No Let-up for Liz Halliday
Equestrian News Release
In a case of ‘no rest for the wicked’, Surrey-based racing driver and equestrian, Liz Halliday, exchanged the near 600 hundred horse power available from the AER engine in the back of her Lola racing car, for just two last weekend - called Harry and Oscar – as she set off to compete in the Wilton Horse Trials.
With her relentless schedule marching on, Halliday jetted to Wilton having just finished a hugely successful run in three near-consecutive races in the American Le Mans Series. A win, a second place and a third helped to maintain her fantastic lead in the LMP2 class driver’s standings, her advantage over the mighty Porsche factory squad currently secured by a slender five points.
Back in Wilton, Oscar – entered in the intermediate category – had a great run with a great score in the dressage and a much-improved show jump - albeit slightly marred by one rail down, and a solid clear cross country round. “I’m pleased with the progress that Oscar and I are making together and I feel that we are really starting to put all three phases together now.” Said Liz, “We had a couple Liz/Oscar communication issues on the cross country, but nothing major that would have caused us any trouble. The ground was also pretty hard and given that he’s going to run again on Wednesday at Aston-Le-Walls I didn’t want to take him too fast.”
Despite holding back, Liz and Oscar finished a satisfying 8th overall – their best result to date at Intermediate level.
On with Harry who, despite being a bit unhappy with the large amount of flies around the event, went on to do a very acceptable dressage test leaving them in good standing as they went into the jump phases. Two rails down was the result of a slightly wild run in the show jumping, but overall Liz was satisfied with his performance. The same could not be said however for the cross country which, according to Liz, was a disaster!: “It was a strange day. We had two stops on the course and Harry just didn’t seem right straight out of the box. He was very disinclined to gallop-on and just kept backing out of the fences, which was very out of character. Naturally we had the vet out straight away who found that, although he is mostly okay, he did have quite sore muscles, especially in his front end, and some physio work seems to have helped a lot. You have to remind yourself that horses have off-days too- just like us!”
Following the result on Sunday, Liz obviously opted to withdraw Harry from the Gatcombe Horse Trial on the 5th August as it was meant to be his first competition at Advanced level and she did not feel it would be right for him physically or mentally to move up a level off of a bad run. Luckily, she was able to get him into the Aston-Le-Walls horse trials on Wednesday the 9th where he and Oscar will both again compete in the Intermediate sections. Until next Wednesday, Liz will pay extra attention to Harry’s performance and of course do everything possible to ensure he arrives well-prepared. Looking further ahead, the following event for Liz will be the Highclere Castle Horse Trials in Wiltshire on the 28th of August. Before then she’ll be back behind the wheel on August 20th with Round 7 of the American Le Mans Series: the Generac 500 at Road America, Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin
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