Lainey Ashker and Jolly Good Sport sporting Kentucky Horsewear Gera boots
Good Morning Eventing Nation!
I come to you from the cutest little bed and breakfast in Middleburg, VA! I spent the weekend at Paradise HT and we will have more Paradise coverage later today so stay tuned. The event season is really ramping up with four USEA events over the weekend. California had training sessions at Red Fox Farm for Shannon, Max, and MacKenna. Aiken training sessions with Lauren Hough start today. I’m keeping this short and sweet, since the internet in my little bed and breakfast gave out and I am making my awesome, kind, loving, benevolent, amazing, brother–who, I must admit, is the greatest human being alive–transcribe this from Michigan.
Paradise Farm Horse Trials concluded over the weekend with quite a wet Sunday. As I mentioned, I will have a recap later today. Until then, [here are full scores].
Rocking Horse Winter 2 also finished up in Florida. If you missed it over the weekend Samantha did a lovely recap of Friday [here]. There are too many divisions to give shout-outs to all of the winners, but, speaking of Michigan, the mitten state’s very own Erika Treis Peterson and Crimson Tide won the open prelim B. Katie Rupel, also from Michigan, had a good finish in the advanced on Saturday. If you’re from Michigan and we forgot to mention you–give us a shout-out in the comment section. [Rocking Horse Full Results]
Across the country, on the West Coast, Ram Tap HT was going on as well this weekend. While Derek Di Grazia’s student Max McManamy was getting coached up by Mark Phillips at the training sessions, Derek made good use of the weekend with a win in the Ram Tap prelim. [Ram Tap Results]
Last, but not least, New Mexico eventing is officially under way with Las Cruces HT — [Las Cruces Results]
Don’t forget that the Aiken Training Sessions start today with Lauren Hough! [Schedule]
Express Eventing is seeing a bit of a make over for next season. It’s now a team competition as well as an individual competition. It will be comprised of 14 riders on 7 teams. A veteran rider will essentially be a team captain, and chooses his/her second teammate. Express Eventing will kick off in London, after the Olympics, and will continue through 2013 at several other venues. [Eventing Worldwide]
Golightly Sport Horses has a great blog post about Paradise: [Golightly]
Nancy Jaffer writes the help is on the way from the New Jersey equestrian community for horse owners who have fallen on hard times. [NJ Star]
People will run on the Red Hill’s XC course a day after the horses. [WCTV]
Congrats to Comedic Eventing on making the big move up to advanced this weekend at Rocking Horse! [Blog]
In show jumping news, superstar Beezie Madden won a $50,000 derby in Wellington! It was her goal with Prima this year, and she bested 26 other entries to do it. There were problems at the devil’s dyke, the tables, the bank, and water. There were 25 efforts in all. Even though Beezie won, her mount, Prima, took a rail. Sounds a little like eventing, no? [COTH]
Best of the Blogs: Emily Beshear and Moose go Prelim.
A little teaser of how wet it was at Paradise.
Seriously, if you don’t go read Horse Nation each and every day after getting your morning fix of EN (always come to EN first, of course) then you are missing out. Speaking of Horse Nation, why doesn’t John let us EN writers drink a bottle of wine and then review it? In fact, I think I specifically remember John telling us that he’s the only one allowed to drink and write, although Coren regularly breaks that rule.
