book with the rather wince-making title For The Wee Ones. I thought, when I read that (because I read the message before I looked at the picture) that the picture was going to be a typical winsome production from the school of artists who think (or who are paid to think) that the child is a thing sent from God and a blissful thing. They had obviously never met a child, and certainly not mine. I should have known Louise better. The artist responsible for Archibald, don't eat the bedclothes slipped this one past the editors. Just look at the poor, broken Mother Rabbit. She knows she has not the faintest chance of being listened to, and poor thing, she is stooped in the way of a mother to whom this is just the lastest in a long line of horror; with nothing good to come. And Archibald is obviously the spawn of the Devil. Just look at those eyes. He'll have the bed after he's finished the bedclothes
Read more

Dick Sparrow - 40 Horse Hitch, and Neil Dimmock's 46 Percherons

-
Image
Here's a clip of Dick Sparrow driving 40 horses. It's an amazing sight, particularly when the shot changes to show the team from the rear and you get the great incongruity of modern American corporate architecture as a background to the wagon and horses. I love the anticipation in the video: the sense of something amazing being just round the corner is palpable. Thanks to Christina Wilsdon for telling me about this world record 46 Percheron hitch (alas just stills) but you get the idea.
Read more