MALVERN Hills Riding Club’s Nicola Jones came close to a win at the South Essex Insurance Brokers British Riding Clubs Horse Trials Championships.

Jones put in a superb performance at the national finals in Offchurch Bury, Warwickshire, to finish second.

The senior finals were run on a full three-day event format with roads, tracks and steeplechase forming a demanding speed and endurance phase along with cross-country.

Jones, who works as a paramedic, was in action in the top senior open category and had no problems on her grey eight-year-old Temperament.

The horse had made the finals for the third year running and finished eighth in the open championship in 2007.

The pair were fourth after the opening dressage phase, where they earned a score of 35.7, just over four marks off the lead at that stage.

They then jumped a superb clear over the testing cross-country course, coming home with 15.6 time penalties, one of the quickest rounds of the section.

Jones looked like going clear again in the final show jumping phase, only for the very last fence to fall.

It was still good enough to take her into second, just 0.1 of a mark ahead of the third-placed rider, and score the pair’s best national eventing result to date.

Two riders from the Cropthorne and Evesham Vale club also made the senior open line-ups.

Jocelyn Icke, eighth at last year’s finals, moved up to sixth with a good cross-country clear on Ballinar and Victoria Stanley was seventh in her arena on Bob the Builder.

A Cropthorne team again gained a place in the Junior Horse Trials Championships, for riders aged under 18, where they had finished fourth in 2007.

The team missed the line-up this time but two riders did make the individual placings. Amy Furness, 14, was ninth on Kilarney and Alex Worall was a close fifth on Pencader Lady.

Cropthorne’s Jessica McNeil Wilson was eighth in the senior intermediate finals, where the 17-year-old rode the Latvian bred seven-year-old Grand Surprise, who came from Irish Olympic event rider Austin O’Connor.

The pair were in their first year in the senior finals, having been on the placed junior section last time.

Malvern Hills rider Tina Price was 10th in her section of the senior novice finals on her mare Chinor Fantasy, whose score of 45.7 would have been good enough for a win in several other sections.