There are jumps in there somewhere
Yesterday I had a brief chat with a German journalist who betrayed just a hint of derision at the style of delivery here in Vegas. ‘This is Vegas’, I said to him.
‘Yes, it IS Vegas,’ he replied with a faint sneer. My advice to him, should he ever grace Las Vegas with his presence again for any reason, is that he leave his Teutonic superiority hanging in the closet at home and instead pack a daily dose of open-mindedness pills. I have already said that I don’t actually like Vegas. It’s a bizarro world, a strangely shimmering non-city filled with sin bingers. But if you can walk away from a World Cup Final held at the Thomas & Mack feeling unmoved by this unique and energized atmosphere, I think you might be missing a ‘fun loving’ chromosome.
The jumping is about to start, and Canada’s sole entry, Chris Sorensen, will be second to go, having squeaked into the top 30 by finishing 27th on Friday night. Bobby is a big fella for this petite arena. I won’t finish this post before Chris’s round so please imagine a brief pause in your reading, and I’ll be back after his round.
Chris and Bobby off to a rocky start
Well that didn’t go so well. First one down, and two more along the way for 12 faults. He won’t be back for the second round this afternoon. Bobby’s a game, athletic horse but maybe not ideally suited to jumping on a postage stamp. The crowd has been encouraged to make noise through the rounds today, which is perhaps not that helpful for the horses that have limited indoor mileage – horses like Bobby.
And that leads me to my suggestion of the day for the FEI. Let’s please allow dressage horses to have their ears plugged. Never mind the fact that several scores would have benefited from dampening the crowd noise yesterday. How about horse welfare, that tired old catch phrase so beloved of the FEI that it’s been used to the point of not having any meaning any more?
The issue of crowd noise is a tricky one. If letting the spectators cheer makes the sport more appealing to a wider public, which leads to more bums in seats, more sponsor banners around the ring and even some more TV exposure, how can we keep shushing the audience?
However, there were enough mistakes and upset horses in yesterday’s freestyles – including a couple of European steeds that have plenty of indoor experience under their girths – that we have to take into account the risk of giving horses the heebie jeebies and loweing scores. Solution: ear plugs. Why not? Does it unlevel the playing field? Well I suppose it takes away an advantage for someone riding a Valegro, a horse completely unfazed by the deafening roar of the crowd during his victory lap yesterday. But who wants to beat a rival because the rival’s horse scooted when the crowd cheered? Ear plugs please, as soon as possible.
I do think it’s a bit of a stretch to blame the crowd for Legolas’ bloody spur mark, however. I’m not saying anything against Steffen. Rawness from a rubbing spur is hardly torture, and it’s most certainly not rare. Robert Dover was quoted in CoTH as having suggested maybe Steffen had to use the spur a little bit after the crowd clapped (and let’s not forget that they were only responding to the spoken lyric ‘Hi, I’m Legolas’, which was clearly placed in the entry to get them amped up) and Legolas reacted like a turtle trying to withdraw into his shell. I don’t think Robert was doing Steffen any favours. For his part, Steffen has owned every last bit of the unfortunate situation, and full credit to him for that.
So we are now 12 horses in and have not yet seen a clear round. Just to give you a sense of how tight this ring is, the maximum number of strides between any of the jumps is 11. From the first jump take off point to the last, there are only 94 strides in total on course – and the course is so tight that there is almost no variation in stride numbers from horse to horse. If you divide that by the 16 jumping efforts, that’s an average number of strides between fences of slightly less than 6. That’s some fast-twitch work to just get through, which two riders so far have not.
One of the most fascinating aspects of the field here in the WC jumping is that the oldest horse, Flexible, and the youngest rider, Ireland’s golden child Bertram Allen, are the same age: 19. That’s impressive in two completely opposite ways.
Just finished watching Gerco Schroder and McLain Ward have two rail rounds apiece (this course is not giving away any freebies), and it occurred to me it would be fun to conduct a leg squeezing power test on those two, to see who can apply more pounds per square inch. Surely there have never been riders who stick to their horses’ sides like those two thigh masters do.
Come on Beezie, give the crowd a wave. Would it kill you to give back a little joy to this audience who just raised the roof after your clear round? Or would that be too much for you because then you’d also have to smile? Oh the torment of being a heroine to the fans.
First round is done, so I’ll post this now. Not to jinx him, but it looks like Steve Guerdat will be a bride’s maid no more. He has a rail in hand over little Bertram from Ireland, who took one rail and is on five faults. Just seven clear rounds out of 29 starts. That’s a sheep from goats course design by Anthony D’Ambrosio if ever I saw one.
A note to my DQ readers: I’m still mulling over the scores from yesterday. I think I’ll review the rides on FEI TV on demand once they put it up, and then come back with some well-thought out opinions. That pirouette situation with German Jessica just keeps nagging at me. Since it is potentially a very damning bit of evidence on the judges’ ability to tell left from ‘other left’, I feel I need to get that sorted out before I go on any tirades.
