These cross-country courses at Fair Hill are absolutely beautiful thanks to the great work of the volunteers, the builders, and course designer Derek di Grazia. The courses seem universally liked by the riders and the common theme with everyone I have spoken with is the hope that they will dry out as much as possible throughout the day. I was walking the course Friday afternoon and someone remarked how beautiful the grounds are at Fair Hill. It struck me that I get so caught up in the courses that I often times forget to recognize how truly beautiful our venues are in US eventing.
The weather. The weather is perfect course-drying weather with wind and full sun. It’s a race against time to dry this course out as much as possible. The CCI3* is the second division on course, which is a distinct advantage over the CCI2* because the course will have more time to dry out. My guess is that the riders who have to go at the end of the CCI2* will have the toughest time because the course will be most torn up at that point. [Weather]
Normally we publish a post with all of the course photos, but Fair Hill has kindly put a course map with photos of every jump for both the CCI2* and CCI3* on their website, so we will just link to those. I’m planning a live blog of the show jumping, but not the cross-country this year.
[Live Scores, CCI3* Course Map with Pictures, CCI2* Course Map with Pictures]
I tagged along with Phillip’s course walk Friday afternoon. Phillip’s walks are a must-attend event for much of US eventing high performance. I would say that close to half of the CCI3* field was on that walk and five of the top six riders after the dressage were in attendance, including of course Phillip. One of the reasons that so many riders, including myself, like working with Phillip is that he tells you how to get the job done in the simplest way possible. A big theme of the course walk was recognizing that the hilly terrain combined with less than ideal footing would take a lot out of the horses. Phillip emphasized ways to ride efficiently and look after the horses around the turns and through the combinations late on the course.
The top 10 three-star pairs are separated by under 10 points and the top 30 buy just over 20 points, and the two-star is even tighter, so it’s going to be an exciting day of competition.
The action starts at 9am ET. Good luck to all of the competitors at Fair Hill and around Eventing Nation today. Stay safe, have fun, and go eventing.
