The Red Dragon 2023

Interesting times!  Positives - we've had a fabulous weekend with moments that will go down in history for being epically inappropriate, decent scenery, brilliant company, a horse who has never looked or gone better all year and lots and lots of laughs.  Scotland won the Home International, the best turned out team and was second in the Celtic Challenge.  That said there was a general "WTF" theme to the weekend, Rebecca and Chamfron by Dand were selected as reserve for the team and of course someone has to be.  The problem was on paper the horse chosen instead of him had very little form which left us scratching our heads and wondering if our faces didn't fit.  We had a horse that had flown round four sixty kilometre rides this season, achieving gold in them all.  The other horse had three thirties to it's name and one fifty where it had finished on a higher heart rate, it had never done a vet gate and yet it was picked for the team on a notoriously tough ride to do the 55km.  Clearly we were missing something, except simply and without being mean, we weren't.  Asked to ride together the other horse obliterated Rebecca's chance of finishing in time.  As Owen sailed through the vet (and despite walking for the last third of the race) the other horse did not.  We came out of the vet shed to be told Rebecca had been "kind" and a "real team player" to stay with them (she didn't really have a choice) and while that is all very nice the fact is she'd spent a lot of money, taken a weeks annual leave and didn't get to ride her own race (asked "would you have finished in time if you'd ridden alone?" - "absolutely, without any doubt").  Oh and yes poor Owen got selected for the random drugs test too!  Hindsight would have been to give the team a firm swerve and get an 80km in at the Scottish Champs or Tentsmuir!  

Edited to add, asked for clarification and the reason given was that the vet and physio had felt Owen's trot was slightly "off" at the first inspection on the Friday.