As ballot date (Tuesday 9th May at 12:00) looms for the first Childeric Saddles Little Downham Horse Trials of the 2023 British Eventing season, the event reaffirms its focus on “exemplary customer service”.
An event that has always put the sport at the centre of its focus, most notably with the September CCI4*S that looks to condense the timetable into a single day wherever possible and removes the bells and whistles that sounds many of the country’s feature 4* fixtures. This year the Little Downham team say they are more focused on delivering 5* customer service more than ever.
“We want to reassure owners and riders that we appreciate them as customers and want to ensure we deliver a first-class customer experience. Abandonment Insurance was a high priority for us and we want to confirm that in the event of abandonment we will issue a full 100% refund as soon as we are possible.
With onsite stabling we are offering a single night booking option, in order to keep the costs as low as possible for competitors. We appreciate many riders travelling long distances for our upper-level classes and realise that stabling costs can often be high and therefore many the events more prohibitive to competitors.
As well as focusing on the competitors we also have our volunteer workforce in mind and will look to run slightly under the maximum entry numbers so as to reduce the length of day for all involved. Competitors don’t wish to dressage at 8am, to then run cross-country at 7.30pm and we don’t expect our volunteers to be on duty that long either.
The updated layout, adopted from our pandemic protocols, has remained which enables us to offer more owners parking adjacent to the dressage and showjumping, within easy reach of the lorry park. The benefit of running on a company site means being that we can make all three-phases more accessibly for competitors’ connections.”
The June event sees the addition of a new BE105 which has proved popular at the venue’s July fixture and offers those short of competition runs this season a more gradual progression route from BE100 to Novice.
As have become a key feature of Little Downham, the ground conditions remain exceptionally good with key focus being on delivering educational courses at all levels, that run across some of the best ground in the country.
Little Downham (1) runs from the 2nd – 4th June and offers all classes from BE90 to Advanced.
