Zenyatta graces the top of an Eventing Nation post today for what I imagine will be the final time for quite a while–probably until her first foal is born. The greatest female racehorse of all time officially retired earlier this week. While I am sad that we won’t get to see her race any more, Zenyatta’s connections have once again shown their class by gracefully moving her on to the next phase of her life while she is still happy and healthy. Zenyatta will retire to a life of making babies at Lane’s End Farm in Lexington, Kentucky. Z lost the title of “greatest racehorse ever” by six inches at the Breeders’ Cup Classic this year, but, as time wears on, the memory of those six inches will fade and increasingly be replaced by thoughts of her greatness and charisma.
—The La Biosthetique Sam drama continues today with news that Sam has arrived back at Michael Jung’s barn [pferdenews.de]. On Thursday, a German site and the COTH reported that, following the Tuesday court injunction ordering Sam to be returned to Michael, Kreuter and the Jungs reached a written agreement specifying the terms of the return. From what I have heard, the agreement allows prospective buyers to try Sam at Michael’s farm and it prevents the Jungs from selling the horse for a profit at a later date if they end up buying Sabine’s share of Sam. While all of this has been going on, Michael is competing at the prestigious Stuttgart horse show and he has been kicking butt and taking names–he has won three upper level dressage divisions and the indoor eventing competition.
Sabine Kreuter has been pretty quiet throughout this entire process so we don’t have her full version of the story, but it sounds like there is a 1 million Euro difference between what Sabine says she can sell her 60% share of Sam for and what Michael’s sponsors have offered her. Sabine is restricted from selling the horse until an agreement between her and the Jungs expires on December 31st, and, unless the Jungs can find more money to offer, it looks like Sabine will wait the 40 days and sell Sam to her 2 million Euro mystery buyer. Unless, of course, she is bluffing. As always, thanks to LD for keeping us posted on the situation.
–Coren wrote a post about this on Thursday, but please check out the CANTER online charity auction and bid on a few items. There are tons of great lessons with top coaches and many other awesome items up for bidding. Most importantly, the money is going to a fantastic cause. There’s a lesson with Bruce going to $85 right now–are you kidding me? I don’t want that selling for anything less than $200. And you know bidding gives you great EN Karma.
–The Horse and Hound is reporting that horse owners are likely to cheat on their spouses. The first thing to note is that the H&H says that the finding are from a study by a website called EllicitEncounters.co.uk, so I think we should be at least a little skeptical from the start. The reported study of 2,000 UK cheaters revealed that 8% of cheaters owned horses or ponies. I suppose if we wanted to be scientific, we would have to compare that figure to the percentage of faithful spouses who own horses, but the story didn’t go that far. One explanation for the correlation of cheating to horse ownership might be that, as the study says, both cheaters and horse owners tend to be higher-income earners. I think we should just chalk this up to hunter princesses giving us all a bad name…again.
–You might notice three new beautiful SmartPak banners in the EN sidebar over the next couple of times you visit Eventing Nation. The banners are randomly rotating so each time you visit EN one of the three will show up. They each link to a different SmartPak page so check them out and, as always, a big way you can help keep the heat on at the EN corporate headquarters during the long winter is to buy from our sponsors directly through the links on EN.
–Going below the fold for a moment, Kansas City police are looking for information leading to the arrest of a person who stole a Meerkat from the local Zoo and then dropped the stolen animal off at a nearby pet store 11 days later. Apparently the thief tried to make the Meerkat a pet. My favorite quote from the news report is that “Meerkats make very poor pets. They bite…and they will use their scent to mark their owner and the house as their territory.” This suspect should be pretty easy to find–severely wounded and very stinky. Thanks to BC for the link to that story.
–I want to thank our good friends at the Canadian WEG team and Omega Alpha for sending me this autographed poster that they signed at the Royal Winter Fair. One of my favorite memories from the WEGs is of Graeme Thom and David yelling at me at the celebratory Canadian after-party for picking Canada for team bronze rather than silver. I’ve never been happier to be wrong.
Best of the Blogs: Chelan writes about her new horse and Galway
Stay tuned for a busy day on Eventing Nation. I’ll be traveling most of the day, but Annie will keep things running smoothly with your help. Also, we might have a post from a new guest writer so stay tuned for that. See you soon…
