Yay, well rested so back to the blog.    First the corrections from yesterday.  The horse and rider I said was Totillas and Edward Gal was actually Steffen Peters and Ravel.  Both pairs are spectacular of course, so I can be forgiven on the weakness of my exhausted stupor.

Steffen Peters and Ravel

So we arrived at the park in our car (the shuttles were working just fine, but the cost difference was only slight ($20 parking, $30 for the two of us on the shuttle) and the walk from the car parking lot was only slightly longer.  Besides, the parking attendants were  a show in themselves.  There was music playing outside our car through the absolutely crustal clear, static-free speakers with the WEG logo on them.  Some of the parking attendants were incorporating the music into their communications to their subjects.  The short video below shows a young man trying to communicate us to not follow the car in front of us and start a new line.  He was hysterical.  I wonder how long he was able to keep this up.

So after breakfast and a brush with the very kind George Williams, mentioned yesterday, it was back to the main stadium for some spectating.  The weather varied from occasionally entirely overcast to sunnier as the day went on.  The temperatures were in the upper 60s and low 70s with no wind.  Very nice for both spectators and horses, and when the clouds passed over, I thought of my friend Derith, who, as a horse show photographer, has a much easier time of it when the clouds make the sun a non issue.  There were, of course, some serious cameras in the media section and I’m sure they were glad for the overcast while it lasted too.

I have never spectated at an international team dressage competition before so I learned a few things watching the WEG.  The first was that they draw order of teams and then each team chooses order of their riders.  Usually, the best riders are chosen to go last for their country, so the final rotation is pretty much a bunch of ringers.  Keep in mind though, that even the first rotation is pretty impressive.

In the third rotation, which was our first today since there were two yesterday, there were some very nice rides and some major disappointments.  We were all stunned and very sad when Adelinde Cornelissen on Jerich Parzival was excused very early in her test.  Her horse had some blood in his mouth and the FEI rules are very strict about horses having to be eliminated for that.  Another horse was eliminated in the session for “irregularity of gait”, the dressage queen phrase for lame.

We also learned from the headset narration that dressage horses do not do anything nearly so mundane as poop, they “make manure”.  What an elegant way of expressing it!  As in, “Oh that lengthening was made more difficult for him since he was making manure during it.”

On a fashion note, the Italian rider Susanna Bardone on Dark Surprise cut quite the dashing figures as she wore her mounted police uniform.  It was a refreshing change from the sea of white breeches.

Italian Mounted Police Uniform Goes Uptown

The final rotation included the Netherland’s Moorlands Totilas (pronounced TOW ta las).  He has set the world record for the highest score ever received in a Grand Prix Competition and came very close to matching that score again at the WEG.  This horse has such charisma that he has people doing things usually reserved for NFL and NASCAR fans.

The Exuberant Dutch

Of course, they are the Dutch, so they are to be given some latitude.  They seem to have a very high fun factor.  Their colors are orange, quite obviously, and they stand out in a crowd not only for that reason, but for their enthusiastic cheering for their country and general good-natured rowdiness.  They’re a walking pep rally.

Totilas: Once In A Lifetime

Totilas did not disappoint.  The big black charismatic stallion came out and filled the arena with his effortlessness and joy in his work.  Edward rode beautifully.   Watching them was peaceful and powerful at the same time.   He did his halt from passage at C so beautifully that the entire crowd, including me, exhaled in admiration.  For a halt, mind you.  The horse is 10 years old, a relative babe in dressage terms.

The judges agreed.

Wow.

We actually felt sorry for the rider who had to follow that,  and remarkably, our worries were unfounded.  While not quite of Totilas’ quality, the horses following were still magnificent.  Ashley Holzer of Canada, trains out of New York and is a national Purina Ambassador.

Ashley Holzer and Pop Art, National Purina Ambassadors

The nutritionists at Purina work closely with Ashley to manage Pop Art’s feeding program, and it shows.  The sun had come out for his ride and his chestnut coat glistened  like copper and he fairly crackled with healthy exuberance in his test.

Steffen Peters and Ravel

Steffen Peters, riding Ravel, was the last ride of the day.  When they entered the arena, it erupted in enthusiastic welcome.  Ravel was gorgeous in his work and came within a few points of Totilas’ score.  Steffen watched most of the dressage competition from a vantage point near us during the earlier rounds.  Fans were constantly wishing him good luck and generally interrupting him, but with all the best intentions.  He was gracious about it, despite the fact that the pressure must have been intense, since the U.S. team was so close to medaling.

I “Took at Good Look Around,” as Jimmy Wofford would say, at the crowd during the canter work in Seffen’s test.  About half the crowd was very subtly rocking in their chairs or nodding their heads in time like they would do if they were riding the canter themselves.  Very intense, very quiet and very supportive.  It was charming.

The Netherlands earned gold, Great Britain silver and Germany bronze.  The U.S. team was a very close fourth.

After Steffen and Ravel and before the medals ceremony, Anky Van Grunsven brought in her reining horse and did a fun demo.  She did not do a full slide stop in the arena footing of the stadium since the footing required by reiners is entirely different.  But there was enough galloping and flying lead changes and spins to keep people interested and clapping to the music.

Next, Jay and I went out to look at the other half of the xc course.  That is continued in the next blog.

Today was the start of team Grand Prix dressage competition.  The forecast last night for today indicated it was going to be wet going.  So Jay and I packed it off to Target last night and rustled up some cheap rain slickers to put over our Field Day jackets, which are good in the rain for a limit of 4 hours when their nylon shells morph into skin-clinging, heat-sinking deadweight.  We needed plastic.  Our mission accomplished, we slept the sleep of the deserving.

Up early this morning and off to the park.  I’d like to note here that Lexington, KY has the longest stoplights in the world.  Combine that with the fact that we had just gotten on the highway when I sheepishly announced to the fabulous Jay that I forgot my headset and wanted to go back and get it.  Stoplights become even longer the third time around, having now gone through them on the way out, the way back and then the way out again.  With rain tapping metronomically on the windshield and my heavy burden of making us late, I comforted my self with the lovely fact that I was married to a man who actually was annoyed he was going to miss sitting in the rain and watching dressage.  As a horse-riding woman, that’s a very good problem to have.

Not only is he a horseguy, we’re also both pretty much engineering-type geeks, (with the caveat that he’s a real engineer, I’m a just Physics-Obsessed Girl (POG)) and we like infrastructure stuff.  This is what makes him a really good xc jump builder and me, um, I don’t know what it makes me other than someone who can understand what he is talking about, usually.  So we had a big conversation about this:

Oooh, infrastructure...

Why, it’s a roll up temporary sidewalk.  Even in this picture it looks slippery, doesn’t it?  But it isn’t.  It is made of interlocking plastic tiles that made it possible for them to create this people highway that makes it a lot easier to walk and keeps people from making huge mud and getting it on themselves, if it rains.  This showed some nice foresight on the part of the WEG planners, since it hadn’t rained there for many weeks before the Games.  It would occasionally slightly bridge over a pothole underneath.  The bridge over the gap would be springy like any self-respecting suspension bridge, and add its energy to the walker’s next step, sort of an involuntary human passage step, which was a very appropriate way to start Dressage Day.  I’d have never thought of this clever device to get people in the mood for the day.  These WEG planners thought of everything!

I promise there is lots of horse stuff coming up, but there was even more fun before the horses set foot in the ring:

Tractors!

Yes, tractors!  Every horse husband’s fantasy is to at least have a really cool tractor that he can drive around the property while doing all the work while the princess rides about in perfect ignorance of what it takes to run the farm.  (Yes, I’ve been paid handsomely to write that.)  But seriously, these tractors were really fabulous — not too big, not too small and waxed to within an inch of their dear little spark plugs.  John Deere is a major sponsor of the games and, as an aside, in the John Deere pavilion, you can sign up to “Ride a Reiner.”  There was always a line or I’d have been all over that.  The only sliding stop I’ve ever ridden was a special surprise gift to me and had a 3’3″ oxer at the immediate end of it.  But I digress.  And for even more digression, back to the John Deere thing, my dad was a John Deere salesman and he loved his work and they were good to him.  So John Deere rocks and the picture above of those dandy little workhorse tractors just makes me smile.

So, the riding today was incredible.  For sticklers for the details, the percentages, the horse’s breeding, rider’s middle name,  yadda, yadda, yadda, the scoreboard is here.  I’m one of those people who goes to baseball games to enjoy the sunshine and the popcorn and the game, but I can’t tell you Babe Ruth’s rookie year ERA.  I don’t memorize minutiae.  I watch dressage to watch riders and horses and enjoy their harmony and connection to each other. We can always look up the scores later online.

We watched the first set of riders.  The two things that struck me about the riders were their forward-moving hands and the relaxation in their backs and hips.  The horses are talented, beautiful and nearly unflappable.  The stands were much less than half full, but the stadium was loud in greeting horses and riders and there was not one even moderate blowup in reaction to it.

But there were some “Moments”.  (Blog definition: “Moment” is short for “Marital Moment” — those occasional extemporaneous conversations that happen in a relationship.  These conversations usually end with a word like “Fine”.)  The dressage Moments today included an honest to beginner novice Wrong Lead.  Transition from passage no less.  I was so stunned I couldn’t even think to look at how that would score in a GP test.  The lead was fixed in one stride of course, with a perfect flying lead change.  Let’s be clear then, I am not negatively critiquing anyone who has the technical skill and cahonies to ride GP dressage at WEG.  But what I am saying is that people who are struggling to learn to ride a dressage test in public can take heart, your suffering will never end because you’ll always make mistakes, that’s just how it is.  Ha ha.  While that is true, that’s not my main point, I’m kidding.  What I am saying is take heart, everybody has Moments and there’s no need to have a canary about it by punishing yourself for a week for a wrong lead or whatever.  Just get out there and see how quickly you can fix it.  Everybody makes mistakes.  A GP rider fixes it in one stride.  If you fix it in 5 strides or 5 months, it is still fixed.

So, then in The Scheduling Oddity of All Time, the dressage rounds were interrupted by the Endurance Medal Ceremony.  It was in the schedule, but What?  I kid you not.  These impressive endurance people were up trotting and cantering around until all hours last night, and apparently they compared their calendars at the end, and all could make it at 11:00 (or whatever it was) this morning to receive their medals, so the dressage people said, “Sure, come on in, we’ll just piaffe in the corner over here.”

Endurance Medal Ceremony in the Middle of Dressage

Seriously, I’m all about celebrating somebody who rode 100 miles yesterday and was here walking upright today, but really, right in the middle of GP team dressage?  Apparently, yes.  The dressage spectators could not leave the arena, because once your ticket is scanned you are in and if you leave you are out, never to return.  No inky handstamps allowed.  So we hung out and cheered the Spanish woman who won it and the two UAE father and son people who got silver and bronze.  The silver medalist literally could not be bothered to show up so his chef d’Equipe (coach) stood in for him.  No explanation was given, so we’re going with our theory that a middle eastern guy couldn’t deal with a Spanish woman on a horse named “Nobby” showing him how it’s done.  That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.  She was a way good rider and I will leave my comments about the quality of the other two medalist’s riding unsaid.

Go Spanish Chick

So back to the dressage.  The first U.S. dressage rider, Todd Flettrich, produced a very nice test.  He ended up 16th of the 31 horses who competed today, and not an obvious drop score among them.

The second U.S. rider, the last rider of the day, was Katherine Bateson-Chandler who has partnered with this horse only since this March.  I shot this video with my really lame $100 digital camera that I bought like 5 years ago.  I used it because I did not bring my video camera because at Rolex you can’t video tape your own shoes standing in the park for fear of copyright infringement, so I was thinking the same would hold here, but videocams were rampant and nary a word was said.  D’oh!  I was wrong.   So this video is a little low in quality, but you’ll get the idea of the lovely ride Katherine shared with us today.

Tomorrow, Day IV WEG:  Dressage, second half of our XC course walk (which would be the first half of the course) and whatever else shows up on our Big WEG 2010 Adventure.

Reining team final this afternoon.  By now I almost understand what I am looking at, thanks to the quality explanation on the headphones.  The final US entrant was high score for the event, which does not win him gold, but it did clinch the gold for the US.  That is great, but call my cynical, isn’t this a US sport?  We pretty  much invented it, no wait, we DID invent it, so I’d pretty much expect world domination for at least the first four times it is in the WEG.  And that is true so far, so all is right in the world.  I’d say look out for Italy and Germany who clearly understand the game and God knows somebody will sell them the horses if they can’t breed good ones themselves.  Dark horse: Poland.  When freestyle reining becomes a WEG sport, which I suspect it will, the Polish riders I saw already have a leg up on the lyrical potentials of the sport.

Watching reining gave me several things.  One was a reminder that good riding all looks the same, regardless of the sport.  Another is that english riders, as a general group do not require enough of our horses in submission, possibly.  By this I mean that the reining horses are all, as they say, broke.  They stand still when asked for the most part.  They go forward when asked, they come back when asked.  They follow the rein.  They are soft in the poll.  They back up using their hindquarters.  All pretty handy stuff.  When this is accomplished through loving systematic training it is a very good thing. 

Then Jay and I went and watched some GP dressage schooling in the Stadium.  Horses would come marching down the entry into the stadium and be ready to go with their work, 5 and 6 beasts of hunky dressage gorgeousness at a time.  Some riders would have the horse on the bit the entire time, producing beautiful work for a short period and then let them relax only when they had exited the arena, while others had their horses walking on a loose rein quite frequently.  As a general matter of comparison, it was much more relaxing to watch the GP horses school than the eventing horses school dressage.  Sorry, even though I’m an eventer at heart, the dressage people were more subtle with their horses, though everyone was well within the acceptable range.

Now we’re off to watch some endurance. I’m not sure how much of a spectator sport that is going to be.  From the vantage point of  the Maker’s Mark Bourbon Village, it has been fun to watch the dots progress around the course on the live feed.  They go out and back in a series of loops that together cover 100 miles.  Each loop comes back into the vet check area where the horses stop for a period of time for P and R checks and if they pass they can then go back out.  So we’ll grab a toddy and head to vet check and learn something there I’m sure.  Cheers for now.

Nearly unbelievable.  William Shatner, Mohammed Ali, gaited horses that were so beautiful and happy in their work that they brought tears to my eyes (and I usually don’t get the gaited horse thing), a boy sitting next to me who asked if the lady with the white hair driving the hackney was Queen Elizabeth, western dressage, rope tricks, a full symphony, the UK basketball coach, the KY governor, Lexington Mayor, FEI President Princess Heya, 2 antique cars, a beautiful sunset, a packed house, bareback and bridleless reining, the fresian train, music from Carmen with full choir, Circus parade carriages, California cowgirls, some guy who rode two horses at a time while standing up, a man and andalusion who danced beautifully with a young ballarina, great weather, great sound, packed house.

Wow.  Must sleep.

Next stop this afternoon was Reining Session II in the Alltech Indoor Arena.  Whether it was coincidence I can’t say, but the quality of the horses and riders improved in the second session.  The Polish rider chose some native music that was lyrical, and the way he and his horse flowed reminded me of a dressage freestyle.  It didn’t surprise me when, at the end of the session the announcer shared that the rider also did a freestyle that could “make you both laugh and cry.”  He had some technical difficulties, but I think his style is very attractive and could be the next generation in reining.

The radio commentary provided by the NRHA president was excellent.  Just enough was said to be enlightening.  He didn’t talk it to death and he didn’t leave major questions unanswered.  I talked to him afterwards to tell him how well I thought he did and how I thought that their way of describing staying “between the reins” was something we talk about in eventing as “to keep the horse between the straight lines of the reins and the stirrup leathers”.  And that his expression of the horse being “willingly guided” by the reins is analagous to one of my favored expressions of the horse “following the rein”.  Very interesting.

I had wondered before the first session if I would be able to tell the difference between very good reining and not-so-much-good reining.  It turns out, yes.  The basics are always the same.  Cool.

Jay and I toured (part of) the trade show for a few hours after that.  Everything you want, and stuff you didn’t even know you wanted (but now you do) is there.  More on that tonight.

Right now I have to catch a bite at the Maker’s Mark Bourbon Village (who wouldn’t love that name?) and go to opening ceremonies.  Jay is catching OC at the hotel tonight, the local NBC affiliate is carrying it live.  Just one more reason I love KY.  That is sweet.

Rock on.