Hannah Burnett and Harbour Pilot “William” are part of the US Pan American Games squad preparing to take on the world this weekend here in Guadalajara. Thanks for writing this guest blog Hannah and thank you for reading.
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Team USA
From Hannah:
Viva la Mexico! We have arrived here in Guadalajara and are having a great time. Our team gets along like peas and carrots…or maybe more like fire and gasoline! We have a pretty cozy but very functional apartment in the Athlete Village. It’s really fun to be with all the other athletes from different sports in the Village. All the countries have Pan Am pins and they love to trade them. They are the best currency we have around the Village and our Venue. You can pretty much get anywhere you want to go as long as you give the guards a couple of the American pins. They especially love the American ones. Sara has collected pretty much every country’s pin in the whole venue (she is very sociable :).
William is taking very well to the Mexican lifestyle. He gets to eat a lot of hay, take plenty of siestas, and hang out with Sara all day. He absolutely loves her! My lessons with Mark have been getting better and better. I had a flat lesson Monday, jump Tuesday and a flat Wednesday. We ran through the test for the first time since last week on Wednesday and I’m really excited with our progress. William’s canter transitions have gotten a lot more solid and our trot work has improved.
We walked the cross-country Wednesday for the first time after our dressage lessons. The golf course and country club at Santa Sofia is absolutely beautiful and the course doesn’t disappoint. I think we were all pretty surprised and excited about how nice and challenging the course is. The terrain has some grueling climbs and there are some difficult questions. It is a course you would expect from John Williams and I think there is enough out there to change the scoreboard from the Dressage on Friday.
We just finished jogging and all the horses looked really well. Our outfits might slightly resemble airline hostesses but we still looked smart and put together. Good thing we knew where the emergency exits were at all times because the jog got pretty exciting when some of the other countries horses’ started double barreling and galloping around in the tiny area where we were confined. We will be serving peanuts and cold beverages at the jog on Sunday.
We have arena familiarization this afternoon and then off to walk the course again. It’s finally starting to feel like a 3-day around here instead of summer camp so we’re all getting excited.
GOOOO USA!!!
-HSB
