Ali Smallpage, an old eventing friend of mine from my days in beautiful Lexington, Kentucky, was at FENCE horse trials this weekend and kindly sent us this quick recap of a great weekend of eventing in North Caroline. Astute readers might remember Ali’s contributions to Coren’s video collection from Southern Pines. Thanks for writing this Ali and thank you for reading.
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From Ali:
FENCE Horse Trials is at the lovely Foothills Equestrian and Nature Center in Tryon, NC. They are part of the Nunn Finer than Carolina Eventing Series. This event was FENCE’s first of three events this year, and the horse trials ran very well thanks to the many volunteers and superb staff!
Becky Holder made her debut at the FENCE horse trials this weekend. There was much talk about how exciting it was to watch her ride in person in the barns. As I was out on cross country watching, I over heard almost every group talk about how lovely it was to see her ride and where she was training now-a-days and who her horses were. It must be nice to be a celebrity an amazing horsewoman and have the eventing nation rooting for you, many of whom you have never met. She did quite well leading start to finish in Open Novice-A aboard Show Biz finishing on a 27.9 in the horse’s first novice, a flashy chestnut that had caught some people’s eye. She also placed 2nd on Prospero and 6th on Payback Time in the training divisions.
Saturday was warm in the sun and chilly in the shade with gusty winds making for some lively dressage and show jumping rounds. Fence four in the show jumping proved to be every competitors dream fence – it survived many a (hard) whack without ever coming out of the cups. It was just a lowly ol’ white and yellow striped vertical as the first element of an 8 or 9 or 10 (who can count that high anyway?) stride line in the training, novice, and beginner novice courses or as the first element of a vertical three strides to a skinny chevron two strides to an oxer for the intermediate and preliminary courses.
Sunday was a gorgeous warm mid 70s clear sky day. Beautiful April weather atop a mountain (literally). If you’ve never been to FENCE, cross country literally runs up and down the side of a mountain! Cross country started off well, but ended with some screaming debate about the finish flags. There were two sets of finish flags: one set for training and preliminary and one set for novice and beginner novice. They were marked with electrical tape. Four training level riders were technically eliminated for crossing the wrong finish flags. It is the rider’s responsibility to know their course, however, the unfortunate part about the situation is that after several riders have gotten TE’d, the xc starter began reminding the riders in the box to make sure they knew which finish flags were for training level. This caused debate back at the barns and with officials as to fairness and unauthorized assistance, etc. There was also debate about telling riders they had gone through the incorrect flags a la being told you jumped the incorrect fence and were eliminated.
Save for the bit of drama about the finish flags, it was a wonderful eventing weekend in the foothills.
Go eventing.
[videos with help of Lianne Burgess]
