Friday was an exciting day of XC at the Asian Games in China. The course seems to have ridden well with the top of the team and individual leader boards remaining unchanged. Terri Impson of Thailand was kind enough to send us her report following the XC, and her report starts with one of my favorite opening lines we have ever had on EN. Thanks for writing this Terri and thank you for reading. [Individual XC results, team results]
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From Terri Impson:
What a great day for cross-country in the mountains of China! The weather was beautiful. A good breeze was blowing, and misting fans were set up with tons of room for icing and cooling out.The warm up was well run with lots of room to gallop, a smattering of solid fences mixed in, and even a bending line of roll top to roll top. Surprisingly, on paper there were not very many problems or time penalties, but thats’s because a lot of rounds resembled the long format phase B “chase” complete with some chip-ins before the fences. While in warm up, I watched the first horse out, and I thought to myself that there was no way I could go that fast even if I wanted to! The crowd control problems that we were worried about was a non-issue as the Chinese corralled them behind wide tape in sections and didn’t let them near the ropes. A couple of teams had team members that were eliminated or retired which is very costly-if one team member has to retire or is eliminated you add 1000 points to your team score; but most teams have bought some really nice horses that did their job well. This will probably lend credit to the rumor that the next Asian Games will be a CCI**. Obviously safety is an issue we face everyday in this sport and today was a good day for eventing safety in China. If we want this sport to survive, it’s the little countries that are going to have to catch the fever and fuel the support to keep this sport alive in the international arena.
This would prove very influential as about a half an hour after cross-country the official protest from Japan came in claiming he had a stop. We provided a united Thai Team front with all the coaches, chef d’equipe, team captain and Ice at the Stewards/Sports info room and waited as the minutes ticked by as China joined the protest and then Qatar as well. I started to look for a sign up sheet to see if the rest of the teams were going to jump on board! After a stressful two hour wait, someone finally came up with video from the backside of the course and the still frame indeed showed the horse squarely through the flags. We headed back to the barns happy but tired. I guess it’s guilty until you can prove yourself innocent!
The jog is tomorrow at 9 am and then Show Jumping in the afternoon. The course looks colorful and bold- here’s hoping everyone has their game on and is ready to jump.
