Maria Brandel about the 2012 Swedish Obedience title

 

The 2012 Swedish championship in obedience started on Saturday with the qualifying round. 60 equipages made their rounds arranged in three rings with 2 judges in each ring.

Our qualifying round was very successful and we reached 296,5 points, enough to take the leading position of the day. Diana Ljungström was second best with 285,5 points followed by Lillemor Edström with 279 points. This years lower limit to reach the final on Sunday was 260,5 points.

 

The programme on Sunday is as usual in reversed order of precedence. That meant a very long and nervous waiting! I did some exercising during this waiting time to prepare Ylle as good as possible. The final day was organised to one single big ring. Being a national championship, the performance was very smooth and included negligible waiting time between the elements. Unusually lot of equipages made smaller or bigger mistakes in the final. When the time came for my entrance, I was really nervous! The heelwork felt like a Marathon run and my tongue was that dry so I hardly could speak up any word. The programme went on and after the box I became calmer, but just a little. I worked hard on each element to keep the focus to the very end. Ylle kept calm and focused the whole time, and even though we made some irritating mistakes we reached the best score of the day – again!

 

After completion of the competition the score order had changed to some extent. Karin Bengtsson and her Lyxa performed very well and achieved a silver position. Diana Ljungstrom and Zack caught the bronze medal. And believe it or not – we made the impossible possible and won the game with even better margin compared to 2011. Almost 23 points in advance! This is really fabulous among all equipages and I am tremendously happy for my achievement!