by Susan Stafford-Pooley
No bullets today – at least not in the press tent – so it was a good day. Out on the military shooting ranges surrounding the Olympic Equestrian Centre it was a different story, however.
I felt so badly for Colleen Loach, whose dressage test included a (hopefully) unintentional ear-piercing sound system yark, not once, but twice. Although she recovered quickly from Qorry’s completely excusable scamper, the horse remained tense through the next few movement and it all reflected negatively in her score.
My first outraged Canuck thought was, can she ask for a reride? Are rerides allowed, and if so, under what extenuating circumstances? While eventers (and jumpers and dressage riders and everyone else) have to get used to riding in all kinds of weather and natural disasters, this was a completely preventable human error that cost her points. I couldn’t find anything during a quick scan of the FEI Eventing rulebook about this, so I will have to ask our columnist and steward extraordinaire Jan Stephens. Watch for the answer to this burning question in an upcoming issue of Horse Sport.
Some press tribune banter today led to a conversation about making equestrian more viable as an Olympic sport when the jaundiced eye of the IOC is always watching for signs of weakness so they can kill the weak and make room for totally awesome sports like skateboarding and surfing (really dude, talk about potential doping scandals!). My contribution was to make eventing dressage a bit more interesting for the public by doing freestyles. Other esteemed journalists (or War Correspondents, as we prefer to be called now) suggested that at Olympic Games, the team competition should be decided once based on total scores across the three disciplines, or even with a new form of team eventing where the dressage test is ridden by a grand dressage rider and horse, the cross-country by an eventer, and the jumping portion by – you guessed it – a show jumper. The whole thing could be done in a day and we’d all be home in time for cocktails.
I walked a portion of the cross-country course today and it was just as the riders have forewarned – very technical and with a lot of questions. Personally, my first question would be, why did I take up eventing? I hope that everyone has a safe trip tomorrow (and nobody wanders onto the course looking for Pikachu). Most importantly, I trust that those who are not up to the task think of horses before country.
