I was sitting in the grandstands finishing up my dressage recap post Thursday afternoon and I looked up to see a young man proposing to his girlfriend. It was quite the scene with water trucks still circling in the arena and, truth be told, I have no idea how they ended up in the center of the arena, but there was one other photographer as a witness on the other side. Otherwise, the grand stands were completely vacant. I believe there is some other sort of wedding festivity that went on sometime Friday morning and if Coren were writing this post she might tell you about it, but she’s not and so we move on to eventing news and notes…
–We have one more day of dressage, but one big thing on the riders’ minds is the cross-country footing. In the post-dressage press conference, Allison and course designer Derek di Grazia were quite optimistic about the sunny and windy weather drying the footing out on Thursday. The weather certainly cooperated Thursday during the day but thunderstorms once again rolled across the Bluegrass Thursday night. The great KHP crew is doing everything possible to dry out the course, including using water pumps and digging drainage ditches, but it’s going to need as much help from mother nature on Friday as possible. Derek has said that there will certainly be water in the sunken road on Saturday so it sounds like there will be an additional water complex on the course. One way or another, the best mentality as a rider is to say ‘whatever the footing is, we’ll just stud accordingly and ride hard.’
–Friday is course walk day at Rolex. The world famous Jimmy walk is 30 minutes after the last dressage ride. The good news is that if you can’t make the walk, you’ll still be able to hear the whole thing as Jimmy yells it through the megaphone. That goes for our readers in Tennessee as well.
—Peter Atkins is also hosting a course walk on Friday–meet at the Head of the Lake 10 minutes after the lunch break starts.
–PRO is hosting an Q&A session with the riders after the last dressage ride [USEA]
–Be sure to stop by the Phillip Dutton autograph session presented by our friends at FLAIR at the Bit of Britain tent starting at 12:30.
–Update: Check out the Q&A’s at the Ecogold booth with Boyd today at 1:00pm, the Canadian Team today at 5:30, and Phillip at lunch tomorrow. Ecogold’s booth is booth #69 in the trade fair.
–As I wrote about in my dressage recap, most of the top contenders ride on Friday, so I expect a lot of changes at the top of the leader board.
–Hannah Burnett will start the day off. I watched Hannah’s afternoon school yesterday and Nike is looking very wound up but otherwise on top form. After Hannah’s ride, the big names keep coming throughout the day will all of the British based riders competing.
–Today is an especially good occasion on Eventing Nation because we get to welcome a new sponsor. Devoucoux makes absolutely amazingly high quality saddles and you can see the evidence in the vast number of riders at Rolex who compete in Devoucoux or just by feeling their tack. David at Devoucoux also gave me a sweet green Devoucoux jacket when I was freezing at The Fork, which is pretty awesome. Be sure to stop by the Devoucoux booth in the covered arena trade show and thank Devloucoux for their support of Eventing Nation. Out of curiosity, what’s the plural of Devoucoux?
–Oh, she said yes, by the way.
–Of course, stay tuned throughout Friday for all of your Rolex news, information, and commentary. We’ll be back with our one of a kind CIC4* live blog. The USEF Network is the place to watch the live video feed for dressage, but you are welcome to tune into our live blog as well to see if/when I say something ridiculous. Go eventing.
