If you’ve been around at all these past few weeks, you will have noticed the viscous blog war that has been going on, all centered on the Luhmuhlen Three Day Event taking place this weekend. The First Horse Inspection begins today, at 17:00 hours. For those of you not in the Military or Air Force, that translates into 5 pm German time, which translates into 11 am EST. I’ve done my best with the time table conversions (which are seriously confusing for these international events) and doing all the conversions is definitely not part of my job description, but then again neither is cleaning out the Chinchilla cage every day. I think it’s time for a raise or at least some Eventing Nation logo wear, hint hint John.
Anyway, back to the matter at hand; we have some top US riders representing our country this weekend, so it will definitely be interesting to follow the competition as it plays out. Will Faudree and Jennie Brannigan are both entered in the CCI****, and both in my opinion have a good shot of being right up there at the end of the weekend. Tiana Coudray and the lovely Ringwood Magister also made the trip to Germany, and are entered in the CIC*** as they are still rebuilding from their performance at Kentucky earlier this spring. Tiana’s not one to leave many points on the table in the dressage arena, so I think she’ll start her weekend right at the top of the leader board. I think how the weekend plays out will depend largely on how Tiana rides; she is mounted on a top class horse and certainly has the potential to establish herself as a top class rider this weekend. Great Britain based Julian Stiller will be competing on two horses as well.
The Americans weren’t the only ones who decided to come play in Germany, as a staggering number of countries are entered, most of which have a depth of six to eight horses and riders assembled. It definitely should be an exciting weekend. I’m unlike John in the sense that I almost never try to predict the winner of a big three-day, at least not publicly, but I’m feeling a little different on this occasion. To raise my odds For the reason that I think they’re all equally brilliant, I’ve picked three riders/horses one of which I think could walk away with the title.
They are:
Andreas Dibowski and Butts Leon
William Fox-Pitt and Macchiato
Jonothan Paget and Clifton Lush
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out my genius, and the reasons for why I’m going with these three is simple. William already won this event three years ago on this horse, and although the horse has been out of the limelight for the past few months, William has very much been in it and is as sharp as ever. Andreas Dibowski is entered on his old campaigner Butts Leon, and this pair has more international experience than you can count on ten fingers, including being on the gold medal team at the Hong Kong Olympics. And Jonothan Paget, although younger and less experienced than the prior two, is fresh off a win at the Bramham CIC*** with Clifton Lush. You don’t have to be in Eventing long to understand the influence that ‘being on a roll’ can have on one’s performance, an effect that I think will be very well demonstrated this weekend by Paget and Clifton Lush. That’s about as far as I’m going to stick my neck out for today, so to wrap this up I’ll leave you with a couple Luhmuhlen links:
Go Eventing.
