The heat might be getting to me, but I’m feeling pretty scatter-brained this afternoon. The reality of websites is that the finished product that everyone reads is like the tip of the iceberg–I spend a lot more time answering emails, talking with sources, and organizing guest writers than I do actually writing posts. This will be the rest of my Saturday afternoon.
Maryland Horse Trials: Karen and Mandiba competed prelim today at the Maryland Horse Trials just to get stretched out before their scheduled advanced run at Rebecca Farms. Mandiba won the dressage with a 24.6 but had 7.2 XC time penalties and finished in 3rd behind Mara Dean and High Patriot and Phillip Dutton with Why Not. Phillip won another open prelim division on Jan Byyny’s Inmidair. How would you like to ride in an open preliminary division against two Rolex horses? Sounds like fun to me.
Link: Maryland Scores
Other live scores: Whidbey Island Pony Club H.T. (WA), Huntington Farm Horse Trials (VT), Genesee Valley Hunt H.T. (NY), Wayne Dupage Horse Trials (IL), Coconino Summer H.T (AZ)
I also understand that a jumping derby sponsored by Maui Jim is going on this weekend. Katie Lindsay is organizing the competition and rumor has it that she may send us a report.
Barbury International: The final selection trials before Great Britain announces its WEG short list is the CIC3* at Barbury this weekend. Ruth Edge and Two Thyme lead a field of 104 pairs on a score of 35.4. You might remember Ruth Edge and Two Thyme as leading after the first day of dressage at Badminton but they were eliminated on the XC. Mary King and Imperial Cavalier are in second with a 36.9. For the record, Dag Albert and Tubber Rebel of Sweden are sitting in 104th place with a 91.5, but I expect them to move up because the horse must surely be a good jumper–right? I understand that both jumping phases will be held on Sunday, and I believe lec will be attending the event on Sunday with her camera.
Andrew Hoy’s CIC2* leading test
SHN: If you check in with Sport Horse Nation this weekend, you’ll notice that the site will only have one classifieds post per day on Saturday and Sunday. This is just due to the fact that internet traffic is about 30% lower on the weekends because many people tend to be outside (at competitions) rather than sitting in front of a computer at work. Although a Canadian team rider did email me after Bromont saying that her grooms were getting all the inside info from Bromont by visiting EN on their IPhones–while at Bromont. Gotta love it.
–Update–Sidebar: I just added Facebook and Twitter to our Eventing Nation sidebar Saturday afternoon. We added the same Facebook plugin to Sport Horse Nation last week, and after one week SHN has more fans than Eventing Nation, so I got jealous and added the plugin to EN. Mostly, I think it’s a fun way to showcase all of our awesome readers. From time to time you’ll see some pretty big name eventers show up in the Facebook box (I just saw Max)–as well as my goofy non-riding friends who just became fans of the site on Facebook because they want to support my endeavors.
Does anyone have any suggestions for next week’s question of the week? I’m drawing a blank, but, never fear, I’m sure something ridiculous will come to mind at 2am this morning.
Lastly, I want to brag in the nerdiest way possible about the tremendous work by our writers and readers here at Eventing Nation. As you might know, Google evaluates keywords, daily traffic, age, links in, and a variety of other characteristics to rank sites in their search results. High search results rankings are a source of bragging rights for websites, and I am very excited that Eventing Nation is now the 3rd ranked result for the Google keyword search for “eventing”, right behind the USEA and Wikipedia’s eventing page. The results fluctuate from day to day, but hopefully we are secured in the top half of the first page. Even Google recognizes that Eventing Nation is the source for everything eventing. Go eventing.
