Photo courtesy of Retread
Links: Fair Hill live scores, Fair Hill course, Boekelo live scores
–In all honesty, I am glad that the Fair Hill CCI3* only did dressage on Friday–one day of watching 3* dressage was more than enough for me. None of the dressage tests really stood out as spectacular, which I attribute partially to the fact that the last dressage I watched was at the WEGs, but the fact that lowest CCI3* score was a 46.6 accurately reflects the fact that no one was truly outstanding on Friday. But, it’s time to put the dressage behind us and look ahead to the cross country.
–The Fair Hill XC times are posted here as a Word document, but for all of us Mac users, the CCI2* starts and 9:30am ET and the CCI3* starts at 1pm ET, running at 4 minute intervals in the same order as dressage. Phillip Dutton and Fernhill Eagle are the last pair on course and they are scheduled for 3:08pm on Saturday.
–The wind on Friday dried the soggy Fair Hill ground just enough to make for nearly ideal footing conditions on Saturday. I do think that the footing will be pretty torn up in certain places for the later riders but the CCI2* and CCI3* courses are different enough that most of the CCI3* footing will be perfect when that division starts. The riders will have to be careful with the fences that are shared on the two courses.
–It is hard to compare the cross-country courses to last year because a third of the 2009 jumps were removed due to the horrible weather and that course actually rode relatively simple as a result. The consensus from the riders this year seems to be that the course is fair but keeps consistently asking tough questions–there are no long easy stretches. One feature of Fair Hill is that the terrain and windy turns make efficient riding an absolute necessity to making the time. If the time is tough to make, Nate and Phillip are two of the fastest pairs near the top of the CCI3* leaderboard.
–We have several options for Saturday’s Fair Hill coverage on EN. One option would be for me to walk around the course and get some video while everyone else who knows me will try to distract me with long conversations. Or we could attempt a live blog for the CCI3* or part of the CCI3*. Finally, I could just go and do the dog agility course myself–I’m pretty sure I can win against the 30lbs and under dogs. As always, our aim is to please our audience, so let us know what you would prefer.
–Meanwhile in the Netherlands, the Boekelo cross-country starts well before the sun rises here in the US and will be wrapping up around lunchtime on the east coast. We will of course cover Boekelo to the best of our abilities.
–One final note I want to make is that Boyd has responded to a critical thread on the COTH forum with this blog post. In this era of hypersensitivity and an often (sometimes justified) very negative view of professionals from the eventing community, I would probably have advised Boyd to just let the thread die out if I had been Boyd’s PR manager. But I respect Boyd for his belief in dealing with things openly even if it leads to more criticism in the long run. Before Boyd, when was the last time you can remember a member of the US team writing publicly about a controversial and substantive issue? If more professionals would be as willing to voice their opinion publicly, even at the risk of being criticized, eventing would be a better sport for it.
Good luck to all the cross-country riders and godspeed.
