Ju­nior na­tion­al eques­tri­an rid­ers Hadley Ra­hael, Syd­ney Navar­ro and Jor­danne Brown re­turned from a suc­cess­ful rid­ing so­journ in a va­ri­ety of com­pe­ti­tions in Flori­da.Ra­hael, Navar­ro and Brown all trained and com­pet­ed with Shawn and Na­tal­ie Rus­sell of Oak­more Farm, a top Hunter/Jumper/Eq­ui­tation barn in Cen­tral Flori­da, USA.

First to trav­el in June was 14-year-old Ra­hael, who showed at the Try­on show on Bil­boa, a 14-year-old warm­blood. Suc­cess for Hadley was im­me­di­ate with this horse, get­ting blue rib­bons for clear rounds at heights of .95me­tres and at 1.0me­tres. She al­so placed sec­ond in the low child jumper class, and third in the low child jumper stakes with two love­ly clear rounds.

At an­oth­er com­pe­ti­tion at Camp Fox Lea in Venice, Flori­da, Ra­hael rode an­oth­er warm­blood, a grey called Re­flex Z. Again Ra­hael was suc­cess­ful with clear rounds in the train­ing class­es.Ra­hael had to switch hors­es at the Plain Brown Wrap­per show, this time rid­ing Pan­do­ra Z on whom she re­ceived a fifth place in the speed class.

Hadley al­so com­pet­ed in the 2'6" adult eq­ui­tation class on a nine-year-old chest­nut called Is­tan­bul. Hadley was the cham­pi­on low adult eq­ui­tation rid­er at one com­pe­ti­tion, and the cham­pi­on eq­ui­tation rid­er and re­serve cham­pi­on in the low adult/chil­dren's hunters at two oth­ers.

She re­ceived a sil­ver tray for be­com­ing the over­all cir­cuit cham­pi­on in eq­ui­tation over fences and un­der sad­dle. Ra­hael's horse went lame when she first went to com­pete and as a re­sult, she had to switch hors­es of­ten. But Ra­hael en­joys learn­ing and showed true com­mit­ment to her sport, great de­sire to im­prove and emo­tion­al ma­tu­ri­ty in not let­ting this set back have an im­pact on her.

Jor­danne Brown, 15, went to the Fox Lea Show in Venice from Ju­ly 28 - 31 af­ter spend­ing three days train­ing with the Rus­sells. Brown per­formed at a high lev­el, get­ting blue rib­bons in the .95 and 1.0m clear round class­es. She al­so fin­ished third in the mi­ni prix clas­sic at 1.0m and fourth in the 1.0m child/adult clas­sic.

This was Brown's first US com­pe­ti­tion and her re­sults against more sea­soned adult rid­ers demon­strat­ed her pro­fi­cien­cy as a young rid­er. This has giv­en her a tremen­dous boost of con­fi­dence and re­in­forced her pas­sion for the sport and her de­sire to learn and im­prove.Al­so gain­ing tremen­dous ex­pe­ri­ence and con­fi­dence from the ex­pe­ri­ence was 16-year-old Syd­ney Navar­ro. Rid­ing Sail Away in the .75 and .85m class­es, Navar­ro got blue rib­bons in each of these clear round class­es.

The young rid­ers now look for­ward to com­pet­ing in the Ja­maica and T&T legs of the Caribbean Eques­tri­an As­so­ci­a­tion's Ju­nior Jump­ing Com­pe­ti­tion, which will be held lat­er this year.T&T is present­ly tied for the lead with Bar­ba­dos af­ter the first two legs of the com­pe­ti­tion, which were held in Bar­ba­dos and the Cay­man Is­lands.