Sharon White and Rafferty’s Rules
After a great morning of intermediate cross-country and prelim show jumping, the CIC3* and advanced divisions are running cross-country all afternoon at The Fork, with the advanced horse trials following the CIC3*. The weather is cool with cloud cover and rain predicted later this afternoon, which I only point out to make sure it doesn’t rain. CIC3* cross-country is scheduled to start at 12 with the advanced at 3:20pm and everything is supposed to wrap up around 5pm. Check out the live scores and Samantha’s Twitter below while your husband hogs the TV for the Masters…on CBS:
As a few quick notes from the morning’s intermediate action:
–Whether it was the course design or just great riding, there were a lot of excellent rides in the intermediate. The cheese wedge narrow at #5 caught some riders out early but other than that the intermediate course seemed to ride really well.
–My favorite moment from the morning was watching Jan Byyny gallop through the water jump and then Sharon White jump through just a few rides later. The best thing about eventing isn’t when things go fairy-tale perfect, but how eventers step up and respond to adversity. There aren’t two better examples of that anywhere in sports than Sharon and Jan.
–Kim had a tough morning with two falls in the intermediate, one at the trakehner and one at the skinny cheese wedge. Kim walked away from both but from chatting with her I doubt we will see her out with Tipperary Liadhnan this afternoon. She won the 2* last weekend and two falls this morning…that’s eventing.
–The volunteers have been absolutely amazing today, from helping with the fence judging to making sure the riders can cross the roads safely. Brian is doing a great job with the announcing and I always appreciate him keeping everyone updated on the rides. I also should give a shout-out to the folks at CatchRi.de for letting me use their electrical plug-in all weekend. We’ll have much more from The Fork later today.
