The British and US teams faced off at the Land Rover Challenge on Monday–Brits won
One week from today we will all be talking about the new eventing world champion. Will we be talking about how Phillip and Woodburn thundered around the XC to take the lead, or how William repeated his win at Rolex, or how Mary King’s veteran poise propelled her to the top, or how some bright new star put together the perfect weekend? Some incredible stories are going to be written this week and here is a look at how things will happen outside of the arena:
Team Schedules: The US team horses are each on a unique preparation schedule over the next several days based on what their riders feel is best for their horse. Phillip and Boyd are concentrating mostly on the dressage, and others will probably have one jump school early in the week. Israel’s Oded Shimoni is helping the US event riders with their dressage as well as competing for Israel at the WEGs. Oded scored a 66.298% on Monday, a score that put him near the middle of the pack. Oded has been working with the US team since the beginning of the year and I have only heard good things from the riders about his training. The Canadian team jumped on Sunday, did flatwork on Monday, and will also do flatwork on Tuesday, with a couple of the more energetic horses also jumping again.
Frustrations: I have heard some frustration about logistics and that the organizers keep randomly changing the availability schedule of the arenas, gallops, and hacking areas, but issues like this are to be expected at such a large event with so many different disciplines. Every single one of the riders that I have spoken with has praised the friendliness and kindness of the WEG volunteers.
Tuesday: On Tuesday, the riders will have the first rider briefing and the cross-country course will open for walking. The draw order will also be picked on Tuesday which let the riders know whether they will be riding dressage on Thursday or Friday and their order of go. We will not have any ride times until then, and, to my knowledge, the FEI has still not publicly released a list of the definite entries, which were submitted by the national federations on Saturday.
Wednesday and Beyond: The first horse inspection is scheduled for 9:00am on Wednesday. The XC course opening and the jog will happen sooner than at traditional three-days to give everyone more flexibility with their schedules. All of the teams will submit their final designations of which riders will compete as part of the team and which riders will compete as individuals. After Wednesday, the rest of the weekend will be pretty simple, with just the most exciting and action packed 30 minutes of total competition that each rider will ever face.
As an aside, I have been frustrated so far with the online video and media coverage, especially for the endurance event which received very little attention. But, all that will change because Eventing Nation will be arriving in force.
Eventing Nation’s Coverage: The insanity that is Eventing Nation’s live event coverage will never be more insane than over the next week. We are planning complete live blogging coverage, like our Fair Hill, Rolex, and Jersey Fresh live blogs [Rolex SJ example]. I don’t even want to think about how many posts we will have this week, but it will be as many as it takes to give our readers a fun, informative, and live look at the WEGs. Nearly every writer from Eventing Nation will be on scene and they will contribute with varying degrees of regularity. If, by some extraordinary twist of fate, we don’t cover something, we will link to everyone who does.
As a bare minimum, starting on Thursday, I will be doing a morning live blog, a lunch-time update, the afternoon live blog, the afternoon update post, then a recap post with more in-depth coverage, a preview of the next day, and any breaking news. I do not plan to eat or sleep, so I imagine that my live blogs and posts will get more delerious as the weekend progresses, which may or may not be a good thing. Leslie is also going to be especially busy taking tons of photos which will we plan to post on EN in daily slideshows.
Online Video: Unfortunately, I think if you want to watch any of the eventing live online, you are going to have to pay around 30$ to either FEI TV or UniversalSports.com. Universal Sports offered free video replay of parts of Rolex, and parts of the WEG so far, but they have not offered any specific guidance about replays for eventing. The USEF Network has been a fantastic and mercifully free service, but they only broadcast the live competition that is not broadcast by Universal Sports, so, to my knowledge, they will not have any eventing live.
Update: Suzanne was kind enough to mention in the comment section that “if you live in Canada – CBC Bold is covering XC and SJ live from beginning to end.” I have also reports that some of the video sites are not working in Canada. As always, please help each other out in the comment sections. I also should have mentioned that NBC will have the eventing show jumping finals and some XC replay televised on Sunday.
By now, you all know the drill: sit down, strap in, and get ready for the best week ever on Eventing Nation.
Go eventing.
