For those of you not heading out into the traffic jams at bridges and borders this Labour Day weekend, you might be looking to kill some time on the World Wide Web. One thing I cannot recommend for the moment is subscribing to FEI TV. I remember talking to a man named Christian Osterode at FEI TV […]

I don’t doubt for a minute that the right horses and riders were on the podium after the European Championship Dressage freestyles on Saturday. After watching Adelinde’s ride, I wasn’t sure if Edward would beat her. Until I saw him. He did have a pretty significant mistake in the one tempis, but clearly the judges […]

I am still forming my opinions about the freestyles yesterday in Windsor, but watch this space in the next day – I won’t be speechless for long.  

Holy ravioli, look at them scores. And if you have FEI TV, look at them rides (when they eventually put up the video-on-demand coverage, that is). I’ll be tuning in tomorrow at 11:45 lazy west coast time to watch the freestyles live. I can’t even begin to imagine what the scores will be like. And […]

Having been retired from eventing these past dozen years, I had forgotten how much fun the people are at horse trials. I went out to the Campbell Valley Horse Trials (near Vancouver) on Friday with a full cooler and a pillow on the bed in my van. When I reluctantly headed home Saturday evening, the […]

It is almost exactly a year ago that I arose from my China-sized guesthouse bed at the brutal hour of 4 am and made my way to the train station for a bleary eyed ride to the cross country course at Beas River. It was the shortest Olympic cross country course in history, not much […]

… that the Dressage Canada Board dismissed the entire Senior High Performance Committee in July? Not surprisingly, they haven’t gone out of their way to convey this shocking news to their members, though if you go to the relevant page on the DC website, under “Committee Members” there is a black dot where there used […]

Has everyone completely lost their marbles? The troops are rallying behind Isabell and I am baffled. The IDRC refused to accept her letter of resignation…the former German chef d’equipe says there should be a ‘special rule’ for Isabell…even HRH has suggested (according to the open letter sent out by the riders’ clubs and FEI Athletes’ […]

  What is with Mission Control, anyway? The complete absence of press releases on Isabell Werth’s, and now Michael Whitaker’s, drug busts, led me to believe they are all on summer vacation; except Switzerland’s national day isn’t until August first. I know there must be someone rattling around HQ, because a video message from HRH […]

I’m glad I made the long haul east to Montreal this year, even though the weather during the Blainville CDIs is always a grab bag of hot, humid, wet and downright stormy. I got to meet Cees Slings, though I could not have imagined in my wildest dreams how would turn out. I found him […]