Lily Brackenbury celebrates success at British Dressage team competition and Equifest

Lily Brackenbury is celebrating a whirlwind few weeks of success at dressage and showing competitions.

Lily (14) and Captain Oats have represented the east and south region at British Dressage team competitions - and came away from Equifest at Peterborough with a working hunter title under their belt.

To top it off, in their first season at British Dressage competitions, they have qualified for the Pet Plan Equine championship finals next month.

Lily, from Upwell, and the versatile Surf, a 17-year old Connemara, competed at the British Dressage youth inter-regional teams competition - where Lily was sixth overall.

They then went on to the youth international and gained 8th individual in the novice section. South and east were overall winners and Lily’s team of four were 10th out of 30 teams.

Later in August they changed discipline and took the amateur working hunter championship at Equifest at Peterborough.

Two days later Lily and Surf were in the dressage arena at Fenning Farm’s area festival where they won the preliminary class and finished second in the novice. With the first two in each class qualifying for the finals it means they are off to Arena UK early in October.

Surf is owned by Caroline Ward, from Tilney St Lawrence, and came to Lily a little over a year ago when her other pony was off work due to injury and left Lily with nothing to ride.

They have competed in affiliated working hunter, pony club teams (Lily is an active member of the Walpole and District Pony Club) and attended pony club camp. Surf has introduced Lily to British Dressage after competing unaffiliated last summer prompted by trainer Emma Wakefield.

Lily says how lucky she has been to have Surf and is “forever grateful to Caroline for the opportunity.”

She added: “Surf is a fun pony with oodles of energy - too much sometimes. But he is a very kind soul with a cheeky side. We aim to keep climbing the ladder and to progress in dressage with lots more training over the winter.”