USEA and TIEC have announced that Adequan USEA Advanced Gold Cup Final cross country has been rescheduled from from its original start time of 5 p.m. today to 9:45 a.m. Sunday morning.
The remainder of the schedule will remain unchanged. Advanced show jumping will still be featured as tomorrow’s “Saturday Night Lights” competition, beginning at 8 a.m.
It sounds like organizers feel compelled to give the course a chance to dry out after the rain that came through yesterday and last night, with emergency vehicle access being a concern.
“The storm has brought a lot of rain to the region and we appreciate the focus on safety for our riders, horses and spectators. That is our very first priority,” says Sharon Decker, COO of TIEC and Tryon Resort. “The course has handled the rain amazingly and our greater concern was emergency vehicle access to the course and safety, as well as spectator movement. An extra day of dry weather will eliminate that concern and we’re looking forward to an exciting finish to great week of competition.”
Tremaine Cooper, cross country course designer for this week, says, “It’s amazing how well this track has held up with the rain. There are a few places that we will preemptively put out stone dust to make sure that there’s not any issues. Our biggest concern was getting the emergency personnel and vehicles out to the course and that was a risk we were not willing to take.
“This place dries out so well and I think being on the preemptively safe side is always the way to go. We want all of the riders to have the best going possible and the gallop lanes look fantastic now and will only improve with an extra day of sunshine tomorrow.”
While it’s partly cloudy, warm and windy on the lunch hour, a line of inclement weather looks to be headed this way with an ETA of late-afternoon. From a spectator standpoint, we’re totally cool with not having to watch Advanced cross country in a thunderstorm — this sport is thrilling enough without potential lightning and thunder in the mix.
Screenshot from weather.com.
Radar as of 1:30 p.m. via weather.com.
A note about Advanced cross country: The course runs on the White Oak Complex, a bit further afield than the other levels, and in addition to parking at TIEC spectators can park at the Complex itself, located at 4990 Pea Ridge Road in Mill Spring, NC.
Click here to view the updated schedule.
