If you don’t already know, let me introduce you to the gender-neutral abomination of a mascot for the London Olympics named Wenlock. Wenlock was introduced to much public shame and embarrassment in May of 2010, and since then the London organizers seem to have employed the time-tested marketing strategy ‘if at first people hate something, make it creepier and dress it up as a national icon.’ An EN reader recently sent us this picture of Wenlock’s newest costume, and all I can say is that I hope that thing isn’t planning on going anywhere near horses. There have been some terrible Olympic mascots over the years, but Wenlock and his (its?) twin Mandeville just keep looking worse and worse as the Olympic Games draw nearer. Now for your news and notes:
—Mid-morning update: Reining added to Young Riders, Horse and Hound writes about Prue Barrett, Ben Hobday’s entry is ready to go for Badminton.
–In the Full Gallop one-day scores that took a while to get posted on Wednesday, Sarah Cousins won gold, silver, and bronze in the intermediate division. Doug Payne and Running Order, who I would look at as top contenders to go to the Pan Ams, were 4th. Two of the intermediate riders, including Ashley Adams and her Rolex horse Vaunted elected to make Full Gallop a combined test. WIll Faudree and Kim Severson took the top two places in the prelim A division and Matt Flynn won the prelim B with Cheval Z. [Full Gallop Results]
—Tiana Coudray scored an impressive 7 minutes on the plank exercise at the USOC fitness evaluations in California. This sets the plank record for US High Performance riders. I believe Doug and Jennie retain their mutual squat title at 360, and Boyd holds the sprint title. The exercises will be repeated at a later date (around Rolex) to test the fitness development of the riders. Mark will be joining the riders today for the start of the California training sessions.
–A CRI5* and the first-ever Reining World Championship Freestyle will be held at Rolex this spring. The main reining events will take place Friday and Saturday nights. Personally, I think the idea is a great chance to provide some cross-discipline fun, although I wonder how many eventing fans will want to stay at the Kentucky Horse Park each night after watching Rolex all day. As a sport, reining has been much better about marketing and promoting itself so hopefully eventing can learn a thing or two during Rolex. Samantha Clark attended the press conference and has complete and awesome coverage with videos on her blog, so we will just link to that for all the details: [Samantha’s blog]
—Survey: There are 81,000 horses in Maryland [TheHorse.com]
–In the second of the High Performance Blogs, Hannah Burnett reports on life in Ocala. Hannah will be busy writing this spring; she is as EN guest blogger and she will also be doing an alternating piece in the Eventing USA magazine with Boyd. [HP Eventers Blog]
–The US Equestrian Team has added Jenny Sutton, Chester Weber and Jack Wetzel to their list of Trustees. Chester Weber, of Campbell’s Soup fame, is a combined driver who won silver at the WEGs and is an all around good guy. I don’t know much about the other two names, but the USET press release has more info. [Press Release]
–Fifteen-year-old Beth O’Driscoll dominated the latest BE winter jump training series [British Eventing]
–Dressage: Rider and Groom Wanted at Prestigious Hof Kasselmann [EuroDressage]
—Jack and Jill get new show names [Adventures of Jack and Jill]
–The first USEA Gold Cup event is a month away at Red Hills [USEA]
–Ecogold’s textile engineer shares his knowledge in a post on the Ecogold blog. Speaking of Ecogold, we have an exciting Ecogold contest scheduled for next Monday. We will be giving away some crazy cool Ecogold stuff. More on that soon.
–Today’s TOTD item are Tredstep half chaps 50% off–only available until noon. [TOTD]
–Fences #19-20 on Monty White’s fictional London cross-country course [Talking Horse blog]
–A 16 year old Australian eventer might become the next Miss Universe. [Tweed Daily News]
–Horse Agility–It’s like dog agility, but with the added excitement of potentially getting trampled:
That’s all for now. We have lot’s of fun lined up today on Eventing Nation, including the next step in the FLAIR Jimmy Wofford photo contest if the EN Chinchillas can take a break from dust baths long enough to get us a list of 10 finalists. Until then, check out the Pennfield Facebook page, Jennifer Wooten-Dafoe just posted on it. See you soon.
