Eventing at the Asian Games, part 1 – Aachen Quarentine

One of my favorite things about writing for Eventing Nation is learning about cool events that I would never hear about without spending a lot of time sorting through eventing news.  Never has this been more true than with the Asian Games, held from November 12th to 27th on mainland China.  The Asian Games will host 476 events in 42 sports and it will be the largest sporting event in the history of mankind in terms of number of athletes competing.  Of course, we care here at Eventing Nation because the Asian Games will be hosting the three Olympic equestrian sports, including a CCI1* for eventing.  Two US based Thai eventers–Terri Impson and Nina Ligon–are en route to China and Terri was kind enough to write to us from quarantine in Aachen.  Thanks for writing this Terri and thank you for reading.
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Hacking in Wurselin–Cool wind turbines!

From Terri Impson:

Nina Ligon and I are representing Thailand in the Asian Games.  We join a Germany based Thai rider who works with the Hoy’s and two other Team members from Thailand who have been in Kuala Lumpur for two months in mandatory quarantine. This is the first time temporary importation of horses is being allowed in China and one of the women who worked in the livestock cargo area at Amsterdam didn’t believe me when I told her we were competing in mainland China; she said it was impossible.

Yep, “Mission Impossible” that’s a little bit what it feels like. This will also be history in the making as it is the first time ever that an FEI level event will take place in mainland China, we will be at a brand new HK Jockey Club built facility in the mountain town of Conghua known for their hot springs (maybe the water jump will be warm?) about 2 hours north of Guangzhou (3rd largest city with 10 million people) where the rest of the 43 events will be held. The brand new athlete’s village is built to hold 30,000 people with 8,000 apartments.

 

So far, the horses have all shipped incredibly well. Nina’s horses (Chai Thai and Tokay) and my horse (Windswept) left October 26th drive NY and flew out of JFK to Amsterdam along with Remington (Boyd’s Pau horse) on the 27th. Nat (Nina Ligon’s groom) and Caitlin (Boyd’s groom) were on board and Remington and Windy shared a pallet. We parted ways with Remington and Caitlin at the Amsterdam airport and vanned to Wurselin, Germany just outside of Aachen to Hans Ruben stables for our pre-quarantine stabling in case of delay. We had turnout there, which is rare and the barn was a very nice euro-style with huge stalls. We hacked out through the fields and windmills for a few days and then packed up all our stuff again and headed for the famous Aachen showgrounds for quarantine. There was a two hour window to arrive and get through the gates and although the line for paperwork was long everything went well. After 24 hours Nat VC has our area ship shape. We have full use of two indoors and three rings but no galloping so we will be doing canters in the big ring. Bettina Hoy commandeered a SJ area and was giving lessons on Monday. Looking at the calendar we will try to get two “gallops” in before shipping to China. Nina is riding both her horses once a day– trots and stretching so far–and I am getting Windy out twice a day since we have no turnout.

Waiting to unload in Aachen

The Games are a one-star, but I am of the mind that the silliest things happen at that level no matter if you are a pro or an amateur and it is an international competition–so kick on! All of the horses are in great spirits and feeling very important, especially the petulant pony Windy!

 
The Chinese vets were due to arrive on Sunday but had visa problems….. 🙂 …….so they will be arriving Tuesday. We have been briefed by the European shipping company running the quarantine that their mission is to get us into China. The Chinese have never done this before and they have their own ideas of how it should be done so hopefully it will go smoothly. We walk on a 20ft carpet drenched in disinfectant and then put foam stuff on our hands to enter the barns and have to sign in and out AM and PM. During our briefing, a team walked up  about 10 minutes late, Martin Atock looks out and says “Ah, here comes Kazakhstan,” not something you hear at home all the time!

With the recent cargo bombs, China is requiring everything in trunks,weighed, measured and labeled down to the hoofpick or it will be confiscated.  The trunks will leave at 8 am on the 8th so hopefully there won’t be too much delay. We fly the afternoon of the 8th and arrive the 9th in Guangzhou!