Welcome to the Jungle: A Guided Tour of the Olympic Test Event Course

Fence #1 offers a friendly welcome to the course, set against a dramatic backdrop that must have taken somebody forever to paint. Just kidding! It's real. We think. Fence #1 offers a friendly welcome to the course, set against a dramatic backdrop that must have taken somebody forever to paint. Just kidding! It's real. We think.

Part CIC2* course, part wildlife safari, the unveiling of Pierre Michelet’s cross-country course at the site of the 2016 Olympic Games is everything we hoped it would be and more.

It manages to combine real-life elements of Rio culture — not-so-distant gunshots, random monkeys, razor wire as far as the eye can see — with all the trappings of a first-class international event: a sculpture garden of festively decorated, beautifully built jumps positioned just-so along a sandy, gently undulating track.

To give you guys a better idea of the lay of the land, I  climbed up into this hilltop tower…

platform

…not realizing that the plywood floor was rotten until it literally started cracking beneath my feet like thin ice. No kidding, I had to crawl out on my hands and knees — but I by-God got my photos. Panning from left to right, if you imagine them all connected:

pan3

pan1

pan2

And that was just the beginning. Let’s go for a stroll, shall we? For a narrated tour, click on the thumbnails.

There’s no telling how much obstacle crossover there will be between the test event and next year’s Olympic Games, and the CIC2* course is only about half the distance that competitors will face next year. Still, the track covers much of the same ground and everyone is looking forward to seeing how it rides.

The first rider leaves the box at 10 a.m. GMT-3, or 9 a.m. ET. The leader board following dressage:

IMG_0509[1]Go Eventing.

[Aquece Rio Test Event Website]