Hawley Bennett-Awad and Gin’n’Juice power into the lead after a strong round xc.
You can check all the live scores here
The Advanced leaderboard was well and truly shaken up after the cross country,and although the corner combination at 5 caused some trouble – glance-offs, a couple of falls, and a few eliminations, the problems otherwise seemed fairly well spread out. Hawley made up for a disappointing elimination for 3 refusals at the #5 corner with a smoking round on Ginny who skipped round easily and looked extremely keen, and they now lead Advanced Section B.
Michelle Mueller and Amistad take over the lead in Advanced Section A after adding just 13.2 time penalties to their 3rd placed dressage score.
Darren Chiacchia on Amendment 15, probably the best of his rides all day.
Nicole Parkin and her lovely mare Lexus move up into 4th place with a solid round, building on their good go in the Advanced at Red Hills a couple of weeks ago.
Jeff Kibbie, who trains with Missy Ransehousen, clear round his first advanced on Loki and sitting pretty in 3rd place overnight
Sydney Conley Elliot and Pancho Villa
Shandiss Wewiora and the huge but gorgeous Rockfield Grant Juan. I managed to catch up with Shandiss later on, and we’ll have that up presently, but in the meantime HUGE EN congratulations to her, not only for a superb ride moving them up from 13th to 5th overnight, but far more importantly on her and Jordan McDonald’s recent engagement – our sincere congratulations to you both!
Leslie Law had two good advanced rounds today – here on the lovely Zenith ISF jumping into the water over Tyson’s pride and joy, the mermaid who rode very well all day, “she loves to be jumped!”.
Look at this stunning horse, (and rider of course,) but look at his expression. Zenith ISF (Iron Springs Farm) is by the US Show-jumping Stallion Judgement who Beezie Madden used to ride, and out of a thoroughbred mare. Today he looked even more mature than just two weeks ago at Red Hills, and now sitting in 2nd place overnight after his third stellar round at his third advanced I’d bet Leslie’s feeling quite excited about his prospects.
Hannah Sue Burnett flew round on Harbour Pilot, one of the best rounds I saw all day, and I spoke to her very briefly later she was full of praise for him, “he’s very cool, he makes my job easy”, but the fact that she looked like she was doing so little must mean she was doing something right; they are now occupying 2nd place overnight behind Hawley in Advanced B.
Heather Gillette and Our Questionnaire demonstrate how to ride the corner at 5. It was tricky because the corner is such a big, solid galloping fence and the cabin at the C element was a bit of a proppy, upright narrow jump so f
ew combinations got both rig
ht and made the whole thing look easy. It seemed the riders who were glancing off were coming in too far to the right already thinking of the cabin five (but sometimes four or even six) strides to the right afterwards. Danielle Dichting’s The Graduate fell here but was up almost immediately with nothing more than quite a deep overreach on his right fore, and Dani swore up and down that she was fine, and did indeed seem to be so. Bill Hoos then came next and did in fact jump through very deliberately as if he was doing three separate jumps, rather than on a related distance so much, but far more impressive was that he managed to holler up at the small crowd gathered up there taking care of Dani and her horse, “Is Tremaine still there?! Did he see this?!” He was still playing to the peanut gallery as he circled back after the log but I didn’t catch what he said.
ew combinations got both rig
ht and made the whole thing look easy. It seemed the riders who were glancing off were coming in too far to the right already thinking of the cabin five (but sometimes four or even six) strides to the right afterwards. Danielle Dichting’s The Graduate fell here but was up almost immediately with nothing more than quite a deep overreach on his right fore, and Dani swore up and down that she was fine, and did indeed seem to be so. Bill Hoos then came next and did in fact jump through very deliberately as if he was doing three separate jumps, rather than on a related distance so much, but far more impressive was that he managed to holler up at the small crowd gathered up there taking care of Dani and her horse, “Is Tremaine still there?! Did he see this?!” He was still playing to the peanut gallery as he circled back after the log but I didn’t catch what he said.
Unfortunately Natalia Gurmankin and Hail also ended their day prematurely at the corner after three refusals, but stablemate Tessa Beckett had an inspired round on Sound Prospect, an OTTB, and they now lie in 3rd place – look at Tessa’s face!
Fernhill Cubalawn is definitely something of a character but Alex Green seems to have the measure of him. I saw him being a bit naughty at the entrance to the dressage arenas yesterday, and he looked to be that awkward mixture of strong but spooky approaching the coffin, but Alex gave him a few warning shots with her crop in plenty of time and they sailed through it. At the straightforward fences he looked golden, and they now sit handily in 5th place going in to tomorrow’s show-jumping.
Imogen de Lavis put an annoying fall at Red Hills a couple of weeks ago behind them to post a respectable clear and they lie in 6th position overnight.
Madeline Blackman and Gordonstown had a great round, had a good shot at the bank, and despite his enormous stride, still made it look very long to get just one across the top.
Tremaine Cooper, the course designer told me he’s done a lot of work on this bank since it caused so much trouble a few years ago, using a lot of the earth that they dug up to make the new water complex to bolster the back side. However it still didn’t ride perfectly, although it was safely negotiated all day, but the one stride was very long, and the two strides, as demonstrated below by Erin Flynn Tamplin on Royal Ruckus, also looked uncomfortable.
Jordan Linstedt and Tullibards Headwind lie in 9th place overnight.
Missy Ransehousen relinquished her lead in Advanced B with a stack of time faults on the experienced Critical Decision, but must be pleased with their round which should set them up perfectly for The Fork, and then hopefully on to Rolex where I’m sure she’ll let the handbrake off! More coming from Missy later.
Leslie pilots Irish Diamonds around for his second nice clear of the day, and he fills 4th place overnight on this attractive horse – I know nothing about him but if I can catch Leslie for a minute tomorrow I will definitely ask him. Leslie, like Jon Holling, Kyle Carter, Jess Phoenix et al have brought a cadre of horses, students and family (yes, Joel Phoenix is the cow show dad) to Poplar. Lesley Grant-Law told me they have 18 horses here between her and Leslie and the students so stopping them for a minute to talk really does feel like an imposition!
Additional notes: the ground just got better and better all day as the sun shone. The tracks got chewed up by the end of each division, especially in the woods, but it didn’t look slippery and as far as I know most people seemed happy with it. The crew worked really hard to put down stone dust and peanut shells in the deep spots between divisions, and the jump judges all worked their own spots with rakes in between times.
Kentucky gals Lindsey Solarzano and Elissa Gibbs both had a 20 but I didn’t see where, although I was proud for the Bluegrass state as I watched both of them on the parts of the course near me. Kristen Bond’s Are You Ready looked to be having a super roun
d and I was eagerly awaiting him near one of the big plain fences in the middle to get his photo when I heard he and rider had been eliminated for three refusals at the cannon combination.
Whitney Weston had just one stop here, marring an otherwise nice round on Rock on Rose. Kelly List lies 6th on Smarty Pants but didn’t have the smoothest round by any means. Christa Gandolfo popped off Governaire but the horse galloped back towards the barn past us and looked fabulous, and as far as I know Christa is fine too.
Steph Rhodes-Bosch and Jessie Phoenix had prior permission not to run cross country today yet still show jump tomorrow, hence the HC by their name (hors concours) and that was always the plan.
I was sorry to miss a few of the early rides again, and especially sorry to miss the rest of the day at Poplar as Lily’s eyes began to swell and she was pretty miserable. That did happen once before last spring and I left it too long so we ended up in the ER because she couldn’t see out of it as it slowly swelled shut, and I don’t want to miss show-jumping tomorrow!
Hopefully it’s nothing a few doses of Benadryl and a night in an air-conditioned hotel room won’t fix! Thanks for joining the Eventing Nation again today, and hopefully we’ll be back at Poplar in the morning, bright-eyed and bushy tailed ready for some show-jumping action! (Once my kids start reading EN I’ll lose the surprise element and have no hope of getting them to an event ever again!)
I hope all the competitors, two and four-legged, manage to get some rest tonight – Go Eventing!
