All Pass Boekelo First Hangover – Sorry, Horse – Inspection

A moment, please, for this poor woman, who had to ride a hobby horse down the trot-up strip in front of 90 of the grumpiest human beings you’ve ever encountered in your life. Photo by Tilly Berendt.

If Darren Aronofsky directed trot-ups, he’d surely be the mastermind behind the first horse inspection at Military Boekelo. Everywhere you look, concrete and chaos and the thin veneer of many, many riders just trying to stay upright and hopefully avoid doing a little sick on their nice outfits; overhead, the pallor of Dutch cloud cover, which always seems to sit about ten meters off the ground, like if a weather front was somehow also a hangover.

We don’t need the weather fronts to be hangovers, though, because we’ve all got enough of those already. Because, of course, Wednesday follows on from Tuesday, and Tuesday at Boekelo means something very different to Tuesday anywhere else in the world. It means that 150 or so of us — riders, grooms, support teams and me, a journalist who ought to be too grown up for this sort of thing now – cram into a little marquee in the stables field and pickle ourselves like Pony Clubbers getting their first experience of supermarket own-brand vodka nicked from a corner store.

Help us; we never learn. The light is out in all of our eyes. We have celebrated being the bestest of mates too voraciously; we have bussed down to All I Want For Christmas Is You too passionately; we have girl-bossed too close to the sun, or whatever Taylor Swift is on about this week. Team Germany is in a particularly bad way, except for defector Kai Steffen-Meier, now the chef d’equipe of the Belgian team, who bemoaned a couple of weeks ago that his hangovers on this side of 40 are life-destroying – but somehow, he’s fine and god, you’ve never seen anyone so smug in your life. It’s sickening. His wife, Lara de Liedekerke-Meier, is also suspiciously fresh-faced. Last night, mid-conversation, she paused, glanced into the tent, and asked me, “do you reckon we’re getting a bit old for this?” The next time I saw her, we were both dancing on tables, covered in other people’s drinks and trying to avoid serious injury from a Frenchman raving with a lit cigarette in hand. I guess we are not.

Same, tbh.

So how do you solve a problem like a Grolsch bar? Honestly, my first port of call, given a choice, would not be a 90-horse trot-up, but choices I have not, and so trot up we did.

Thankfully for morale, the ground jury of Angela Tucker, Andrew Bennie, and Edith Schless-Störtenbecker were in better spirits than any of the rest of us, and they sped us through what could have been many hours of run, spin, and run again in an impressively efficient manner. Just one horse was sent to the holding box for further inspection; that was Barrington Alice, the first of two smart greys for Great Britain’s Izzy Taylor this week. They were accepted into the competition upon reinspection, while the two competitors asked to trot a second time because their horses were a bit frisky – Ireland’s Declan Cullen and Seavaghan Ash and Australia’s Bella English and Cil Dara Bombay S – were accepted without further issues once they could coax a stride or two of trot out of their very fit horses.

France’s Benjamin Massie and Guess Star. Photo by Tilly Berendt.

Military Boekelo, which serves as the FEI Nations Cup series finale, is set in a busy complex with a sports centre smack in the middle of it (and a Grolsch factory across the road, no I am not joking), which means that siting a trot-up requires a bit of creativity. Which is to say that it’s plonked down in the sports centre car park, which is also to say that despite the best efforts of the organising team, a lorry driver did in fact park his vehicle within the intended confines of the trot-up area earlier this week and then left the country. Once, many moons ago, a friend of mine popped into town one morning to collect her car after taxiing home from an evening at the wine bar, and discovered that a market had been built around, and over the top of, the car, and that’s kind of what happened today with the lorry: there weren’t any dresses being displayed on the wing mirrors, sadly, but it was very much an honourary member of the ground jury. The show must go on, et cetera, et cetera.

Can’t park there, mate.

Ema Klugman and Chiraz. Photo by Tilly Berendt.

The show, as it is, begins in earnest tomorrow morning at 9.00 a.m. CEST, which is 8.00 a.m. if you’re following along from the UK and a deeply unreasonable 3.00 a.m. if you’re on the East Coast of the US. Friday’s dressage sessions will see competitors from the seven teams come forward, while tomorrow, and first thing Friday, is all about the individuals. First in the ring will be Italy’s Andrea Docimo, who rides Tradewinds Alfredo this week; you can check out the times in full here.

Unusually, the US isn’t fielding a team this week, though the country isn’t unrepresented at this happy hunting ground: Chris Talley will ride FE Marco Polo this week, and Hallie Coon, who has previously finished on the podium individually here, has two rides in Lucky Fortuna and the former Julia Norman ride Kapriccio. I watched Kapriccio and Marco Polo training this afternoon and man, there’s a lot to get excited about there, even without a full team. We’re also very excited to see US-bred and -based Aussie Ema Klugman, who’s also part of Team EN, competing this week as part of the Australian team with the very smart Chiraz. Plus, after all the excitement of the European Championships last month, where we saw a new flag for the first time from Turkey, it’s great to welcome Hong Kong to Boekelo for the first time ever thanks to Yu Xuan Su and Ventura.

Hong Kong’s Yu Xuan Su and Ventura. Photo by Tilly Berendt.

We’ll be bringing you full reports every day from Boekelo, and to follow along with all the action as it happens, you can tune in to ClipMyHorse.TV for livestream coverage of each phase. Until tomorrow: Go Eventing!

EN is proud to welcome Horsepal onboard as the sponsor of our Military Boekelo coverage! Horsepal is a newly-launched heart rate monitor brought to you by Tom MacGuinness, founder of Horseware and an FEI eventer and endurance rider, who’s brought his decades of knowledge to practice in the design of Horsepal. You can now purchase Horsepal directly to the UK and Europe — learn more here.

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