WEG update day 2 - well many apologies peeps about the delay in my report. The data roaming would not work at the stadium and then wifi at the hotel would not work when I got home so I had to go to sleep! Anyway, here we go! The track yesterday was much tougher at 1.60m and definitely sorted them out a bit. The scoring works like this: on the first day it was a table C speed class (rails converted to seconds added to your time) and everyone is given a handicap score depending on their rank. So first place is on 0.00, second say 0.35, third 0.67 and so on and so forth. There was only one rail between the top 40 horses! So then, the faults from yesterday were added to your handicap and this score is added together for the team score. Today will be the final round for the nations cup so the top ten teams will be contending and the top 50 individuals qualify for the next round also. Unfortunately Australia did not make the cut but Edwina Alexander added only 1 time fault and Jamie Kermond added only 4 faults so they both made the next individual round. Both James Paterson Robinson and Amy Graham finished with 3 rails down but the Aussies certainly did us proud and didnt look out of place! Now the course! An inviting triple bar to start up the far end of the arena from the in gate, right turn onto a simple (no fill) vertical then sweeping 7 or 8 strides to number 3 a very large oxer with Viking ship wings. This fence came down a lot. Left turn to their first big test the triple combination - oxer in one stride to a vertical two strides to an oxer. Some horses that struggled on day 1 put the brakes on here and were not going any further, others didnt have a good enough shot in and so ran out of scope and couldnt make the distance to the second element. After the table was 6 waiting strides sweeping a little right to what we all started referring to as the chopsticks vertical as thats what it looked like but was actually paintbrushes! Right turn back onto the water, lots in the water if you didnt have enough gallop to get over it, then get your horse back for 6 strides to the wall. This sounds like the danger area but it wasnt, it was the next fence that caused possibly the most grief on course. Sweeping left bend 7 or 8 strides to a very wide oxer that was right next to the in-gate got lots of people, one Chilean rider had a very bad fall here and they put the screens up around him and everything as he looked to be unconscious for a little bit. All ok in the end though. Horses that had trouble here were losing their impulsive and just dying in the air and landing in it, possibly distracted by being so close to getting out of the arena. Then it was a left turn back to a simple but tall vertical then 7 strides to another oxer which looked straight forward enough but had a rooster and some eggs on the jump and under it as fill (do the French know that eggs come from hens? Lol) that actually spooked a few horses and thus they were landing in the back rail. Right turn back to the big Rolex oxer, this ones an easy fence - easy to see and now we are facing toward home so they are keen to jump. 4 strides down to a double that caused trouble for some as the vertical in had water behind the vertical so horses were jumping in and seeing the water over the top of the fence then finding it hard to jump out of the big square oxer. The 4 strides down there I think if you gunned it too early and ended up a bit close to the vertical then you found the distance out quite long. Easy canter down to the last vertical in 8 or 9 strides, only a couple had this down - last fence-itis I would say! All in all a great day of jumping. Some beautiful rounds of course by those you would expect - McLain Ward, Patrice Delaveau, Beezie Madden, Marcus Ehning just to name a few. I will post a few videos later. The surface is jumping wonderfully, wish I could have that surface at home, although you would definitely need irrigation to keep it watered! Todays final round for the team comp starts at 3.30pm local time. Ill try and get a local SIM card so I can do live updates :) happy riding everyone!!! Here are a couple of pics of Amy Graham
Posted on: Thu, 04 Sep 2014 06:36:31 +0000
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