rain, rain go away
Good Morning Eventing Nation! Welcome to Tuesday! Well this week’s news sure isn’t going to be much fun to write about now that Badminton is cancelled. Honestly, my first thought when I heard the news (and kudos to the EN team and ESJ for having the story first!) was that at least poor Peter Atkins isn’t missing out on anything now with his broken leg and all. But while Peter’s case might have proven to be not as unlucky as originally thought, there are a lot of people completely devastated by this news. The good news is that it happened in Europe, so there is Luhmuhlen, Bramham, and plenty of other big competitions nearby that the riders can choose to re-route to.
Anyway, let’s take a look at the news this morning:
Horsetalk is talking about Olympic Plans needing some revision now that Badminton is cancelled for 2012. As John stated earlier, the horses that are pretty much shoe ins to be on the team weren’t planning on running around the grueling four star track this weekend, but others such as Zara Phillips and High Kingdom, were planning on using the upcoming weekend to strengthen their hand when it comes down to team selection in a couple of months. Also, reining World and European champion Michael Jung was planning on making his much anticipated Badminton debut, in a show down between William Fox-Pitt and a couple of the other heavy hitters for Britain. [Horsetalk]
Brian Murphy, Sara Kozumplik’s boyfriend, wrote a blog for the Chronicle over Rolex weekend about the journey that ended just one day too soon for Sara and her crew. [COTH]
Boyd blogged about his fantastic week at Rolex, thanking the syndicate owners of Otis, the owners of Remington, his right hand girl Lindsey Taylor, and the rest of the support crew that made his weekend possible. [BOYD]
There is a bit of a scuffle going on across the pond right now regarding a new drug rule that bans the use of Pergolide (a drug used to treat Cushing’s Disease) in any sanctioned competition. The sad part of this new rule is that it really will only affect the amateur ranks, and means that many of the older horses filling the amateur leagues and diagnosed with Cushing’s will now have to retire to un-affiliated competitions. It of course makes sense that the British Eventing Society would want to have uniformity in their drug rules and keep them as close to FEI standard, but you’d think there would be some way to let these horses compete on a drug that is non-performance enhancing and strictly used to treat the hormonal imbalance of Cushings. What are your thoughts, Eventing Nation? Should BE have banned the drug or were they wrong in doing so? [Horse and Hound]
Badminton Horse trials fall foul of floods
Well you can tell that it’s Derby season as the New York Times as just published another front page article about horse racing, but sadly not in any brighter of a light than the last article. Titled “Big Purses, Sore Horses, and Death”, the author sets out to examine the cause of the increase in breakdown rates over the past couple of years at race tracks around the country, a problem which he believes stems from the addition of casinos to many race tracks, raising the purses considerably in many races, and tempting trainers to run unfit or sore horses in pursuit of the big check. They make a few good points, and it really is an article that’s worth a read. [NY Times]
A nineteen year old Texan based Norwegian rider Eirin Bruheim has recently acquired another horse to her string; Tackeray, the British based accomplished Grand Prix competitor previously in the barn of Ben Maher. Eirin told Horsetalk that she just plans to get to know him and compete in some lower classes for the remainder of this year, but that she hopes to compete abroad with him for Norway by next year. Welcome to America Tackeray! [Horsetalk]
That’s all I have for you now, Eventing Nation! Have a great day, I’ll catch up with you later!