Cloud dotted skies with a high of 76 — we’re all green with envy of our friends in Wellington for the MARS Wellington Eventing Showcase. Thankfully, you guys shared snippets of your day on instagram, and we’ve got them all right here:
$50k MARS Eventing Showcase: Website , Entries , Live Scores , Show Jumping Live Stream , XC Live Stream , EN’s Coverage, EN’s Twitter , EN’s Instagram
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I couldn’t be happier with both Z and Fernhill Singapore this weekend. Z finished on his dressage score to finish in 3rd place, and Singapore just added the one rail in show-jumping and 0.4 time cross country to take 10th place. I think it’s obviously very early in the season but it’s great to get out in some atmosphere and doing the 5* dressage test is an advantage. The show-jumping was unique in that we don’t see many show-jumpings around the cross country course like that but all the horses have to get used to different scenarios. The cross country didn’t walk super big but keeping in mind it’s early February and the horses haven’t done much yet. I tried to set out on both horses to give them a good run, you can’t just coddle them all year round, you’ve got to try and get them out and give them a run without stretching them too much at this stage of the year and I was really pleased with both horses. I didn’t push them too hard or stress them too much and they felt well within themselves and had a good experience. It was a conscious decision to come to this Showcase with these two boys and then to take them to the Aiken Grand Prix, especially Z being a hotter horse. I wanted to get them in some atmosphere and I believe that the cross country will be not dissimilar to this in Tokyo – a shorter course, a lot of jumping efforts and a lot of turning. These will be their first two runs and then I’ll probably just do one more event if everything goes to plan, and then hopefully Z will go to Badminton. We owe our owners Caroline Moran, Tom Tierney, Annie Jones, Dave and Patricia Vos, Simon Roosevelt and Suzanne Martin Lacy an enormous thank-you for their support both this weekend and throughout the year; they only tend to get mentioned when we’re picking up prizes but we are grateful always. On that note we’d also like to thank the sponsors and organizers of the event who have looked after us all so well all weekend, it’s been an absolute pleasure to be back.
A post shared by Phillip Dutton (@duttoneventing) on Feb 9, 2020 at 2:08pm PST
