American Eventing Championships 9/11/09: Day 1, Dressage

An astonishing thing has happened here at the AECs. Out of 40 of the best Novice competitors in the nation, Gogo and I are sitting in 7th after dressage with a 30.5, even with mistakes in our test. Our score without the obnoxiousness would have been somewhere between 26 and 28. Which would have meant we almost were kicking Philip Dutton's but!! Oh well, Gogo had to show her snarky side, as usual :)




She and I were dressed to the nines and ready to rock and roll by 9am yesterday morning, and were on by 9:10am for our 10:12am ride. And I have to say, she warmed up faster and better than she EVER has. She was just right there for me. Well, minus the lap around the warmup where she screamed like a maniac for her neighbor, lol. Cracker. Anyway, they had us warmup in the lower ring, then go up and warmup in the upper ring, and THEN go into our test. Last year I think that would have probably melted her down. This year, she was a little looky when I took her up there but behaved perfectly well otherwise, because she was feeling so good after our warmup. She was ready and raring to go, still hot to trot after a solid hour of warmup, and I was ready too even though I had another wicked calf cramp (which was eased by an overdose of calcium chews. Nice...). We were in Ring 1, and she trotted in like a champ, looked around, and went hmmmm now this is the time to really behave! I think I shall NOT! But only a little ;)

The whistle blew, and down the centerline we went. I felt a little all over the place, and realized as I went to make the first turn to our first trot movement that I didn't have a half-halt. At all. There was nothing I could do at that point because giving her a stronger one would have made her fling her head all over th place, in perfect Gogo fashion, so I just put on my game face and fudged it a little bit. The first part of the test was great other than that, although it felt a little stilted, and she made a very nice transition to walk, and even had a pretty nice freewalk for her, all of which scored exclusively 7's and mostly 8's. And then I had to pick her back up from the freewalk, right in front of the judge, and it got ugly for a second. I apparently offended her for whatever reason, and she grabbed the bit, gaped her mouth, and rooted outward as hard as she could, swinging her head around like a madwoman. RIGHT in front of the judge. Nice. Somehow I managed to get it back together enough to pick back up the trot, and then immediately the canter, without any major further incident, but that walk movement scored a 4, and the following trot transition a 5 because of the fact that her head was still in the clouds. Oops. However, our canter DID get an 8, so there you go! I felt like we were sort of losing it at the end, and our right canter got a 6 to show for it because I was sort of hanging on for dear life ("losing energy" was the comment I think), and we came down the centerline and ground to a half. Awww maaaaan, I though. That test was horrible! Won't be competitive, it'll score mid 30's, it was easily the worst test of the entire year.

Scores weren't posted for 3 hours. But when we finally got back to see, Alex shrieked, "You're in 7th!!" Yes ma'am, despite getting a 4, 5, and 6, AND a 6 for submission, we countered those with enough 7's and 8's (including 8 for rider, I think because I was as tactful as I could be given the circumstance!). Our final grind-to-a-stop halt even scored an 8. It obviously didn't look as wild as it felt!! We scored a 30.5; the top score was a 25.








I have more pictures, and I'll post them when I get them all sorted :)


As for right now, it's on to XC. You can follow the live feed on the USEA website, check out the blog, and see full coursemaps with pictures too. What you CAN'T see in the coursewalks is the approach to some of the complicated questions we have. There are jumps leading to both waters, a step out of the water, a downbank to an offset skinny, a corner, an offset two stride, and a FULL coffin complex (not numbered as such but rides as such). I will have a full coursewalk for you as soon as I can :) The course is challenging, long and FAST, and I am REALLY excited. Wish us luck!!!