Bonnets are excited for Thursday’s dressage recap

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Sarah Van Hasslet and Artic Fox Too of Belgium wore a bonnet

1) No one should be surprised to see the Germans leading the dressage by such a big margin Thursday night.  The Germans are the defending WEG and Olympic champions and they have a tremendous heritage of dressage riders and horses.  When Germany won gold in 2006 they were winning after the dressage, and in 2008 they were second behind the Australians by 8 points so the Germans had to feel pretty comfortable Thursday afternoon–that is until they went out and walked their XC course again.  
2) Simone Deitermann rode a masterfully accurate test on Free Easy NRW to take a 5.3 point lead in the individual competition.  Free Easy is a great mover, but not quite a mover that makes the crowd gasp like Ringwood Cockatoo or Comet on a good day.  Simone rode an extremely accurate test and scored the highest walk marks of the day.  I think a lot of people were a bit surprised when such a low score was posted–not because it wasn’t a good test but because it wasn’t a flashy *blow your mind extended trot* kind of test like most four-star scores in the mid 30’s.
3) Buck had a very strong performance to sit in 11th considering that he was 15th after the dressage with Reggie at the AECs.  I thought Buck’s test might score a little higher than it did because Reggie had lovely movement and was very relaxed.  Boyd Martin shaved two points off of his Rolex score with Neville and will be looking for the XC time to be especially tough to climb up the leader board on Saturday.
4) If you watched the online feed or have seen photo galleries from the Thursday dressage, you probably noticed that a lot of the horses wore bonnets in the dressage.  From talking with the riders, apparently all of the eventers noticed that a lot of the dressage horses were wearing bonnets while they were watching the pure dressage competitions and the eventers decided to imitate their dressage counterparts.  The idea is that a Bonnet muffles the sound somewhat for the horse and theoretically keeps them more focused.  The bit check would remove each horse’s bonnet after the test to check that the riders had not put earplugs underneath the bonnets.
Do bonnets work?  I don’t know–you would have to ask the horses.  I don’t see how bonnets could hurt and even if they don’t help the horses they might make the riders feel like they have an edge and therefore give them a psychological advantage.  
5) I watched William warm up with Cool Mountain during the lunch break and I was extremely impressed.  William started at the trot and canter using a very light seat–barely touching the saddle in the canter.  From there he gradually raised Cool Mountain’s frame and the gaits elevated with the frame.  Tracie Robinson, the British eventing dressage coach gave William a few calm words of advice but the entire warmup looked like a carefully planned and executed work of precision.  William improved on his Rolex score by 0.8 points and sits in third.
6) The scary thing is that the score William won Rolex with earlier this year is 6 points out of the lead on day one at the WEGs.  Obviously I expected the quality of scores to be improved from Rolex, but I really got the sense on Thursday that winning the World Equestrian Games is going to take someone’s best of a lifetime performance in all three phases.
7) The US and Canadian teams need to step their game up Friday.  We have been saying all along that these World Equestrian Games will be won or lost on Saturday, but there’s only so much ground that can be made up by going clean and fast.  If the same exact results from Thursday happen on Friday, the US would trail Germany by 18.4 (assuming one of the lower scores was dropped).  That gives the US 46 seconds to make up over three riders and doesn’t even consider the three other teams in front of the US.
8) I felt like the crowd watching the dressage on Thursday was relatively small.  About two thirds of the covered seating was filled with fans, but the three other big bleachers had a lot of empty seats.  The eventing crowd will grow on Friday and I expect that when the last team horses compete on Friday afternoon the stadium will be much more full.  
9) I expect great performances from Becky, Karen, and Phillip tomorrow.  This crowd is going to ride every single movement with them and explode when they salute.  At Rolex earlier this year, Mandiba scored a 43.7 in the dressage, Comet scored 45.2, and Woodburn scored 47.7.  Again assuming a similar day of competition, those same scores would put Karen into 9th, Becky into 13th, and Phillip into 25th so an improved score from Rolex will be very important, especially for Phillip.
10) I really enjoyed working with Emily from the USEA on the live blog today.  Emily is an absolute pleasure to work with and Thursday absolutely flew by.  Thanks to everyone who viewed and participated in the live blog and I look forward to the next three days of live blogging.  Please let us know if you have any special requests for coverage or suggestions on how to make the live blog experience more entertaining.
Christopher Burton and Holstein Park Leilani get the dressage started at 8:30am Friday morning.  Go eventing.
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