Update: CUET Success at BUCS 2022

We are National Champions! 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
An absolutely huge week for the 1st team at the National Finals at Bishop Burton
🥇Overall Team
🥇 Team Showjumping
🥈 Individual Showjumping for Manuel
🥈 Individual Dressage for Lydia
🥉 Team Dressage
Individual overall placings of 4th for Lydia, 16th for Chloe, 18th for Manuel and 24th for Maaike out of all the students riding for universities and colleges across the country.
Our first national title, we rode some incredible horses over increasingly difficult tests, finishing with an advanced medium freestyle to music and a 1.20m showjumping course.

We are so proud of the performance from our wonderful second team in the BUCS trophy league national final. In the end Cambridge 2’s came away with third place in the team dressage and fourth place overall❤️🏆

Cambridge Equestrian Qualifies Two Teams for Regionals

Match Report by Chloe Fairston.

CUET has had a very successful season of BUCS. Both the first and second teams had their final matches last week and went into these in strong positions to win their respective leagues. The Blues team travelled to UEA, along with teams from De Montford and Writtle, whilst the seconds hosted their home match at the College of West Anglia and were joined by teams from Worcester, Derby and Harper Adams.

The two-phase competition started with the dressage phase. Each competitor draws the horse they will be riding and you compete against the riders from the other teams who have drawn the same horse. There were strong tests performed by all which left the Blues team with a narrow lead at this stage of the competition with only 8.5 penalties between them. Lydia and Chloe also both achieved the highest scoring tests on their respective horses leaving them on 0 penalties each.

Even more impressively, the second team managed to finish their dressage phase on a team total of 0 penalties! Following some beautiful performances, all four individuals scored the highest tests on their rides, putting them in a very strong position going into the jumping phase.

A new set of horses are brought out for the show jumping and a second draw is carried out. All that was now between each team and getting through to the next stage of BUCS was one jumping round and excitement levels were high. Both teams really showed all their training and, despite a complete range of horse types and sizes, were able to adapt and produce almost faultless rounds across the board. This left the Blues on 0 penalties for the jumping phase, with all team members riding the best rounds on their horses – a great achievement at an away match!

Not to be outdone, the seconds also completed on 0 penalties with four super rounds. This left them on an overall team total of 0 penalties, which is almost unheard of and resulted in them being far and away the clear winners! Unsurprisingly this also meant that all four team members dominated the individual placings and since they all finished on 0 penalties, only the collective marks were able to differentiate between them. Huge congratulations go to Connie Begg (1^st), Eve Mayes (2^nd), Emily Finston (3^rd), and Pip Young (4^th)!

With nothing to add in the jumping phase, the Blues team finished on a team total of just 8.5 penalties, extending their lead to a massive 72.5 penalties! This similarly left all four individuals in very strong individual positions and CUET once again took all four top spots! Huge congratulations again go to Lydia Collas (1^st), Chloe Fairston (2^nd), Maaike Hooijmeijer-Brown (3^rd), and Manuel Fernandez (4^th)!

With both teams winning these final matches, this left the Blues top of their Championship league and the seconds top of their Trophy league! More excitingly this means that both teams qualify through to the Regional Championships! These will be held later on this spring and we wish both teams the best of luck as they battle it out for a place at Nationals.

The third team have also had a great season so far. Their final match is coming up shortly so we wish them all the best of luck and we look forward to watching them repeat the success of their home match earlier this year!