CANADIAN Olympian Rebecca Howard is savouring a successful debut at Barbury and hoping to rack even more positive results at her new local event in years to come.

The 34-year-old, who represented her country at London 2012, was third behind winner Piggy French in the CIC3* section B on Riddle Master (46.0).

Howard, who relocated to Wiltshire following last summer’s Games and is based out of Mildenhall’s Mere Farm alongside New Zealand international duo Jonelle Richards and Tim Price, was delighted with her first appearance at Barbury.

“I’m loving it, especially because of the love of the sport over here and the access to competitions – I feel like I’ve learned a lot in this last year,” said Howard.

“I’m on a three-year visa at this point and I’ll be disappointed if I’m heading home. It just all comes down to being able to figure out how to survive here.

“It was a beautiful event. This fall, when I had a bit of a quiet time with the event horses, I came over to the property and galloped some of the National Hunt horses of Alan King.

“So to see it all come together at the actual competition was very impressive – it’s a great event and I’ll definitely have to carry on coming.”

Lower Stanton St Quintin’s Kitty King finished just 0.6 penalties behind Howard, in fourth place with Persimmon.

The 30-year-old was delighted with her eight-year-old gelding, who earned an impressive result in his first-ever 3* competition.

“He was fantastic. He’s relatively green at this level, but he coped with it all really well and stepped up in really good style,” said King.

“When you step up, you don’t know if they’re going to produce their best and I was still hoping for a top ten finish, but you never really know so it’s fantastic that he went so brilliantly.

“He wasn’t one of the fastest because I wanted to give him a bit of time at some of the more complicated fences, but he was still quick enough and very competitive – hopefully he’s got a really exciting future ahead of him.”

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