Someone please turn up the thermostat!
This isn’t the weather I ordered to go with my Eventing weekend at Bromont. Where’s that lovely sunshine we had last year? The horses of course don’t mind the cool temps, and as long as the rain remains an intermittent dribble the footing on XC will be absolutely fine tomorrow. It’s not as though they never get rain around here. One need look no further than the foliage to know they get a spot of the wet stuff on a regular basis through the summer. All the same, it can warm up any time, thank you very much.
We’re half way through day two of dressage, and there’s been neither stellar nor disastrous going on out there. Kyle Carter and Madison Park enjoyed a few minutes at the top of the CCI3* leaderboard after their test, which was a nice display of Parker’s mellowing over the years. It was a very clean and obedient test, with none of the leaping and charging of past years. Good boy Parker!
Entries are down at Bromont this year, but as I pointed out to one of the organizers, it’s to be expected in the one year in four that is an off-year for major championships (and therefore all the Canadians and American team hopefuls putting Bromont on their calendar in order to catch selectors’ eyes). Every four years there is an odd-numbered one in the cycle with no Pan Ams, no WEG and no Olympics. I also think there is a bigger than usual hang over after an Olympic year, which this of course is. This is only the second year Bromont has separated the national competition from the FEI – Petit Bromont is next weekend – and given that it was the big final observation trial for both the Canadian and US teams for London last year, it’s not at all surprising that there are fewer horses. I’ll bet they’ll be at capacity again in 2014.
If there are fewer hooves on the ground here, you certainly wouldn’t know it to look at the human presence. It’s the usual who’s who of NA Eventing. I saw the DOC (we miss you David!) in a store yesterday; I just shook hands with DOC’s replacement Clayton Fredericks for the first time, and I’m looking forward to interviewing him for Horse Sport later today. I also had a brief sighting of EC’s new CEO Jean-Christophe Gandubert, but I’m glad someone pointed him out to me because I would not have recognized him from the photo that was published with the announcement of his arrival to his job running EC. I’ll try to make sure I meet him at some point over the weekend. It seems almost crazy that he’s been there for several months and I haven’t exchanged even a ‘nice to meet you’ with Akaash’s replacement.
I’m going to head out on course shortly, not just to take a peek at the track, but also to warm Chorizo and me up with a brisk walk. If you want to stay on top of the results at Bromont, there is live scoring which you can find by going to the Bromont site and clicking on the big red ‘live scoring’ box on the right side of the home page.
