The final round Blogger Contest entries are in, and we’re offering you the opportunity to weigh in on each article before we declare a victor. We posted two of the entries yesterday, and the final two entries go up today; a poll will go up on Thursday so you can vote for your favorite blogger.
Their Final Round Assignment: Much in the spirit of EN’s annual April Fool’s posts (see 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013), your final round assignment is to brainstorm an original idea for a fake news story and then write it up as a post for EN, complete with some sort of visual imagery you create (photo, video, diagram, drawing, etc.). We stress that access to expensive camera equipment is unnecessary; see Wylie’s FEI pictograms for proof that imagination, at least in the context of this assignment, will be your most invaluable asset. Words and visuals will be judged 50/50 on the same basis as previous entries (Interesting, Funny, Informative, Creative).
Here’s Sally Spickard’s final installment (for Sally’s previous entries, see Round 1, Round 2). Thanks for reading, Eventing Nation. Click here to read Rick Wallace’s final installment and here to read Erin Critz’s final installment. Stay tuned for Ella Rak’s entry. Please leave feedback in the comments section.
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Bio:Sally Spickard is 27 years old from St. Louis MO. She currently spends her free time stalking Eventing Nation for the latest Cooley Cross Border news (have you SEEN that horse yet?) and writing for We Are Cardinal Nation, a St. Louis Cardinals sports blog.
Concept photo released by the USEA of a reimagined Head of the Lake jump at Rolex Kentucky.
Entry:
USEA and FEI Partner to Design Fully Inflatable Cross Country Courses
The United States Eventing Association (USEA) and the Fédération Équestre Internationale (FEI) have announced a partnership to improve the safety of cross country courses at the *** and **** level. These two organizations have designed a new line of rubber inflatable jumps to replace existing jumps made from solid materials such as wood and brush. The first **** course to be redone will be the 2014 Rolex Kentucky course and future events will be designed according to the results in Kentucky. An official course designer has not yet been announced.
Only one concept picture of one of these new rubber jumps has been released (shown above), depicting a new twist on the duck jump as part of the famous Head of the Lake complex at Kentucky Horse Park. In an effort to maintain the same level of difficulty, several new factors will accompany these new jumps. Jumps that are part of a water complex will not be anchored; instead they will float freely, requiring riders to have an exceptional sense of trajectory judgment so that they can most accurately get to the middle of a moving target. The jumps will also have the ability to emit a rather loud squeak (much like a normal rubber duck or squeaky toy) if hit so that a rider knows that they have made contact with the jump. FEI officials have remarked that they hope that this noise keeps horses alert and on their toes as well. The USEA is already hard at work on some training videos focusing on desensitizing your horse to the new jumps and the sights and sounds associated with them.
Upper level riders are showing mixed reactions to this news. Frequent Rolex competitor Lainey Ashker expressed some concerns about the new jumps, saying that there were a few questions that arose: “I worry about the “bounce” which these types of jumps create; that is, if your horse stops and runs into the fence, will they be catapulted backwards like a rubber band? That could definitely cause some problems.” She also expressed concern for her current 4 star partner, Anthony Patch, saying that he is “an already spooky horse at the four star level, so will the shiny nature of the jump further deter [him] from going anywhere near it?”
Other riders seem to be fully on board with the concept, as exemplified by North Carolina based Kelsey Briggs, whose upper level campaigner, The Gentleman Pirate, is currently recuperating from a pasture incident. She expressed her support firmly: “the hell I’ll jump him over anything that doesn’t deflate!”
While this new concept is being met with mixed reviews from spectators and competitors, the USEA still expects attendance at the 2014 Rolex Kentucky to increase in anticipation of the new course. Go Eventing and Go Inflatables.
