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‘There was blood on the door and teeth on the floor’: horse bounces back from broken jaw to win at Barbury

When Alexandra Farrar-Fry got a phone call at 7am from her veterinary practice to say that her much-loved event horse, Grey Finnsky, was about to have emergency surgery for a fractured jaw – which wasn’t the reason he was at the vets in the first place – she could never have imagined that he would win an international horse trials a year later.

After Alexandra’s victory in the CCI3*-S at Barbury Castle on 10 July, she explained the emotional story behind this landmark success – a first at three-star level for the North Yorkshire-based horse and rider.

“I’ve had ‘Boots’, who is owned by a close family friend, Dr Marium Haque, since he was four. When he was six, in 2013, we won the Badminton Grassroots Championship at BE100 level,” she said. “In hindsight, we went up the grades far too quickly. As my now-trainer Caroline Moore would say, we didn’t have enough ‘tools in our box’ to go advanced when he was nine. We both ended up having a bit of a wobble, and went right back down the levels and spent a year at BE100 and then novice.

Please click here to read the rest of the article as it appears on the Horse and Hound website.

Article written by: Catherine Austen

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