Two team members from each country went today which ended with team Germany in the provisional lead and William Fox-Pitt and Chilli Morning with the top score of 37.
Jessica Phoenix and A Little Romance were the very first pair in the ring and scored a personal best at the 4* level. “I’m extremely proud of what she did in that ring today,” said Jessica of her horse. “She relaxed, she enjoyed every minute of it and it was just a lot of fun.”
While Kathryn Robinson and Let It Bee’s round went well, it wasn’t as good as she had hoped because Let It Bee was suffering a bit from the heat.
“I’m based in England, so my preparation for the actual dressage test was very different from what I normally do. He was a quite a bit dozy and flat because of the heat. I normally work him quite a bit before dressage, but today I didn’t really do much. So I was just going ‘Let’s see how this goes’ ‒ which you don’t really want to do at the Olympics ‒ but if I cook him I won’t have anything when I go in there. I had to ride with a bit of hope, but I was happy and he did everything I asked.”
Michael Jung had a very rare error during the first counter-canter serpentine movement of the test when Sam FBW switched leads instead of staying in the counter canter.
”I am not quite happy,” he commented after. “That was an expensive mistake because of a misunderstanding between the two of us. Right afterwards he (Sam FBW) was fully with me again but it is very annoying to have something like that happening at such an important show.”
The biggest surprise of the day was Aussie Christopher Burton with his gorgeous Santano II, scoring 37.60 to put them in second after the first half of the competition. This is the black gelding’s first 4* competition though he had previously scored 37.8 at the 3* in Burham Market in April.
“The cat’s out of the bag,” he said after. “The horse doesn’t have a good walk. Of course we can do things better. But he makes my job really easy, honestly, he is such a good horse.” He thought he might be having a good test and feedback from the clearly impressed audience was reassuring, “After the medium trot, I heard a gasp from the crowd and I thought, ‘That’s not a bad gasp.’”
The most excitement for the day was saved for the press when a live round of ammunition landed in the busy press tent over the lunch hour! The equestrian events are held in Deodoro which is a military town. Having been conscious of the security concerns before my arrival, I actually felt much better driving in this morning and passing the headquarters for the various branches.
Nothing to see here… just a hole in the tent caused by a stray bullet!!
Aside from actually hurting somebody, this must be their worst nightmare come true…. A live round landing right in the middle of the press! It took them some time to come up with something to say and it wasn’t very reassuring:
“The bullet came from the outside,” was the comment from Mario Andrade, the communications director for the Olympic Games. “The authorities are investigating: the type of bullet, the distance, where it comes from and why it came here. The first info that they’ve got is that they can already clearly determined that this area was not the target, it was a stray bullet, it has nothing to do with the games but I cannot be more precise at the moment. The technical experts from the local police were here measuring the place, the trajectory, and everything. As soon as we have information we will disclose that to you. Especially where it comes from, why it got here, and what kind of bullet it was. In the meantime, the authorities have assured us that they have reinforced security around this area. More than one source in the different security areas have emphasized that they have 100% assurance that this has nothing to do with the games and the presence of the Olympic family and the press in this area.”
He continued to say that the actual weapon had not yet been identified. “We are in a military facility. We don’t know yet where the bullet is coming from so we don’t know if it’s coming from any of the training facilities or something like that. We don’t have this information. It’s a very sensitive issue so we need to investigate and clarify everything before we can give you precise information.”
The mounted unit were part of the security patrol this morning. Good thing they were wearing bullet proof vests!
He also didn’t know if it was a training accident. “We don’t have the information if they were doing live fire training exercises, therefore we don’t know if they will continue to. What we do know is that they have reinforced the security structure around this area to make sure that there is no future problem and that they are investigating and will provide information.”
They don’t know where the bullet came from or if it was part of a training exercise.
“I’m not an expert. I’m just relaying to you the information that I got from the security team.”
So, in other words, “We don’t know anything but we are going to tell you everything is all right anyway.”
Fantastic.
Given our location, it’s likely that this was “just” a military accident. But I would sure feel a whole bunch better if they would simply say so and confirm that the military will stop doing live fire exercises during the Games.