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I guess it’s only fair that every once in a while I should write about my eventing weekend, which, as several folks have commented took place at the Encore horse trials just outside of Detroit–and yes, the horse trials did look exactly like the movie 8 Mile, thanks for asking.
It was a light weekend for me and I just had a young horse in the training division. He scored a 28 in dressage, which was a disappointment for him and resulted from a couple of technical mistakes by me–I didn’t channel my inner Kim Severson very well. The horse jumped well in both show jumping and cross-country, but was very green between the fences and we had a few time penalties in both phases. Let’s just say that when he ran sideways out of the box I thought I was in for a long ride but he settled in nicely. He has a lot of upside and I was pleased with his progress.
As a few other notes from Encore–I am not 6’4″, I don’t have an Australian accent, my hair is tame, and I don’t ride in zebra stripes on XC, but now that I think about it that does kinda sound like Boyd… One girl did offer to pour cold water on me in the XC warmup.
The volunteers, officials, and fellow riders were all wonderful at Encore and I couldn’t have enjoyed the competition more. Midwest eventing rocks.
One thing to remember is that the Kentucky Horse Park is closed until the WEGs, so we had quite a few riders from Kentucky at Encore. Our Kentucky readers will be looking for events elsewhere this summer. Moral of the story–get your Richland entries in on time.
Speaking of cross-country, good new technologies usually begin to get popular in the eventing Meccas and then spread out to the rest of the country, and Point-Two vests are no exception. It is becoming rare to see riders not protected by Point-Twos in Virginia, but I only saw maybe 15 at Encore this weekend.
Lastly, I’d like to give a big EN shout-out to Stayner Haller who finished his last event ever this weekend at Encore with his wonderful horse LGM Challenger. Stayner is 73 and Challenger is 27, and Stayner told me that Encore was their 110th competition together. I competed in Michigan quite a bit in my early teens, and Challenger looked just as fresh this weekend as he did 10 years ago. As I told Stayner, you don’t see horses with that kind of longevity these days, he has taken wonderful care of Challenger throughout their career together. Can we get an encore Stayner?
Go eventing.
