Military Boekelo: we’re fine. Everything’s fine. (Send help.) Photo by Tilly Berendt.
At most horse inspections, the small talk – and there’s a lot of small talk – goes something like this.
“Hi! How are you! How have you been! How are your horses! How’s your wife! Isn’t this weather funny! Horse horse horse!”
At Military Boekelo CCIO4*-L, the FEI Nations Cup finale, the crown jewel of the Dutch eventing scene, and the party capital of our sport, it goes a bit more like this:
“How are you alive? Is that a black eye? Where did you wake up this morning? If I don’t find a burger soon I’m going to garrot myself with a lead rope and a hoof pick.”
Often, I find photographing a Sunday morning final horse inspection quite hard work, mostly because everyone looks incredibly tired and lacking in joie de vivre. At Boekelo, it’s the first horse inspection that’s the problem, because nary a one of us has escaped without mud in our hair, bags upon bags under our eyes, and a green pallor kind of reminiscent of those 1970s avocado bathroom suites. My last memory from Tuesday night’s famously raucous party is watching one rider’s dog roll gleefully in another rider’s puddle of sick; my penultimate memory is seeing Tim Price’s sad, wet, mud-covered flip flops abandoned under a table next to the dance floor while their asbestos-toed owner merrily Irish jigged his way into the sea of people. We are a sorry species today. We are not well. You mustn’t pity a single one of us. We only have ourselves to blame.
Are Giovanni Ugolotti’s sunglasses a fashion statement or a cry for help? It’s hard to say. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
But nevertheless, we persisted. We might not have been thriving, but surviving felt like enough of a win, and the fact that everyone made it up from the stables to the first horse inspection, held in front of ground jury Laure Eslan (FRA), Angela Tucker (GBR), and Stuart Bishell (NZL) means that everyone deserves a rosette in our eyes. (Including, frankly, us.)
That we all made it through the next couple of hours and nearly 100 horses – and drama after drama after drama – without crying is also hugely commendable.
At one point, the holding box looked like this:
And then, four hours or twenty minutes later, depending on the hangover level of the person you happened to ask, it looked a little bit like this:
In total, there were six horses sent to the hold over the course of the presentation, and a further three asked to trot a second time. Sweden’s Amanda Andersson and Jersey, the USA’s Sophia Middlebrook and Prontissimo, and Dutch competitors Jordy Wilken and Carrickview Ambassodor were each given a second go up the strip, and while Amanda and Sophia were then accepted into the competition, Jordy’s mount was reallocated to the holding box, where he joined a rather illustrious line-up made up of fellow countryman Jan Mathijssen and Geronimo, Ireland’s Susie Berry and Clever Trick, the USA’s Cassie Sanger and Redfield Fyre as well as Lauren Nicholson and I’ll Have Another and Dan Krietl and Carmango.
Susie Berry and Clever Trick. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
The reason for all the excitement? By anyone’s reckoning, it came down to a trot-up strip that was rather rockier than expected: as at last year’s event, we made use of the new trot-up location in a cul-de-sac by the venue’s tarmac parking lot, with a surface put down for the purpose. After the first smattering of holds, though, competitors began to warn their friends and teammates about the stones in the middle, and the subsequent presentees came forward expecting first to try to avoid them, and then to potentially have the bum-clenching stress of a visit to the holding box.
Dan Krietl and Carmango. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
In the end, though, we lost just one combination from our initial line-up of 98 starters. That was, sadly, Indiana’s Dan Krietl, who’d made the long journey over with fan favourite Carmango for their second European trip in as many years, this time as the recipient of the Dutta Grant. He opted to withdraw the eleven-year-old from the holding box without re-presenting.
“I was quite surprised,” he admits, “because I rode him this morning and he felt great, and he felt good when I trotted him up. But if there’s something there then I have to try to look at it as good news, because I’d have run him this week thinking he felt really great.”
Dan and his team are planning to take a closer look at the gelding and pinpoint any potential issues, and, if this is just one of those moments of rotten luck at a horse inspection, he’ll plan a reroute in the States, potentially at TerraNova.
Is Dutch Olympian Sanne de Jong the only person having fun here right now? MAYBE. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
The competition here at Boekelo will now begin in earnest from tomorrow morning, which will herald day one of dressage, and the turn of our individual competitors. That’ll start at 9.00 a.m. local time (8.00 a.m. BST/3.00 a.m. EST), with Great Britain’s Harrison Colling and Trevi Fountain first to go. On Friday, we’ll see the 11 teams battle it out between the boards for the leg win. The 2024 series title is, in effect, written on the wall: the series leaderboard currently sees France in a commanding lead on 370 points, followed by Great Britain and Germany, tied for second place on 240 points and 100 points can be earned here for victory. You can find tomorrow’s times in full here, or, if you’re tuning in to the livestream on ClipMyHorse.TV to cheer on our ten-strong US contingent, you can see the first batch of them do their tests tomorrow at these times:
- 9.35 a.m. (8.35 a.m. BST/3.35 a.m. EST) – Lauren Nicholson and I’ll Have Another
- 10.25 a.m. (9.25 a.m. BST/4.25 a.m. EST) – Olivia Dutton and Sea of Clouds
- 12.04 p.m. (11.04 a.m. BST/6.04 a.m. EST) – Alexa Gartenberg and Cooley Kildaire
- 12.25 p.m. (11.25 a.m. BST/6.25 a.m. EST) – Sophia Middlebrook and Prontissimo
- 15.46 p.m. (14.46 p.m. BST/9.46 a.m. EST) – Cosby Green and Cooley Seeing Magic
- 16.07 p.m (15.07 p.m. BST/10.07 a.m. EST) – Lauren Nicholson and Larcot Z
We’ll be back tomorrow, full of electrolytes and hopefully slightly less sadness, to bring you everything you need to know from day one of dressage — and probably, as always, a fair amount of stuff you neither need nor want to know, too. Join us as we descend into madness and Military Boekelo.
Military Boekelo Links: Website | Times & Live Scores | Live Stream | EN’s Coverage
