A ‘view’ from the beautiful South Woodstock, VT countryside
I will never get used to cross-country on a Wednesday. It’s common to have one day events on weekdays in England, and even necessary considering the number of horses some riders have in competition, but here in the US there are only a few events during the week each year. As far as I know, the Pony Club championships and the GMHA T3DE and N3DE are the only three-days in the US to compete exclusively on weekdays. We love weekday eventing here on EN because it gives us something to write about on a lazy Wednesday afternoon.
It was a beautiful day for the long format in South Woodstock, Vermont, with highs in the low 80’s and partly cloudy skies. All of the riders who started the course completed it and there were only a couple of issues on course.
In the training three-day divisions, which are part of the SmartPak USEA classic three-day series, Jennifer Clapp and Becket took the open training lead with just 2.4 time penalties. None of the competitors in the division had any jumping penalties–which was a consistent theme at GMHA–so congrats to everyone on a great day.
Annelise Aurillo and Your Lucky Day held onto their dressage lead with 0 penalties on all endurance phases in the junior training three-day division. Emily Mainolfi and Tacaro are in second and Andi Lawrence and Armani IV round out the top 3. Again, all of the riders in that division finished without jumping penalties.
Elizabeth Mudge and Catch Me lead the senior division, with Hannah Bowen and Rebound in second, and Jennifer Eddy and Killeen Clover in 3rd in the senior training division. Two riders had issues out of the 14 starters, including today’s winner for coolest horse name, AHHFUHGEDDABOUDIT, which I swear is what it says on the live scoring.
Allison Springer is leading the open novice three-day with Loughin’s Aragorn. They added 0 penalties to their 23.9 in the dressage and have a 10 point lead going into the show jumping. Molley Tulley is leading the junior novice three-day with Sudden Flirtation, and Gretchen Creesy and Tigerlily moved up from second to take the lead in the senior competition. The senior and junior divisions have less than a rail separating 1st and 2nd going into the show jumping.
In the team competitions, team Coral has a 6 point lead over the two other training teams. Team Lilac has a 15 point lead in the novice team competition. I’m detecting either a nature or color theme, and considering the second placed team novice is named Teal, I think I’ll go with color.
As a bit of a background, GMHA stands for the Green Mountain Horse Association. It was founded in 1926. They are located on 65 acres in South Woodstock, Vermont and host a variety of disciplines in competitions throughout the year, made possible with over 3,000 volunteer hours of community support. You can learn more about GMHA at their website.
Show jumping for all three-day divisions is on Thursday. The GMHA horse trials will run this weekend with beginner novice to preliminary running Saturday and Sunday.
Go GMHA.
