Good to see you friends. Are you still alive? Have you melted to death yet in this heat wave yet? Oh, I see. No, I have never seen that much sweat. Actually, that doesn't sound healthy. Your horse wouldn't go near you? I don't blame him--I'd go see a doctor for that.
As many of you know, the US team released a
partial short list in mid-may following Rolex and Jersey Fresh with the intent of potentially naming additional pairs after Bromont and Luhmuhlen. The short list, of course, is a list of up to 18 pairs that determines the final group of riders from which the WEG team will be selected after the selection trials. Here we are a few weeks after Luhmuhlen, and
my understanding is that the final WEG US short list will be released sometime next week.
USET vets have looked at several horses in the past couple of weeks, presumably to evaluate their candidacy to be added to the short list. From this fact, and the fact that it has taken so long after Luhmuhlen to release the final short list, I am guessing that a few names will get added.
The $64,000 question is who might get added to the short list? Off the top of my head, Tipperary Liadhnan, Sweepea Dean, and The Good Witch are the only horses who have applied for the WEGs and completed a three-day after the May short list was released. As for
other WEG applicants at Luhmuhlen, Arthur jumped around with 20 time penalties after a great dressage test but he didn't jog on Sunday due to a hematoma, and Wonderful Will withdrew before XC at Luhmuhlen reportedly because of an abscess.
It's no doubt a shameless plug for SHN, but Sweepea Dean, one of the WEG qualified and WEG applicant horse is for sale right now on
Sport Horse Nation. In fact Sweepea Dean was our first ever real classified post on SHN.
The other possibility is to retroactively add Rolex and Jersey horses. The team vets only looked at 7 horses after Rolex and all of them were added to the original short list. Vets looked at WEG applicant Rafferty's Rules after Jersey, among other horses.
I have no idea who might be added to the list, so I have enlisted the psychic German octopus who correctly picked Spain's victory over Germany in the World Cup to give us his predictions. Here are Paul the Octopus' ranking of top horses that applied for the WEGs but were not included in the May short list:
1) Tipperary Liadhnan: I know, I know, talk about show jumping all you want, tell me that there's no way "Paddy" has less than 12 penalties in the WEG show jumping. The bottom line is that from what I'm hearing about this WEG track, we are going to need horses that we can send out on XC and be nearly 100% confident they will come home clear. Paddy is one of 7 horses I feel that way about right now (Woodburn, TruLuck, The Foreman, Reggie, Bobby, Paddy, and Neville). I'm not saying put the horse on the team, just put him on the list and see how his show jumping develops over the next couple of months.
2) Last Monarch: "Stewie" placed 17th at Rolex, just two spots below Pawlow, who was included on the May list. Pawlow and Stewie both horses have the same questions about experience surrounding them. Last Monarch scored a 58 in the dressage at Rolex, and that has to come down, but he has jumped well all year, and you have to love his enthusiasm and athleticism.
3) Arthur: You can expect a great dressage performance, and the XC ability is certainly there on the right day. Again, I think this is a solid horse to add and see how he looks at the final selection trials. Hopefully Arthur had enough time to heal after Luhmuhlen for the vets to get a good look at him, but I'm not so sure about that.
4) The Good Witch: This horse was 18th at Luhmuhlen and had the second best show jumping round in Germany, but it is hard to forget that early fall at Rolex. If they add 4 names, this would be my 4th addition.
: Titanium, Connaught, and Rock On Rose deserve consideration, but their riders probably have enough horses listed already. Rafferty's Rules had a great run at Jersey, and Nevada Bay did win Bromont, but it's hard to send horses to their first 4* at the WEGs. I'd guess that Nevada Bay gets some serious discussion though, even though he did not apply for the WEG list.
