Good Morning Eventing Nation! It hasn’t really felt much like a work week with all the coverage from the test event these past few days. Its always a throw off when horse trials, which almost always take place in a weekend format, run during the week. It just didn’t feel right when Badminton ran Thursday through Monday this year, something about the days switching place and cross country Sunday rather than cross country Saturday really threw me off. The only real upside of having weekday events is for those of us either in school or sitting in a cubicle or office for the majority of the day, it sure makes tracking the live scoring minute-by-minute easy.
John has decided to stay in England to watch some football/soccer thing called Burnley. Word isn’t out yet on when he’ll be returning, but I’d guess he’ll be states bound by Tuesday, if only for the reason that Tuesday is the day I’ll be tying his precious chinchillas either by the side of the road with a ‘Free’ sign, or the middle of the road with a ‘Hit me’ sign if he hasn’t arrived to take them back. You try babysitting several overgrown rodents with teeth like a woodchuck and a propensity for consuming both carpet and furniture.
With the conclusion of the Test Event at Greenwich Park, everyone has begun transferring their focus to next year’s Games, but not before echoing their many praises for the facility and organization, and voicing a concern or two as well. According to this article written for a New Zealand sporting news site, one of the main concerns for next year’s Games is the condition of the footing on the cross country. Many riders felt that footing was quite slick and didn’t produce as good of rounds as better ground would have. A few concerns were even voiced over the waxed sand, fibre based footing in the main stadium. British show jumper and previous Nations Cup winner, David McPherson, made the comment that, “The surface is nowhere near good enough. It needs an enormous amount of work.” While the footing was regarded as something in need of slight improvement, the rest of the event received a hearty approval by all of the competitors. Even Mark Todd, who’s seen more venues in all his years of Eventing than probably most of us combined, said about Greenwich Park, “‘What an amazing venue. I think it will be made to work really well for next year.”
British Eventing put together a recap and some statistics from the event.
Rachael S. Levine, DVM of Henderson Veterinary Associates, wrote a great article for EventingUSA titled “The New ‘Hard Keeper'” which deals with a growing issue of an overweight horse population. I think most of us have either cared for or been around a horse or pony that is perpetually overweight, even despite the owner’s best efforts to keep their horse in proper condition. We do our best to keep them at a healthy weight, but some of those ‘easy keepers’ I swear you could put on a dry lot and feed a flake of hay a day and they wouldn’t let a pound budge. In the article, Dr. Levine writes about some of the different ways to tell whether or not your horse needs to lose a few, and also talks about several types of metabolism disfunction that may be preventing your horse from existing at a normal range weight. [Eventing USA]
Have you/ your sister/ daughter/ cousin/ uncle etc. qualified for the AEC yet? If your answer is yes than you should consider congratulating them on their big achievement with an Ad in the 2011 Nutrena/USEA American Eventing Championships Program. Who doesn’t love to see a big picture of themselves and a few cheesy lines in a program that everyone at the competition will flip through sometime over the course of the weekend? How do you sign up you ask? It’s simple. Just fill out this PDF form and mail it back to the lovely folks at the USEA.
Best of the Blogs: Eventing with a Twist: ‘Chip’s First Blog’
Here’s one more quick video of the cross country at the Test Event, courtesy of the Ligons:
That’s all for now, Eventing Nation. Have a great day and don’t forget to check back to the greatest website in Eventing!
