London Olympia Christmas Horse Show

If you wonder where I’ve been hiding recently, well I have been working, honest! Not much writing in the last week, but working at the day job – the most amazing, awesome and fun job in the world (aside from writing novels)!

I am incredibly lucky to do two jobs that I love passionately, and to help you understand a little more about one of the aspects of my day job, I’m going to share some of the highlights from the last week.

There are many hats to wear when you work with horses (often literally), and this one is just the best: for those of you who don’t know, I operate a scoring computer at International dressage competitions, reaching, so I thought, a peak at London 2012 Olympics. This means I sit alongside one of the judges and enter their scores as they utter them.

Well, this week was another high – World, European and Olympic champion, Charlotte Dujardin with Valegro, clocked yet another WORLD RECORD on Tuesday, and then again on Wednesday 😀

Take a look at her record breaking performance in Freestyle to Music, set to a medley from the film ‘How To Train Your Dragon’. Perfect!

If you are sharp eyed, you can just spot me in passing, sitting at the end of one of the tables, at 3 minutes in, and at 3.45

To give you an idea of what I looked like on the night, one of my lovely clients up in the crowd took this picture just before the competition began.

Charlotte’s amazing score was 94.3%, (5 judges, 50% of the marks for technical merit, 50% for artistic), and my judge was the one who gave 99% for artistic – can you imagine being the one to input that score for a new world record? It was amazing!

I’ve been back at the show later in the week as a spectator; my wonderful official’s badge allows me entry whenever I wish, so I like to make the most of it and watch some of the awesome displays on offer. Here’s a taster:

And I just managed to snap this on my phone – the moment an incredible police horse jumps through an apparently solid object, bursting out the other side and setting off a cascade of fireworks. Takes a special horse to do that 😀