I don’t know a lick of Portuguese, but after being here a few hours I quickly recall how nice and welcoming everyone is. Between friendly smiles and smooth operations it has happily been a non-eventful first day. There are a couple tell-tale signs of the last minute issues that may or may-not get completed, but nothing that would significantly impact events.
Special Media towels, that’s a first!
The arrival and processing at the airport went smoothly and I was chauffeured all on my own in a huge bus Deodoro Accommodation Village. This is a complex of buildings right in the heart of the military town that were built for the 2007 Pan Am’s and recently refurbished for the Olympics. Similar to a dorm, each floor has several pods, and each pod has common room, kitchen, and half a dozen rooms. My room even came complete with personalized towels! I’m sure it would be frowned on to steal these, but I’m very tempted.
Nobody’s home at the Logistics Office.
My travels also reminded me of the disparity of wealth here. The area surrounding Deodoro is quite poor with ramshackle homes made of cinder blocks and corrugated metal rooves. A trip to the Main Press Centre (MPC) in Barra offers a distinct change in scenery to upscale condo’s and high end shopping malls. It was at the MPC where I caught a glimpse of some the incomplete items like turnstalls with no ticketing computers installed, signage/direction boards with nothing on them, and, my favourite, the empty Logistics Desk office among all the other shops.
I’m looking forward to cheering on our Eventers tomorrow as the dressage phase gets underway at 10am local time. Lucky Jessica gets to be the very first in the ring and I’ll be paying particular attention to the crowds reaction. There has been some disturbing online commentary that a group of Canadians had purposely cheered loudly in advance of a Brazilian dressage performance during the Pan Ams and the Brazilians might be looking to retaliate.
Our all-girls team is in fine form and are either close to or achieving personal bests at the most recent shows:
– Jessica Phoenix and A Little Romance tied their best dressage score of 51.5 in the dressage phase at The Planes in July.
– Kathryn Robinson and Let It Bee scored 45 at Luhmuhlen in June, their best score this year.
– Colleen Loach and Quorry Blue D’Argouges just moved up to the 3* level this year and have consistently scored in the low 50s.
– Rebecca Howard on the Canadian Sport Horse gelding, Riddle Master, average dressage scores in the 40s. Their last outing at Barbury Castle was close to their best earning a 42.2.
Dressage in the 40s is really what it takes to stay in the hunt so I’m sure everyone is hoping to keep on form and for personal bests.
I can’t sign off without a commentary on the FEI’s new marketing campaign which has a disturbing trend of featuring people with horse head masks on and sometimes embellished with wigs and mustaches. WHAT ARE THEY THINKING??!! We work with the most gorgeous and graceful athletes and they all but ignore them completely until the last couple of frames in favour of models with masks on? How on earth does this promote our sport?
Does this capture or promote dressage to you?
Exhibit 1: A screen shot from the new website which uses these masks to highlight each sport.
Exhibit 2: This new video featuring models in the same masks doing various dance routines to demonstrate each sport.
I understand the necessary task of educating the public about equestrian sports, but is a video of people leaping around in tube socks to 80s synthesizer music really the way to do it? The only thing I can think of is that they were hoping to shock the world so completely with this most bizarre video that it would go viral the way this other disturbing horse mask video did – notably it features more actual horses than the FEI’s version.
There simply has to be a better way.
