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‘I’ll moan for 10 minutes then move on!’ Piggy March ‘frustrated’ with blips in her Blenheim Europeans dressage test

Martha Terry Martha Terry

    • Piggy March’s bold riding on the stunning stallion Halo secured a sub-30 score in the Agria Blenheim European Championships dressage phase, keeping the competition tight between Britain and Germany at the top of the leaderboard. But a couple of blips took the gloss off what could have been an even better mark, leaving Piggy “frustrated”.

    “I had a couple of really expensive, uncharacteristic mistakes,” said Piggy. “It’s really disappointing when you’re here [at a championships]. It means a lot, and I’ve been so excited to be here and he’s such a fab horse and you just want to do your best, so to have the mistakes we did is frustrating.”

    They started with a bang, drawing eights for their first halt. Jayne McGivern’s stallion has lovely cadence and combined with Piggy’s accuracy and ringcraft created a beautiful overall picture.

    Despite a sub-par halt and rein-back, they were trending in the lead when Piggy executed a brave and bold medium canter with Halo eating up the ground. However, he just lost balance moving into collected canter, breaking into a couple of strides of trot before the half pass, which plummeted what could have been exceptional marks to fours and pegged them back to 29.4. This slots them into fourth towards the end of the first day of the dressage phase.

    “The good bits were really good,” said Piggy. “I’ll moan for 10 minutes but it’s still sub 30 and we’re here at the Europeans, part of a team, with a great horse. But it is frustrating – that’s sport, it’s horses, and life!”

    Piggy is no stranger to the pressure of a European Championship, having already won five senior European medals. However, it’s been four years since she last represented Britain and Halo is a newcomer to the championship scene.

    “It’s so special, really cool to be back on a team, and on home soil,” said Piggy. “I’ve got my nails done for the first time! I feel like I’ve been out of it for ages, so it’s an honour and I’m proud to be part of it.”

    The 12-year-old grey has course form, as the winner of the 2022 young horse class at Blenheim, and he has proved exceptional in the dressage phase – finishing on a sub-20 on his last international run, at Burgham CCI4*-S.

    Piggy was riding second in the British team, in partnership with Agria, and built on pathfinder Yasmin Ingham’s competitive score of 29 earlier on day one of the Blenheim European Championships dressage phase.

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    Martha Terry
    Martha Terry

    H&H features editor
    Martha is an experienced journalist who is mad-keen on horses and dogs. Her reporting CV includes the Paris Olympics, European championships, Aachen World Equestrian Festival and World Cup finals. After growing up with assorted liver and white springer spaniels, she enjoyed 14 years with two rescue dogs. Now, her constant companion is Fidget, an extremely energetic and habitually muddy black and white springer. Martha has written on topics as diverse as a top horse’s clone to the best GPS trackers for dogs, as well as equestrian and rural matters for Country Life, The Field, The Times, The Spectator and The Telegraph alongside Horse & Hound.
    Martha Terry

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