Laura Vello and Winning Facts jumping in the rain
Hide yo’ kids, hide yo’ wife. The partly cloudy beautiful autumn skies of Friday have given way to light but persistent rain, wind, and highs in the 50’s. By now, everyone here is either completely soaked with rain or well on their way to being soaked. Eventing Nation’s inaugural event coverage was at Fair Hill in ’09 so no matter how bad the rain gets at any event I will forever get to say from experience “it could always be worse.”
We have a full day of all three phases in action here at Morven. The advanced horses show jumped this morning. The prelim and training horses are running all three phases today. Intermediate is show jumping and a couple of intermediate divisions are riding dressage this morning as well. Novice runs all day on Sunday and the intermediate and advanced will run cross-country although if the rain continues I will be interested to see if the Pan American horses run a full or abbreviated course or perhaps not at all.
In the advanced A division Boyd Martin and Ying Yang Yo moved up one place with a double clear to take the lead. Boyd flew over to the US with Ying Yang Yo on a cargo plane in 2006 and competed together in Boyd’s first Rolex. That trip led to Boyd working with Phillip, moving to the US, and the rest is history as they say. “Thomas” is owned by Faye Wolf, who lost Call Me Ollie in the True Prospect fire. Thomas has been ridden by Fay’s daughter Eliza for the past few yeas. Faye sent him to Boyd to ride this autumn as a sign of support and because Eliza is busy at school. Boyd and Thomas are shooting for Fair Hill and they are looking like one of the early favorites. Karen O’Connor and Veronica moved from third to second withas *double clear. Sally Cousins was the only rider with two double-clears in that division.
Michael Pollard and Jude’s Law pulled a rail in the advanced B division to drop to second. Buck Davidson took the lead with a double-clear on Carl and Cassandra Segal’s Ballynoecastle RM. Gina Fiore and Feral Errol are sitting in third on their dressage score. Karen O’Connor is 4th with Quintus 54 and Karen is the only rider with two horses in the top 5 in the advanced divisions.
[Full Morven Scores, Morven Weather]
The show jumping caused quite a few rails, but there were just over 15 double-clears out of over 35 starters. The footing looked like it was holding up well but the rain is continuing to come down and we will see how it holds up throughout the day with the intermediate set to show jump this afternoon.
Doug Payne is riding High Society this weekend. “Trevor” is owned by his girlfriend Jessica Hampf. Jessica is busy with school and thus Doug has the ride on the very talented thoroughbred for the autumn.
Stay tuned for much more from Morven. Samantha is at Jump Start in Kentucky so we’ll have a full day of coverage here on Eventing Nation. Samantha is posting updates from Jump Start via Twitter @SamanthaLClark. The US horses headed to Boekelo are just arriving at the show grounds safe and sound from their flight across the Atlantic. Go eventing.
