MEM is a bi-annual championships in which IHSGB can send a team to compete at. It happens in the alternate year from World Championships and runs (usually) in August just after the Nordic Championships. This tournament offers opportunities for both A and B sport competition and GB can send an extended number of competitors compared to the World Championships, although there are qualification scores required to compete in A sport.
On this occasion, we had a small number of riders qualified to attend and due to personal reasons, Nadine Kunkel and Kjarkur did not attend the tournament. This meant that 2 riders and 4 horses would be the small team taking on the 2 day mammoth journey to Austria to compete!
Mike Adams with his 2 pace horses: Rut and Hafeti
Jemimah Adams with Skirnir (A sport) and Orn (B sport)
After a long, hot journey, there was time to recover and train ahead of the official start of the tournament and Jemimah and Skirnir got things underway for Team GB in T2.
Jem did a good test with Skirnir and achieved 6.43 in a highly competitive field!
F2 was next for Jem with Orn, this being only their 2nd competition together, Orn and Jem narrowly missed the B final with 5.80 and a good performance. Experience for Orn was everything and after his first big road trip, the team were happy with his performance!
Pace Test (PP1) saw Mike and Rut in their first test of MEM together and after a great first run, sadly, in PP1 2 good runs matter and Rut broke from pace in her 2nd run. But still, the quality of her pace was clear and she really is an exciting pace horse!
Jem and Orn were unable to complete 2 runs of pace… but their partnership looked good and promising for the future – a huge stepping stone together!
B sport pace – P3 (150m out the gates) and Mike and Hafeti proved their experience together and managed to improve their time over the 4 heats to 15,66 – finishing 6th overall! Congratulations to them!
Jem and Skirnir would finish their tournament together in the V1 with a good score of 6.53. Two very fine performances from this pair, in the heat and the rain!
P2 and the need for speed! In an exceptionally fast event, Mike and Rut set themselves a new personal best time of 7,82!
MEM proved to be a power event of current, previous and soon to be World Champion horses! We are very proud of the team’s performance, always a little sad it was not a bigger team, but still a great performance from those that represented IHSGB well!
