Eventing News and Notes: February 2010 Archives

*3D3W: Amy Tryon, Holly Hudspeth part II

Bruce Davidson and Laine Ashker post new blog entries.  When I get the time (ha), I need to write a post about the explosion of new blogs/websites in eventing over the past year.  The explosion is incredibly exciting and a perfect compliment for our aggregation format here at EN.

Galway Downs, along with everything else on the planet, is like the movie Avatar because its in 3-D.  Joking aside, that press release is actually interesting, making it one of the better pre-event press releases I have ever seen.

Megan Lewis is riding from China to London.

Horseless horse show is a 'huge success.'  Which is surprising, because when you take horses away from a horse show, all you have is 300 crazy people standing around in a muddy field, one super-stressed event organizer driving a golf cart in circles, and 100 dogs that should be on leashes.  Go EvEnTiNg with horses.

Alex Hua Tian has all the potential to be an eventing icon for years to come.  Imagine being the first Olympic rider for the largest country on Earth, a country with tremendous equestrian heritage, and all before graduating college.  Everything I have heard and read about Alex indicates that he bears the great responsibility of all that potential with humility and grace.  Sometimes I feel like one of the hardest things to overcome in eventing is early success, but so far so good for Alex, and I would bet that he will be winning big events soon.

Zena, a premature donkey, is making a great recovery.   

If you are going to get drunk and take a gun to church, you might as well ride a horse to get there.  The guy was lucky he didn't get shot; in Kentucky, most people take guns to church.

Get to know some eventers in Maryland.

Rolex will also be the WEG dressage and show jumping test events.  This will make Rolex a very large operation indeed, and an intentional practice for all of the WEG operations.  

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Top 5 signs I have been watching too much of the Olympics:

(1) I am having dreams about curling strategy.  Literally, I had a nightmare last night about going into the last end tied when my opponent had the last-rock.  

(2) I tried to do a triple-lutz-triple-loop combination on my horse.  Now I'm no longer allowed in Bridle Creek.  

(3) Since all the cool athletes seem to be doing it, get excited for the upcoming release of my air conditioner commercial, and yes, I will be singing the soundtrack.

(4) While driving yesterday, I tried to disqualify someone for merging into the wrong lane.

(5) I'm working on developing a new sport called eventing-cross, which is like eventing but with 4 people competing at the same time.

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Someone brought it to my attention yesterday that the USET training session calendar has Katie Prudent and Oded Shimoni only scheduled to teach in Aiken.  I understand that most of the training list riders are located in Aiken, but Oded and Katie are scheduled to make 5 trips to Aiken and none to either the California or Ocala training sessions.  Oded is based in Wellington, so perhaps the thought is that the FL riders can work with Oded at his home base.

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Another issue that a reader raised yesterday was the lack of helmets being worn at the training sessions.  All I can say is this: kids do not try this at home.  Unless you want to eat out of a straw for the rest of your life, always, always, always wear your hemet.  

Noon Update: Bruce Davidson's Rolex blog part 2, Leslie Law part 2

Jersey Fresh has joined the PRO tour Event Series.  The only PRO event I remember from 2009 was the highly entertaining puissance at Plantation Field, but PRO wants to be much more than that.  Jersey is the 4th tour event for 2010 so far, but look for more events to be added and a lot bigger push from PRO in terms of event entertainment and publicity this year, which is fantastic for eventing.  2010 is a big year from PRO.  What is PRO and what do they want to be?  From a publicity standpoint, unless %90 of US eventers can answer that 8 months from now, PRO will not have done its job.  

Horse agility: "like dog agility, but with bigger obstacles."  That sounds pretty awesome.  Unfortunately, in reality, the obstacles are smaller than dog agility.

       -3 people like this.

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Top 3 reasons not to get too excited about the Hockey USA's victory of Canada:

(1) I'm a firm believer in acting like you've been there.

(2) All it really means is that the US has to win one less game (3) than Canada to win it all.

(3) This was just the preliminaries, hopefully the US and Canada can meet again soon.

When the announcer said "oh no, slightly off on the twizzle section there!" I realized that ice dancing is my least favorite Olympic sport.  

Quote and Person of the Day goes to Canadian skier Chris Del Bosco, who gave up a sure Bronze for a chance at Gold.  Del Bosco told NBC "I had bronze sewed up but I didn't want bronze."  Go eventing.

Noon update: Holly Hudspeth on 3D3W

Pine Top Results, FHP Results, Ram Tap Results

TJR: Sire of Totilas Dies: Let's hope he was insured.

Colic Discussion: "Almost all horses with colic can be saved if the problem is recognized quickly..."

FEI bans Rollkur: A roundtable group of FEI officials has declared "any head and neck position achieved through aggressive force to be unacceptable" and "redefined hyperflexion/Rpllkur as flextion of the horse's neck achieved through aggressive force.  FEI press release.  "The technique known as Low, Deep, and Round, which achieves flexion without undue force, is acceptable.  Full FEI press release.  One thing to remember is that this whole issue really gained momentum after footage of Patrick Kittel (below) hit the internet.  After reviewing this footage and additional information, the FEI concluded that there was no evidence that Kittel used "excessive" techniques.  So if "excessive force" is no longer legal, but Kittel wasn't excessive, then has the problem been solved?

 

FEI dressage director speaks on the outcome of the roundtable

FEI requires stabling on-scene at CIC***'s and makes ground jury officiate horse inspections: At first glance, this seems like a reasonable rule, especially with the FEI's new stabling doping policies.  Frankly, I didn't know that it was legal to stable off grounds for any FEI competitions.

New BruceDavidsonEventing.com

Horse slaughter trends (graphs included): the interesting and sad point here is that when the US plants shut down in 2007, Mexico and Canada raised their slaughter levels, and so the number of horses slaughtered overall has remained constant.  Presumably, this is because when supply decreased due to the US closings, demand remained relatively constant, thus raising the short-term prices, which raised the marginal revenue, which raised production.  Just yet another example where fighting supply doesn't work in a large market.

If you missed it, here is the Budweiser Clydesdale Super Bowl ad

Who needs to go south for spring training?  Is that the band that did Firefly?  What's the over-under on how long it takes youtube to yank the soundtrack?

Thanks to Eventing Nation voters, the Budweiser clydesdales are back in the Super Bowl

Price of USEA paper omnibus reduced by 30% to $24: Number of people upset at having to pay for paper omnibus reduced by 10%.

Mark Todd in Sports Illustrated: The real news here is mostly that SI is writing about an eventer, but it is a little strange that the article says he has been named to an 11-person NZL squad to prepare for the Olympics.  I seem to recall there being some other pretty important competition happening before the Olympics, if I could only remember what it's called.... 

Groundhog predicts more riding in the snow: The most accurate indicator ever that people are absurdly superstitious and enjoy making a big deal out of total rubbish.  What do all the other groundhogs think?

Top US eventers coaching South American national teams: I feel pretty strongly that one of those riders will be coaching the US team someday, but don't ask me which one.

Totilas to stand at stud before WEGs: Stud fee around 5,000 Euros, which is higher than any other current dressage stallion.  I remember concerns about breeding affecting Windfall's performance, so we shall see what the effects are on Totilas.

Thanks to The Centaurian blog for posting this, and having EN in their blogroll.

Noon update:

Local article about Holly Hudspeth: Sadly, no Star Wars references here.

TJR~Wild horse roundup update:  Shockingly, chasing horses around the Nevada desert with helicopters is harmful and dangerous for the animals.

Polo hits the big screen...with an unwieldy, oversized, bamboo hammer.