Devizes eventer Coral Keen to wear the British flag in first team call up
Coral Keen with Derby Wiltshire event rider Coral Keen has been asked to compete for Great Britain next week (September 24-27) in the CICO3* competition at Waregem in Belgium as part of the British Nations Cup team - and she is really looking forward to the challenge.
It will be the first time the 28-year-old from Devizes has worn the British flag when she partners her 11-year-old gelding Wellshead Fare Opposition - known as Derby - with whom she achieved a top 20 placing at Luhmuhlen and finished in twelfth place in the CIC3* at Hartpury.
After disappointment at the Land Rover Burghley Horse Trials held earlier this month in Lincolnshire, where she was unseated at the Cottesmore Leap, the call up has come as a welcome tonic: “It just proves that every cloud has a silver lining. Derby was going so well at Burghley, jumping all the technical combinations beautifully."
"We came to the Cottesmore Leap on the wrong stride and he hit the back bar, catapulting me out of the saddle. We had to have a cross-country training session with team selector Yogi Breisner, just to check Derby was a hundred per cent and hadn’t lost any confidence. But he was raring to go and as full of himself as ever and I’m so pleased to have been given this opportunity."
Coral has brought Derby on since he was a four-year-old, progressing him through the ranks from BE100 level up to four star, which is the highest eventing level any horse and rider combination can compete at. Coral is based at Little Cheverell - south of Devizes.
Last week, at Gatcombe International, Coral won the CIC1* with Cascadelle, a six-year-old she started training as a three year-old: “She was absolutely amazing doing a beautiful dressage test and then jumping a double clear. She just popped round the cross-country and gave me such a lovely ride."
"She’s such an exciting prospect for the future so we’ll keep carefully plotting her career with the aim of competing at the highest level.”
Cascadelle will also be heading to Waregem where she will run in the CIC* along with her stable mate Highmead Proposition: “We were supposed to be going to South of England, but as soon a s I was offered the chance to ride on a Nations Cup team, a leapt at it, and decided to re-route these horses there too. It’ll be a very busy week but I am really looking forward to it."