Hi, am finally up and running on my computer again after some technical hitches and looking forward to telling you all my news.

I am not long home from my 1st 4 star international on my new horse Youri. Youri set off for England on Wednesday 23rd of May, he landed in York at 5am on the 24th. Sue and James Joy set off for Vienna late Friday night with 3 horses (Katherine Wheelocks horse Elisa, and Liza Landaus horse Logan) and all our gear and landed in Kreuttal on Monday 28th May.

The team met up at 5am on Monday 28th for a 7.30am flight to Vienna but due to problems with planes we didnt leave Dublin till gone 12 noon. We were collected by two hansom men who took us to our accommodation and then to Kreuttal where we checked the horses and had some dinner. Dieter then took us back to the De la salle school which became home for the next week.

Tuesday we were up early and had some breki and a bus arrived to take us to the horses. We had a lesson with Doni McNamara our national trainer and Sue rode Youri for me to get him going. We had lunch and then we headed off for a tack shop about half an hour away. Once again we returned to have dinner and then headed home.

Wednesday was trot up day and nerves were begining to show, Elisa had kicked out at Youri as he was anoying her and cut her leg but not badly and somehow we all scraped through. We had dinner again at Kreuttal and headed home for an early night.

Thursday - the first day of competition and I was on first at around 12ish with Katherine and Liza on later in the afternoon. I was bricking it at this point as I didn't know how Youri was going to behave. As we went into the arena I felt him go a bit dead on me and worked really hard to try and keep him going. I pushed him too hard and knocked him out of balance, but we produced not a bad test and headed back to the stables and untacked him washed him down and I started to change when Adeline our Chef came to tell me we were second with 63.2%, we didn't have time to tack up again so I went to the prize giving on Lizas electric scooter with a grin on my face from ear to ear! I was beaten by dutch rider
Petra Van de Sander. We won a rosette and lovely piece of Vienese hand made china. We all headed out for dinner in Vienna to celebrate and we had great fun and lots of laughs.

Friday - our second day of competition Youri felt good today, we went into the arena and he was more forward and I was more settled and able to slow him down and we rode a good test, today I stayed on board just in case! I was in the lead but there were 5 more horses to go including yesterdays winner! Then I heard the news I'd WON with a score of 66.45 - I was in shock, I had dreamt of winning for the last 5 years and it had finally come true. Well there was great excitement, prize giving took a little longer than usual as they didn't have the Irish national anthem to play. The organisers downloaded the music and the words for Doni and Rachel to sing!! Then they managed to download the music (thank god!) I won more china and a rug for Youri and a rosette, they played the national anthem and I got to do a lap of honor. I spent about 2 hours on the phone calling home and friends to let them know my news. I got text messages saying my win had been announced on radio and tv which was very exciting. The team were very supportive and we celebrated with a little champers that night!!

Saturday - Freestyle day - I wasn't looking forward to this as I was still using the music I had for my old horse Oberlina and it didn't really work for my new horse and I hadn't enough walk music and didn't spend enough time working out a plan. As I left Doni I said "for what I am about to do I sincerely apologise". We ended up second with 68.6% and was once again thrilled to bits. Needless to say we had plenty of wine and good food that night!!

So it was a great week all in all and we came home happy chappies. I also met a lady the day I won, her name is Janneke from Holland and she had Youri on her yard from when he was 3 years old until he was 9, we swopped email addresses and I hope to get in touch with her and the family who owned him soon. What a small world!!!!