The Longines Royal International Horse Show 2019

The Longines Royal International Horse Show 2019 by Hesteyri Horses

We were lucky enough to have sponsors passes for Ladies day at Hickstead, thanks to our amazing sponsors, Horsemart!

It was my first time going to Hickstead so I was ridiculously excited, unfortunately we got caught in bad traffic so missed a lot of the day, but we got there in time to visit The Equine Superstore stand (sister company of Horsemart) and meet our sponsors in person for the first time which was amazing!

Meg & Lauren, Hesteyri Horses and Janna, Horsemart 

We then went on to watch the Science Supplements BHS Queen Elizabeth II Cup and were on the edge of our seats for its entirety! The jump off was particularly intense and ridden amazingly with David Simpson taking the win in the end! We absolutely adored the way he spoke about, and praised, his horse!

The Bemer Speed Class ended up being even more exciting and the crowd was with the riders for every step! When Ellen Whitaker landed a clear over the last fence, the crowd went wild! Ellen took a masterful win! Our favourite moment was watching Ellen throw her rosette to the children at the ringside!

We really enjoyed exploring the All England Show Ground, visiting the other stunning arenas which all had different classes in.

There was also a commendable effort, ‘10 for Tim’ at the end of the day, where top riders, many of whom had ridden earlier in the day, ran 10 laps around the Longines International arena. This raised over £50,000 for the Tim Stockdale Foundation. It was an incredible amount to raise but also a massive distance ran by those doing their bit!

We also went around the shopping village. There were much fewer stands than at other big events which we loved because you could see everything rather than having the feeling of missing good stands and taking hours shopping instead of watching the competition! There was still more than enough shopping, though, and plenty of variation!

Our other favourite thing about Hickstead was that they offered free drinking water. This is so important as keeps everyone hydrated, avoiding things like fainting from heat stroke. Competition venues often have the most insanely expensive bottled water so we were so grateful to be able to fill our bottles up.

We had the best time, thanks to our awesome sponsors, it was amazing to be able to watch from the members enclosure and just to be there!