As the prelim cross-country is just getting underway at Morven let’s take a quick look at Morven Park with course designer Tremaine Cooper. The interview is from Friday afternoon as evidenced by the lack of rain and wind. Morven is a unique eventing venue for a variety of reasons including that most of the advanced course is on a completely different part of the property than the other divisions. Tremaine was kind enough to give me a grand tour of Morven Friday afternoon and it was obvious that Tremaine absolutely loves working with this property. Morven has a new director and there are a lot of wonderful plans in the works for the next few years to improve the facilities and raise the bar even higher for eventing at Morven.
The footing is a big question mark for the weekend. It rained all week but, as Tremaine pointed out, the footing here at Morven is generally quite good as long as it has time to drain. Today’s rain is light and I think it will be fine for the advanced and intermediate tomorrow if the rain stops tonight. If the rain continues right through Saturday night and Sunday then things could get slick quickly.
One of the cool things about Tremaine as a designer is that he is also a rider. He is out and about today riding in the prelim as well as fulfilling all of his design responsibilities–quite a day! Thanks for the interview Tremaine, good luck today, and go eventing.
