As promised, today we’ll turn our attention to the marvelous displays of equestrianism happening over in Germany at the World Equestrian Festival. The USA is the ‘home’ nation at this year’s event, so there’s plenty of stars and stripes support for the Americans over in Aachen. And on that note, happy Fourth of July to our American followers who are celebrating 🇺🇸
The equestrian extravaganza that is CHIO Aachen kicked off with the vaulters having their turn in the spotlight and then, on Tuesday, all eyes turned toward the show jumping ring. The dressage arena came into play on Wednesday and today, the driving course gets in on the mix.
But don’t fret, eventing fans don’t have much longer to wait, for tomorrow morning the dressage will get underway, with the show jumping in the evening, and then we finish things up with the cross country on Saturday, hooray!
Here are the times you need to know:
Friday 8:30am CEST / 2:30am ET – Dressage
Friday 5:45pm CEST / 11:45am ET – Show jumping
Saturday 9:55am CEST / 3:55am ET – Cross country
I’ll be bringing you live updates from Saturday’s cross country as we find out who’ll take the Aachen crown, and of course, Tilly will be keeping you up-to-date with every phase of the competition. Keep it locked onto EN and go eventing in Aachen!
U.S. Weekend Preview
Arrowhead H.T. (Billings, MT) [Website] [Entries] [Ride Times] [Volunteer] [Scoring]
Bouckaert Equestrian H.T. (Fairburn, GA) [Website] [Entries] [Ride Times] [Scoring]
Huntington Farm H.T. (South Strafford, VT) [Website] [Entries] [Ride Times] [Volunteer]
Mile High Horse Ranch H.T. (Parker, CO) [Website] [Entries] [Ride Times] [Volunteer] [Scoring]
Summer Coconino HT and Western Underground, Inc. TR,N,BN 3 Day Event (Flagstaff, AZ) [Website] [Entries] [Ride Times] [Volunteer] [Scoring]
The Maryland International + Horse Trials (Adamstown, MD) [Website] [Entries] [Ride Times] [Volunteer] [Scoring]
UK International Events
Aston-le-Walls International (2) (Northamptonshire) [Website] [Entries] [Volunteer] [Scoring]
European International Events
World Equestrian Festival CHIO Aachen (Germany) [Website] [Program – All Disciplines] [Program – Eventing] [Entries – All Disciplines] [Entries – Eventing] [US Eventing Team] [British Eventing Team] [Live Stream] [Results – All Disciplines] [Results – Eventing] [EN’s Coverage]
Thursday News and Reading
Dive into the excitement of Aachen with EquiRatings as they make all the predictions about this weekend’s eventing. There are stars galore in the line up at Aachen, and quite a few combinations with the potential to shake things up. Nicole and Diarm discuss them all in this Aachen preview show.
Team talks prior to Paris are happening. Hoping for the luck of the Irish, Horse Sport Ireland Eventing Senior High Performance Director Dag Albert talks building horsepower, peaking at the right time and the strongest ever strength and depth in the Irish team. Read what he has to say as he looks forward to, potentially, Ireland’s best Olympics yet.
King of dressage Carl Hester hits the big screen. From making his Olympic debut in 1992 as the youngest British athlete, to heading to Paris as the oldest, Carl has been not only a mainstay, but a powerful force within British equestrianism. He truly is an inspiration across the horseworld. And now his story is set to inspire even more people, as it’s given the biopic treatment and heads to the big screen. Stride will be at the top of our ‘to watch’ list, for sure.
‘No stirrup November’ wasn’t for this rider, so she tried out ‘No spurs April’ instead. It turns out that it was a darned good leg workout! But aside from that, there were allsorts of ‘a-ha’ moments about both her riding skills and the way her horses worked. From improving her own fitness to having horses that were light on her aids, she discovered a bunch of benefits to her experiment. Read more in this interesting piece from The Plaid Horse.
Video Break
Behold the spectacle of the opening ceremony at Aachen, this year celebrating all things American. Think cheerleaders, football, Barbie, country music, the reigning Miss World, wagons, cowboy boots, and yes, even a real, live eagle entering on horseback. There’s loads of cool content happening on the CHIO Aachen YouTube channel – it’s in German but the pictures alone are well worth a look.
