Becky and Can’t Fire Me rocking the second water
Very few riders have had a better 2012 season at the advanced level than Becky Holder and that trend continued today at Richland with Becky predictably finishing on two clear rounds with Can’t Fire Me and Courageous Comet. Becky’s two lovely greys added just 5.4 collectively in time, which was better than all but 8 of the other individual CIC3* rides. Comet is just within a rail of his stablemate going into the show jumping on Sunday.
Blah blah blah Phillip Dutton is good at cross-country blah blah blah. It’s the same old story as Dutty finished with a combined 0.4 time penalties on Fernhill Eagle and Mighty Nice. Those horses sit in third and sixth respectively. Phillip’s third 3* horse, Atlas, picked up 18.4 time penalties. Jan Byyny and Inmidair worked their way around the course beautifully, picking up 5.2 time penalties. Buck and Ballynoecastle looked great as well, maintaining their fifth position. Katie Ruppel and Sir Donovan stormed around, adding just 1.2 time penalties and moving up from 14th to 7th. Holly Payne and Madeline moved all the way up to 8th from 17th with just one of two CIC3* double-clears (Mighty Nice had the other).
29 horses started the CIC3* course and 25 completed, four of those with stops. Colleen Rutledge and Shiraz are normally brilliant on the cross-country, but today was not their day with a shaky round and then Colleen falling at the last. Colleen’s Facebook page posted the following after her ride: “Colleen had some major issues on Shiraz today when I talked to her she said he has never acted the way he did today since she has owned him. She said he ran away from her and just kept pulling like crazy and she had to circle four times on course which she has never had to do. She got popped off on the last fence. Needles to say Colleen was not happy and she needs to find out and fix the problem before they head to France.” [Colleen’s FB via barnworkbeatshousework]
The Richland field boasts three recent US Olympians with Boyd, Will, and Phillip, and one recent Canadian Olympian with Jessica Phoenix.
There’s no one place to stand at Richland and see any more than one third of the course, so evaluating rides as a whole is difficult. Horses I haven’t mentioned yet that looked particularly nice when I saw them include Catch A Star, Lightning Bound, and Utah B, although Lightning Bound did finish with 20 penalties.
I spoke briefly with Boyd (much more on that later) and he commented that there are a lot of nice young horses here at Richland. I have to completely agree and a bunch of CIC3* competitors gave their developing horses nice rides today on their path to Fair Hill.
Here ends this afternoon’s first experiment of trying to spell while massively dehydrated. Stay tuned for a recap of the advanced divisions and much more from Samantha.
Go eventing.
