Did I say the cross country looked easy? I take it back. I was wrong. It wasn’t easy. It was ridiculously easy. All four US and all four Brazilian horses went clear and inside the optimum time. Three out of four of our Canadians, ditto. The one unfortunate exception was the pair who traveled the farthest to be here, UK-based Kathryn Robinson and Let It Bee. They fell at the second fence, of all places. I heard one second hand report that the horse did something close to a rotational fall, so the really good news is that both horse and rider walked away from the scene.
I did take a second look at fence 2 when I walked the course on Friday, and I regret that I didn’t snap a photo of it. I haven’t seen a hay rack on a major Games cross country in a long time, because the shape of hay rack fences has made them unpopular for the very reason that Let It Bee likely hooked a front leg on it today. The top of a hay rack fence is essentially a table, made a bit fluffy and convex with hay. There was a ground line on this one that extended out a bit from the vertical line from the top of the leading edge, to counteract any illusions created by the backwardly downward slant of the face of the fence. Without the ground line provided by a square timber, this fence would have given a false ground line that results in the horse thinking the top of the fence is farther away than it is. I did note that the ground line was a different colour to the slanting face of the jump, and as Kathryn’s was one of two falls at the fence, I suspect that there was some risk of horses not correctly judging the fence with its differently coloured ground line. Let’s just get rid of hay racks for once and for all, shall we?
I have to catch a flight, so I’ll just post a few photos and catch up with you tomorrow. Canada is now in bronze medal position, having slipped far enough behind Brazil that it’s unlikely there will be a medal of any other colour for our team tomorrow. Jessica Phoenix, whose ride on course as anchor for Canada was a source of enormous crowd migrations and cheering – a highlight for me in a rather dull three hours on cross country – is sitting third individually. If Pavarotti puts on his best show jumping face tomorrow, we just might see Jessica move up to silver, or even to repeat her gold medal victory from 2011.
My FB hacker tells me she got video of the Canadians at the ‘big’ water, but as everyone just sailed through it like a gymnastic exercise with water in it, I’ve decided to tell the hacker not to bother posting them.
Up…
and…
Over! Go Jessica!
