Volunteers are the lifeblood of this sport– our fun weekends simply wouldn’t happen without them! Today we are proud to share a story from Emily, who jump judged at the Colorado Horse Park this past weekend. I know we are all busy with our horses, our jobs, and everday lives…but please take the time out to volunteer at your local event if you can! Thanks to Emily for sending us this report from the Colorado Horse Park, and thank you for reading. If you have a story to share, send it to [email protected]. Go volunteers!
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From Emily:
Greetings, my name is Emily, I live in Northern Colorado and have been horse crazy since I could crawl, I’ve done Pony Club and eventing for years but lately between a combination of college, work, not having a horse, getting married, and now having a baby in my belly I’ve been unable to actively compete in Eventing since 2008. Bummer! So, I instead get my “fix” by heading down to the beautiful Colorado Horse Park every June to volunteer. Not only do I get to watch lots of lovely horses jump around cross country but I get to very feel useful!
This year my husband and pups got dragged tagged along to keep me company out on course. We got to the horse park early Saturday morning and, after a bit of confusion, found the volunteer tent for XC (I scored a golf cart ride out with the organizer, Andy Bowles—who by the way was fabulous! The event went super smooth and he never appeared stressed and was very approachable and friendly). The day started with Beginner Novice and the weather was beeeaaauutiful to being with. My dogs were thoroughly enjoying themselves romping around before XC started by finding a nearby pond and dunking themselves in it and getting rather dirty… lovely.
View towards the Rockies of the lovely rolling terrain of the CHP XC course
Next up was the CCI**, OI, CCI* and OP divisions. We got stationed at fence 20 for the two star (which was also fence 15 for OI), a large but straightforward brush and ditch.
My husband’s thoughts on this fence were “It scares me!” (it was the first time he’d ever seen a CCI fence in person) but the jump rode easily and with no issues.
Maggie Deatrick and Divine Comedy in the CCI**
Sydney Conley Elliott and Pancho Villa in the CCI**
Unfortunately I didn’t get a picture of Heather DuBois and Every Wish, the winner of the CCI**!
Cynthia Wiseman and Vote Yes in the OI
Kathy Cain and Legal Limit in the OI
Moving onto the CCI* and OP we also had no troubles at our fence, but some riders were not so lucky at other combinations on course. About this time it started to get very very HOT.
The pups finding shelter under a makeshift tent erected between our chairs.
I have to stop here and say that the CHP takes very good care of their volunteers!! Golf carts were constantly running around course bringing drinks, lunch, cookies, hats, and just checking on us in general. It’s really not hard to jump judge, as long as you can understand what constitutes a refusal/runout and can jot a few notes after each horse and radio that they are clear, you can do it! I definitely recommend that every eventer volunteer for at least one event, it will give you a whole new perspective and appreciation for all the hard work the folks behind the scenes put into making sure that you can have the best ride possible!
Remember what I said about hot weather? Well, all morning we were watching the storms steadily build over the Rocky Mountains. By lunchtime is looked like this:
So when one of the jump judges radioed asking if lunch came with a bit of shade, Control answered, “Look to the west and be careful what you wish for!”
Sure enough, about 1:30pm, halfway through the training divisions a red flag warning was issued with lightning strikes less than 6 miles away. All the horses were sent back to stabling and volunteers were herded into two horse trailers parked on course to hide from the rain and pray we didn’t get struck by 1 billion volts of electricity!! And rain it did, suddenly, fiercely, and quickly. A typical Colorado summertime thunderstorm, I cannot count how many times I’ve watched these storms roll in and out at the CHP over the years. Amazing to watch really!
See that little red dot? Yeah, that was us.
We resumed cross country at 3pm, as while it was still raining the lightning danger had passed. The organizers were AWESOME by letting all the jump judges drive their personal vehicles out to their jumps!! Last time I jump judged and it was raining they made us sit and suffer tough it out in the rain.
Nice and cozy inside my car!
The Novice divisions wrapped up the day; thankfully it had quit raining at this point and the weather was nice and comfortably cool, perfect conditions really to run XC! We were running riders 90 seconds apart instead of 2 minutes and managed to finish at a quarter after 6pm, not bad considering it was an hour and half delay and things were supposed to finish by 5 otherwise.
A Novice rider heading towards the eastern loop of her course.
I have to say I was really impressed with the Cross Country course this year! They took their old, unused water complex and gave it a complete facelift with brand new jumps and questions, which now gives the course three water questions. They have expanded all tracks to the east, taking advantage of this new water complex and the terrain questions it asks (it is located down in a little wooded gulch with the rest of the course being open rolling prairie to the east and west). Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to walk any of the courses due to being busy all day, but that’s ok!
Things ran very smoothly all day, jump judges got to their fences promptly and there was little confusion the whole day. We got called “Stupendous!” by control by the end of the day, it was great. About half a dozen riders fell off, but no horses or riders were injured (although one horse eluded capture for quite some time, making his way back through warmup, across the road, and all the way back to stabling before being caught!).
It was a great day and we all enjoyed ourselves, until next time I will be nursing a funky sunburn and looking forward to the next time I can get out on cross country, either as a volunteer or on my horse. I really don’t care, both are fantastic experiences and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Cheers!
Emily
