These days the eventing season is 11 months long and we still have one month to go in the 2010 season. Over the next three weeks there will be three-days of every level, including the Midsouth CCI* in Kentucky this weekend, the Chattahoochee (GA) CCI2* and the Galway CCI3* in California next weekend, and then the Pau CCI4* the following weekend.
The Galway CCI3* (Nov. 4-7) in particular stands out to me because it represents the tremendous growth of west coast eventing in the past couple of years. In its first year, the Galway three-star has seventeen entries–over half the number of Fair Hill entries.
Link: Galway CCI3* entries, Galway homepage
Both Titainium and Arthur are entered and, while I don’t want to belabor the comparisons to Fair Hill any more than to point out positives for Galway, that is two more short listers than Fair Hill. Jennie Brannigan is shipping the lovely Cambalda out for his first CCI3*. Buck does a lot of teaching in California and Jennie is of course from California. Galway also has several of the west coast Rolex 2010 horses entered, including R-Star, Ballinakill Glory, and The Alchemyst. Nearly half of the Galway field is four-star horses.
Update: Speaking of large entry numbers, Jenna was kind enough to point out in the comment section that the T3DE has a 37 entries, which is a fantastic showing for that format. Waredaca is also hosting a T3DE in Maryland this weekend.
One of my biggest questions with Galway will be the difficulty of the cross-country. This spring we commented on the apparent ease of the Galway CIC3* and some of the west coast horses struggled at Rolex. Ian Stark is the course designer so I expect the course will ride like any Ian Stark CCI3* course–big and tough. I am particularly excited to see several of the best horses from the east coast take on the west coast contingent on their home turf. In the words of the great Ian Stark: go FORWARD!!!
