Eventer, photographer, and now certified Eventing Nation guest writer (we all have cards and matching capes) Lindsay Berreth has sent this report for the Maryland Horse Trials. Before I forget, please notice that we have added a ‘Captcha’ to our comment form just to add a layer of security. Thanks for writing this Lindsay and thank you for reading.
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This weekend I rode at the Maryland Horse Trials I at Loch Moy Farm, located in Adamstown, Md. A front came through on Saturday, bringing some rain, and then in the afternoon it was a bit windy and humid. Today was hot, but less humid. I’ll take that, considering we’ve had record high temperatures above 100 this past week. I heard some horses were quite fresh on Saturday morning for dressage.
In the past few years, this facility has grown and just gotten better. I think it’s a perfect modern eventing facility. It’s got perfect all-weather footing for the HUGE dressage and show jumping arena (it fits three dressage rings, a huge warm up area, and the show jumping course), and the cross country course flows, even though it’s sometimes a bit twisty and turny. Everything is very close to everything else, so it’s convenient getting around. Over the winter, some new jumps were added, including a nice set of steps that were used on the training level course today. The terrain in the woods was good, and there is gently sloping terrain, which has settled more every year. Despite having a large rainfall deficit, the footing held up well (considering the time of year) with only some rain showers on Friday night and Saturday morning.
Loch Moy spares no expense when putting on their events. There was a water truck, shuttles for spectators, a nice-sized trade fair area and a cooling area for horses after cross country. Everything ran on time and it seemed that communication between officials and volunteers was seamless. The Boy Scouts did a great job with parking, scores were up fast and the courses were great!
I rode training this weekend, and I thought the course was very fair. The new steps rode very nicely down, and I particularly liked that the course designer filled the ditch and wall in for training. I thought it was a good introduction for my boy, who is still green at training level. Just from observation, the other courses looked soft, which is good for this time of year. I didn’t see anything trappy at any level. Perhaps others could comment on the other levels.
Based on the results, the training course didn’t cause many problems. No one in my division had any jumps faults cross country! I also liked how they reversed the course and moved the start and finish from past years. I thought it flowed very well.
I’ll be up at Loch Moy next weekend at MD HT II working for GRC Photo, so Eventing Nation fans, come say ‘hi’ if you see me! I’d love to hear your thoughts on the event.
Lindsay
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Lastly, here is some video of the Barbury CIC3* for your viewing pleasure, it starts with pictures but quickly gets to video. Courtesy of ‘bridled’ via KM.
