Good Morning Eventing Nation! I hope everyone made it through the weekend unscathed by any inclement weather (namely the hurricane), and that everyone made it home safely from the events they attended over the weekend. It’s Burghley week, I think I speak for most of us by saying that I wish I was across the pond right now, doing some London sightseeing and getting ready to spectate at Burghley this weekend. At least between the streaming video and live scores, we get some sense of what’s going on, but it’s definitely not the real deal. One thing we can all look forward to this week is reading everything from the EN Team and a post from EN’s guest blogger, Sally O’Connor. Sally’s over at Burghley right now and will be sending a post our way of whatever comes to her mind while she’s over there. Whatever she ends up writing about is guaranteed to be straight-to-the-point, funny, wise, and above all a good read, so stay tuned on that.
The news on Tuesdays is usually a melting pot of randomness, and today’s news is no exception. The usual culprits are the stories from the previous weekend’s events that somehow got left out of Monday’s post, then the random stories from other disciplines that I hope some people actually do enjoy reading, and then all the blog posts from riders, grooms, talking horses, etc. So without further ado, here’s what you need to know on this Tuesday:
Well the Germans may have cleaned up at European Championships over the weekend in Eventing, but they certainly are no slouches when it comes to Combined Driving either. The World Pair Driving Championships were held in Conty, France over the weekend, where a German woman, Carola Diener, was crowned champion. One of my goals with horses in life is to learn how to drive, it just seems like a whole different sphere with horses that would be fun to explore. Plus, controlling and directing two big strong horses well enough to perform a decent dressage test cannot be an easy feat. [Horsetalk]
John mentioned on Monday that because of their respective performances at this past weekend’s European Championships, France and Sweeden have qualified teams for the 2012 London Games. The French have been a bit under the mainstream Eventing radar recently, but after their Silver medal performance this past weekend, we certainly should be taking notice. The French historically have been hit-or-miss with their Eventing power, they’ll be going like gangbusters one year with some great riders and really good horses and can put together a team to rival the best. Then other years they’ll fall back quietly behind the curtain and will stay there for a period of time. They do like their Olympics though, and after a taste of gold at Athens in 2004, they certainly will be a nation to watch this next year in their bid for glory at the Games.
A new product is on the market in Great Britain, and it’s called the ‘Ardall Breaking In Dummy.’ Yep, you got it, for the small price of €669 (almost $1,000) you can own a life size dummy to use on your young horse during breaking. The reasoning behind this creation is namely safety, your horse gets used to carrying the weight of a rider, while the rider is still standing on the ground. For as attractive as never getting bucked off a baby again may sound, there are definitely some downsides to having a dummy do your dirty work. Like what if it comes loose while the horse is broncing and now your three year old has a loose weight flapping across his back? Definite down side there. Plus, you can get almost any working student to get on for just the price of experience breaking a young horse. What are your thoughts on this one, Eventing Nation? [Horse and Hound]
There are too many blogs this morning to even consider a ‘Best of the Blogs’. You’re probably looking for an outlet of procrastination at the office this morning anyway, so here is your Blog hot-list:
