Sinead and Tate doin’ work, video courtesy of Andrew McConnon
For most east coast North American pairs the road to Rolex starts with a spring horse trials, runs through Red Hills for some, then either Southern Pines or Poplar this weekend, onto The Fork, and then up to Kentucky. Different pairs start the road at different points and at different levels depending on their level of experience, soundness, and overall philosophy. Most of the US and Canadian high performance pairs are in action this weekend at either Poplar Place in Georgia or Southern Pines in North Carolina, making for a very exciting weekend of eventing!
The Tremaine Cooper designed cross-country courses at Southern Pines in particular are running very tough today. The advanced divisions featured 53 starters with 8 rider falls and 11 other rides with jumping penalties. The ratio of falls to rides was almost the same in the intermediate with 10 falls out of 66 starts. JER reports that a fence into the water was removed on the intermediate between divisions after horses were miscalculating the landing. This change appears to have led to much fewer falls in later rides.
Looking at the riders who had good trips around the cross-country, Michael Pollard has a decisive 12.4 point lead in the advanced A division with Jude’s Law after delivering the 4th fastest advanced time of the day to add just a few time penalties to his first placed dressage ride. Holly Payne and Madeline jumped all the way up from 21st after the dressage to second with 6 time penalties. It’s great to see this pair out and about and going great again. Becky Holder and Can’t Fire me are third with a 44.7 and it looks like Becky is starting to put together a spring that is going to make it incredibly hard for the selectors to leave her off of the team.
Clark Montgomery and Loughan Glen continued their strangle hold on the advanced B division with just 2 time penalties to extend their lead to 10 points. Will Faudree and Pawlow also added just 2 points on the XC and lie in second going into the show jumping. Becky Holder is 3rd in this division as well with Comet. Comet doesn’t have anything left to prove and he is not on the US Olympic application list, but I’m hoping for a big campaign out of them this year. The advanced divisions are too stacked to mention all of the impressive pairs, so please be sure to check out the score links below.
Recalling what I wrote about different pairs entering the season and different stages and levels, two pair with a clear look at the Olympics are stretching their legs in the intermediate. Sinead and Tate added two time penalties in the intermediate A division and lead on a 22.9. Neville Bardos scampered around the intermediate course as well, taking his traditional time around the horse trials. Everyone knows Nev can make the time when he needs to and there’s no point pushing things this early. Don’t look now, but Ying Yang Yo is also out and about in the Southern Pines intermediate. Sarah Dunkerton and Matapeake moved up from second to lead the intermediate rider heading into the show jumping. The prelim cross-country is still running North Carolina.
Meanwhile in Georgia, the cross-country is running all day at Poplar. Samantha is on scene and I’ll leave the reporting to her capable hands, but check out the scores below to see how things are going. So far, Canada is completely dominating the top of the upper level leader boards.
And now for some videos. Here is a tumble at the aforementioned Southern Pines intermediate water by Boyd and Crackerjack. The below videos are courtesy of Thehorsepesterer.
A slightly better result in the advanced water by Devon Brown and Dynamic Image:
Allison Springer at the training water on Friday:
I’ll leave you with a Poplar video sent to us by blogger Sarah Finkel of one small dog’s commentary on the cross-country. Is Isabella saying “ow ow ow ow” or “wow wow wow wow?” Eventing Nation, you decide.
Go eventing.
