The World Equestrian Games are officially underway with reining all day on Saturday and then the opening ceremonies Saturday night. With over 16 straight days of wall to wall horse competition, just looking at the calendar/broadcast schedule makes me light headed. Our strategy on Eventing Nation for the WEGs will be to do what we always do: provide fast, fun, and inside coverage specifically for eventers. I managed to get away from my own horses for the full eventing week so we will be on scene at the WEGs starting on Tuesday. Now, I am sure everyone is dying to get their first taste of WEG competition.
The best viewing option for Saturday originally seemed to be the USEF Network, which promised full free online video of the WEGs for the parts of the competition that are not on NBC or UniversalSports.com. Unfortunately and unsurprisingly, the USEF Netowork website seems to have crashed today and there has been no word on when they might get back online as of lunchtime. I say ‘unsurprisingly’ not as a criticism of the USEF, but just from the very nature that it’s hard to build a live video site and have it perform perfectly on the first day of action.
The other viewing option for Saturday is to pay FEI TV a full WEG or a flat daily rate for what different reports suggest will be either on-demand video following the competition or live coverage. If anyone already has a subscription to FEI TV, please share your experience with their WEG coverage in the comment section.
You can also check out the Live Scoring on the WEG website. In early scoring, it looks like American Tim McQuay has taken the reining lead with Hollywoodstinseltown and Anky Van Grunsven is in fifth with Whiz.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
| Reining Team Competition | 9:00 AM – 11:30 AM ET (LIVE) | www.USEFNetwork.com |
| Reining Team Competition | 2:00 PM – 4:30 PM ET (LIVE) | www.USEFNetwork.com |
| Opening Ceremonies | 7:00 PM – 10:00 PM ET (LIVE) | www.USEFNetwork.com |
| 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM ET (LIVE) | LEX18 (WLEX) Television, Lexington |
NBC will be broadcasting live reining coverage and taped coverage of the opening ceremonies from 12pm to 1:30 pm ET on Sunday. Looking for something to tell your non-horsey friends to watch? NBC at 12pm Sunday is a great place to start. The Horse Radio Network will also have extensive WEG coverage that we will link to and embed as appropriate.
Please help everyone out by sharing your online viewing experiences and discoveries in the comment sections of our posts. Did the USEF Network suddenly start working and is it awesome? Is FEI TV cool?
I’m not sure that Hamish and Dave have the answers but their latest uploaded video is worth a laugh:
Go eventing.
