The Hartland team had a great but very long day at Addington for the Osborne Refrigerators National Championships. Joanne competed with her lovely pair of Friesians Star and Metts in both the Concors d’elegance and the Pairs & Tandems classes. Star and Metts preformed fantastically driven by Joanne to her Hooded Hartland Mills Spyder Phaeton to win the pairs and tandems becoming national champion ahead of a pair of the Windsor Greys. Pretty much straight after the pairs class Joanne competed in the Concors d’elegance for traditional turnouts and was one of the three placed turnouts to compete in the evening final.
On the same day Michael competed with his Gelderlander Scooby to one of our Hartland Versatile carriages, having been driven single only a handful of times Michael had decided to put a late entry in to give Scooby his first experience of going to a show, talk about throwing him in at the end. Scooby was very excited for the first 30 minutes or so and seemed to be going around the warmup arena at a pace more suited to obstacles than a show ring, however he did settle, and Michael then competed him in the Concors d’elegance for exercise turnouts. Scooby took everything in his stride and went on to be one of the three placed to then compete in the Concors Finals later that evening in the Indoor arena. After this class Michael also competed and took 3rd in the best whip class.
For the evening Finals both Joanne and Michael were in the same class for the Concors championships with Joanne finishing 3rd whilst Michael came in 6th which he was very happy with due to it being is horses first ever show.
Due to Joanne winning the Pairs and Tandem class she then had to compete in the shows Supreme championship against the other 7 National champions from classes run through out the day. For this class each driver had 3 minutes to do an individual show to impress the Judges after which the winner and reserve were announced with Shane White taking the red ribbons with Andrew Hamilton-Rhodes in the reserve spot.
Congratulations to competitors and organisers who took part in the event, it was a great day.