(1) It was a stark contrast of performances late Friday afternoon when Phillip Dutton and Woodburn scored a 48.2 and then Germany’s Michael Jung and La Biosthetique-Sam followed Woodburn with a score of 33 to take the overall lead. Phillip was understandably disappointed in his test and it looked like Woodburn just never relaxed, which especially hurt his flying changes. In contrast, La Biosthetique-Sam was a picture of relaxation and I thought Michael rode him with incredible accuracy. As I mentioned in the live blog, I could barely see Michael using his aids.
(2) Comet did what we knew Comet would do but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be amazed. Placing 5th at the WEG dressage with so much pressure and so much excitement in the crowd has to be the best dressage ride of Becky’s career. Becky and Comet were put on the US squad to go low in the dressage and then hopefully jump around tomorrow and Sunday to get a podium finish. Phase 1 is complete.
(3) Including from Becky and Michael, there were some really beautiful dressage rides on Friday. 9 out of the top 10 pairs rode their dressage on Friday. Several readers asked whether the better Friday scores were he result of kinder judging or better riding. The judges might have been a little looser with their scoring on Friday, but I think almost all of the difference was due to better horses being scheduled for Friday. Traditionally a team is built with their best rider as the anchor (4th), their second best as the lead (1st), and the weakest rider in the second spot. Every team is different, but my point is that the best horses were scheduled for Friday so there is no surprise that the best scores came on Friday.
(4) Germany extended their lead from 8 to 14 points in the team competition on Friday. To get an idea for how good Germany is at dressage–all six members of the German squad are placed in the top 13. The British team also had a good day on Friday and moved up two spots, jumping Australia and Sweden. The US team slid two spots to 7th and is now 25 points out of the lead.
(5) It’s not time to panic for the US team, but they have left themselves one heck of a mountain to climb on Saturday. We knew that the US teams was built for Saturday and the difficulty of the WEG cross-country fits the excellent US cross-country horses and riders perfectly. The good news for the Americans is that, aside from the huge German advantage, the team competition is closely bunched with just 12 points separating the 2nd through 7th teams.
(6) The WEG individual dressage scores were extremely low. William Fox-Pitt bettered his winning Rolex score by 0.8 and is in 12th place. I wouldn’t be surprised if 42.8 were good enough to win at the end of the weekend, but that will all depend on the difficulty of making the time on the XC.
(7) I was disappointed to see that not a single rider in the entire eventing dressage wore their helmet. The Courtney King-Dye fall and the resulting helmet campaigns have not had as strong of an impact outside of the US and Canada, but I had hoped that someone would step up and show their support for wearing helmets in the dressage. At the very least, they would have gotten a lot of positive attention in the media.
(8) This is perhaps a minor detail in the grand scheme of the WEGs, but I wish the US fans would show more rabid and ridiculous patriotism like the visiting nations. There were at least 40 German fans waiving flags in the stadium which is about 10 times as many as the number of US fans who brought flags. I know we are the host nation and I know we live in an era/culture where it’s uncool to be super enthusiastic, but let’s get crazy, buy some flags, and cover ourselves in red, white, and blue for the cross-country tomorrow. Extra points for face paint.
(9) Astute readers might be wondering where they have heard the name Karim Laghouagh before our write up this afternoon about his elimination from the WEG dressage. In fact, Karim is perhaps most famous for this rotational fall video with Havenir d’Azac.
(10) Cross-country begins on Saturday at 10:04am ET
Go eventing.
