Gladstone thoughts - the jog and day 1!

I feel very fortunate to have been asked to coach one of our riders in the Brentina Cup National Championships this year, Erin Shea.  Erin is truly a hard working and talented individual, who I look forward to seeing great things from in the future.  She is supported by Sue McKeown, who has given her her lovely Grand Prix Horse Marshall to ride and train.

The weather was hardly cooperative for the jog.  During the absolutely delish post jog wine and cheese party, there was much discussion among the competitors about the remants of a hurricane due to arrive that night.  The footing, despite being packed quite hard, was already quite saturated and somewhat slick.  Volunteers were called out in the rain from the party to help move the arena for the morning, so that the corners would be as fresh as possible.  We all got rather damp.

One team wondered why on earth we couldn't 'cover the field', like they would do in many other professional sports?  Volunteers were chiming in that they would call college football teams, or go to Wal-Mart, or do just about anything possible to try and keep the footing from getting overly wet.  This IS the National Championships.  These ARE the best horses in the country!  Why on earth not?

But the "footing experts" simply went about there way.  A couple of competitors were barked at in a rather surly manner, or so they felt.  I'm not sure the footing experts truly appreciated our efforts or goodwill in any way, surely none of us appreciated the rain....

While in most instances, having first draw, especially first draw of the entire show, would have been deemed unfortunate.  In this instance however, we knew the footing had been packed extremely hard, and while later in the draw things would break down to a slickery mush, the footing would be the best it would be.  While Marshall still backed off a bit from the hard pounding of the extremely packed footing, combined with the slickery-ness of the top mush, the pair still put in a respectable ride, pulling fourth in a very competitive class.  We were all very proud of Erin and Marty the rain couldn't take that away!

The Grand Prix was next.  It poured during some rides. Steffen and Ravel made it almost looked easy, nearing the 80 per cent mark.  Having seen the pair at the World Cup, perhaps some of their usual brilliance wasn't there, but Steffen was right in not asking for it in those conditions. The top two pairs in the Grand Prix, Steffen and Ravel and Calecto V and Tina, clearly stood out as "Top Class" among the rest despite the conditions.

The PSG however was canceled despite the fact that the skies had cleared.  Who knows what would have happened if indeed we had protected the riding surfaces over night?  Why must dressage remain in the dark ages....while I agree that we must maintain some semblance of respect to the traditions on which our sport is based in our rules, I am not sure that we must risk our top horses by sloshing them through mushy conditions, when we have other options available to us....