Photo Adventure Friday: Rolex Edition

This week's Photo Adventure....

... is of previous Rolex adventures!



















Rolex Kentucky Three-Day Event, Lexington, KY, 2006-2009.
Something I look forward to every year without fail. Spring doesn't start until Rolex is here. Next year, next year!
(Bonus points: see how many times you can pick out Karen O'Connor. For some reason she ends up in all my photos!)

Bummin'.

Want to know what started today? Rolex. The ultimate destination, as spectator or rider, for all those who love our great sport of eventing. Year after year, Rolex devotees make their annual pilgrimage to this holiest of grounds to cheer, walk 89 miles a day, rack up enormous amounts of debt at the trade fair, gulp down corndogs, meet up with dozens of friends we only see once a year, have heartattacks at every jump, and scream ourselves hoarse as we watch our favorite riders, horses and heroes conquer the most grueling event North America could possibly ever offer up. Rolex. Just the word gives me the good chills. Rolex, where I go year after year without fail, no matter how impossible it is to get there. Rolex... where I will not be this year, and it's driving me nuts. Hurting me, even. I gave up my Rolex this year because I have very limited vacation days and thought I was going to need them all for showing. Now, I don't need any of them for anything, and could have easily taken a few days to go. Sigh.

And yet, life goes on. Thinking about missing Rolex has made me sharply aware of missing my entire show season, and it hurts. I am doing my best to enjoy all the little things I love about my mare - how rich and glossy her coat is even with the last remnants of winter fuzz, how one section of her mane always falls to the wrong side of her neck no matter what I do, how her feet still remain rock hard and gorgeous despite rest and her perpetually sloppy stall (she is the worst hay dunker and she drags that water ALL over the front of her stall every day), how she always manages to look happy whenever I come around in the morning to say hi - but I'm still wanting to ride, to gallop, to just sit on her even. In due time, I suppose. Right now we are celebrating the victory of starting to treadmill again, of tight and cool legs that stay down and cool from the first cold-tubbing of the morning all the way to nightly wraps, and of a freshly trimmed set of feet that make me smile every time I look at them. I might be dreaming of Rolex right now, but I know that next year it will come. I might be wishing for a full and hearty season of eventing for myself and for my mare right now, but I know that even though we can't this year, with patience and time we can do just about anything.







I keep catching Gogo snoozing every morning after she gets a fresh clean stall. (Hence the terrible cameraphone pictures.) She's always covered in shavings, filthy, drooling, and peaceful. I think I know what she might be dreaming about.

Rolex Kentucky 2009 - A Picture Journey

A picture journey through my Rolex trip this year:




The drive down was lovely, albeit a bit long. I flew to Cleveland and drove down with my fiancee, and we pulled it right around midnight.




The new facility looks awesome (complete with statue of Bruce Davidson and Eagle Lion negotiating the Head of the Lake complex), and we got to see a few people warming up for dressage.




They also had a FEH demonstation, and I had a heartattack when I found out who the lovely black filly was - I foaled her out at college, she was by our stallion and out of one of our schoolie mares and only the second foaling I had ever been present for, just one other student and myself. She was a minor dystocia at 2am, and we had to do some pulling. I was totally floored to find out that one of our stallion's offspring was actually DOING something! And wasn't evil either!




Fail... in years past, you could get in to see dressage without tickets. Now, you can't even get close. So, we watched on the Jumbotron. The Good Witch and Headley Brittania... MARE POWER! Bettina Hoy and Ringwood Cockatoo from Germany led with a 28.8... holy crap. Lucinda Fredericks and Headley Britannia (mare who already had won Badminton and Burghley) were in second with a 32. Third place and beyond were all in the 40's.




Rolex is fun.









Cross-country was amazing, as usual. Bettina Hoy had a rather frightening round and accumulated time faults, moving Lucinda Fredericks into first. The Good Witch suffered a fall on XC over the corners, but she's all right.




GO JUMPERS GO!




Headley Britannia wins it!! MARE POWER!!



The Good Witch through the Hollow:




Headley Britannia's winning stadium round:





It was awesome, and over way too fast.

Modern Eventing - For Daun

Well I always said I'd do it, and due to the huge number of responses on my last little snarky blurb I thought I'd really get my facts straight and make a real post about modern eventing, and the dangers behind it.

And also Daun... what's malware, and what is this about it? I've never heard of it and even when signed out it's not flagging anything on my computer. So... I dunno! What exactly are you seeing?

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Everyone knows the basics of the origins of eventing. The military man and his cavalry horse were once valued and crucial members of a country's war machine. A military charger needed to show elegance, precision and obedience on the parade ground as well at out executing maneuvers in the field (dressage); he needed courage and great stamina while headed to battle, often needing to cross lengthy and difficult terrain and any number of obstacles to get there (cross-country); he needed to be responsive and fit once he arrived at the battle, still able to perform accurately and swiftly when needed at the end of a long and exhausting journey (stadium). The military routinely tested their officers and mounts in order to ensure their fitness and ability, and it was from this that the sport of "Militaire" was born. It was the complete test for the officer and his mount, and at its first Olympics, only active-duty officers on cavalry chargers were allowed to compete. In Paris at the 1924 Olympics, the "long format" as we know it now was essentially born, and it was open to civilians as well - dressage on the first day, endurance on the second day (which included Phase A, Roads and Tracks, which was followed by Phase B, Steeplechase, and Phase C, a longer Roads and Tracks; a compulsory halt for veterinary inspection followed these three phases, after which Phase D, cross country, began, The compulsory halt later morphed into a compulsory 10-minute vetbox), and stadium jumping on the third and final day. The English effectively coined the term "Three-Day Eventing," and the name stuck.

Eventing has never, EVER been without deaths and major injuries, both equine and human. As I said before, at the Berlin Olympics in 1936, only fifteen of forty-eight horses competing in the eventing made it through the water obstacle without harm. Twenty-eight horses fell, and three completely refused it. The obstacle injured three horses so badly they had to be destroyed on the scene. The water obstacle ended up being incredibly deep in the center, and full of soft mud on the bottom. In the 'olden days,' it was not uncommon for a horse to finish an event in a state of near-collapse - it was rather impressive if the horse finished at all. One of the horses at the Berlin games that was on the US team was badly injured in the shoulder at the water jump, but the rider remounted and continued on anyway. One of the members from the German team broke his collarbone when he fell off in the steeplechase, but remounted - and the next day, he AND his horse fell in the showjumping, the horse LANDING on the guy, but they both got up and went on to win gold for Germany. Incredible to think about. Here's a wild picture from the 1952 Olympics:



The beginnings of a rotational fall caught on film. 68 horses fell on this particular cross-country course at the Melbourne Olympics, and 20 other riders were tossed. At the 1960 Games, two horses were killed in competition. At the 1968 Games, two more died, collapsing on course due to extreme heat and the stress of competition. (As a side note, look at the high-tech cooling devices used in Beijing - pretty sweet.) How many other deaths can we count in these earlier courses? Dozens, and many rider deaths too. Eventing is, and always has been, an extreme and very dangerous sport.

But what of modern eventing? In 2004 and 2005, a new format was introduced for eventing - the modified or "short" format, which eliminated all of the stamina and endurance sections of cross-country (Phases A-C). I was fortunate enough to see the very last Rolex that was run in the long format in 2005 (my first Rolex ever), and I remember feeling teary-eyed while watching those horses gallop their hearts out on steeplechase. It was amazing. They were simultaneously running a short-format course, to "prepare the Olympic riders and horses" because Athens was running the short format, but nobody paid attention or cared - didn't count in our books. And then, the gavel fell - all around the world, the long format was dying. Why did this happen? Massive pressure from the FEI? Venues not having enough time and space to run the long format? Breeders (the Germans and their German event horses, said my German instructor at the time!!) wanting to push the heavier, warmblood types on eventing? Any way you look at it, it was politics. The Olympic committee was threatening to pull eventing from the Games, and the FEI made a swift change. The classic three-day, as we now call it, is enjoying a bit of a renaissance here in the States at the moment, but it wasn't that way at first. Riders and spectators from all over clamored for the return of the long format for many reasons. A lot of people, myself included, believe it is the "true test of horse and rider", and that it teaches horsemanship - the preparation, the hours put in, the blood and sweat and tears needed to condition the horse and human and the care required after takes years to prepare for. The short format, unfortunately, is the springboard for what this post is really all about - what's changing in modern eventing, and why it's just not helping these dangers.


Like I've been saying all along, eventing has ALWAYS been dangerous. So you'd think this short format helps to eliminate some of those serious dangers, yes? Wrong. The idea that the short format saves wear-and-tear on horses is a load of crock. Several recent studies comparing injuries between the long and short format disprove this in an instant. Horses also tend to be far more stressed in the short format due to the shorter warmups, as opposed to the slow, long, methodical warmup leading to Phase D. While it's true that many upper-level riders, especially the old school ones, still prepare and condition their horses in the same way that they used to, it becomes difficult for a horse THAT fit to perform without the miles of Roads and Tracks and Steeplechase to take that bit of edge off. So what do we do? Condition the horse less? It certainly isn't a good idea. Horses coming off cross-country exhausted can and do collapse - one dying already this year, at BEGINNER NOVICE after cross-country. Problem Number One with modern eventing: conditioning, or lack thereof. As riders, are we NOT physically preparing ourselves and our horses for these difficult tasks ahead? Without the push for the long format, the emphases on conditioning becomes way less important, and exhausted horses on cross-country make mistakes. Fatal mistakes. And so do riders. Not to mention that a physically beat horse that DOES make it through cross-country will not perform well in stadium, and may come away with muscle, tendon, ligament, or bone injuries. The emphasis on horsemanship has seen a rebirth in the Training Three-Day, but there'll another post about that later.

In the old days, Phase D was simple - big, gallopy obstacles and a really rhythmic pace. Not so anymore. My personal opinion, shared with many others, is that the Olympic committee, along with the FEI, decided that eventing was not only long and tedious, it wasn't interesting enough now that it was shorter. Solution? Add more questions on course. A lot more. Killer, impossible, wicked questions that sometimes can completely confuse horses. Problem Number Two with modern eventing: changes in the cross-country course to make it 'more exciting.' It was exciting enough, thank you. Now, riders are having to come down out of their rhythmic gallops to these very slow coffin-canters and negotiating obstacles that, let's face it, you're NEVER going to find while galloping off to battle! Jimmy Wofford always talks about jumping out of your gallop rhythm and not needed a rebalancing zone before every fence because you're always balanced, but this no longer applies to modern eventing. You HAVE to slow down before a combination. These seriously complicated questions can and do confuse horses. And all that slowing down, speeding up, slowing down, speeding up, REALLY takes it out of a horse.

Problem Number Three, speculation: is too much emphasis on dressage now, with the conditioning fading? This is not my personal opinion, but I've heard it voiced before. The dressage phase of eventing is becoming violently competitive, especially at the lower levels - why do you think I do so much dressage?? - and at the upper levels, questions are being asked that have never been included before, such as half-passes, flying changes, serpentines, shoulder-ins, counter-canter, and degrees of collection previously unheard of in the upper-level event horse. If you don't score like Bettina did this weekend (a 28.8), you're not going to be competitive. You can't make it up anymore if you get a 50 and your horse jumps around fabulously... those days are long gone. The argument is that this new emphasis on dressage is taking away a horse's ability to think for itself. Which is a load of bull, but I can see how people might think that. If a horse is waiting for you to tell it what to do because it's so obedient, it might not be able to get itself out of a scrap. But I can tell you one thing, you won't see ME riding a horse like that x-country.

Problem Number Four, speculation: there is not enough GOOD riding anymore. Without good horsemanship and conditioning, without excellent position and equitation, a rider is bound to hinder her horse, and sometimes a huge rider error can result in a horse being unable to get itself out of a situation that a rider put it in. I've seen it happen before... I know I make mistakes, and I'm very thankful my horse can get herself out of them.

Problem Number Five, speculation: there is TOO MUCH good riding. If a horse on x-country is ridden perfectly every time, what happens when it makes a mistake and the rider CAN'T help it out? The horse won't know how to get itself out of a bad situation unless it learns how to make mistakes and recover from it. Again, speculation, but I've heard this spin too.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Feel free to add on.


So what's being done? What can be done? What should be done? What shouldn't? I'm afraid I'll have to put this in another post, because this is getting freakishly long and I'm freakishly tired.




By the way, here's a PETA-type website about the dangers of eventing - a little over the top, but there's some hard data behind it and some very strong opinions that go with that.



Another by the way, about the whole 'no horse has ever dropped dead during dressage' thing? A horse did do exactly that at the Maui Jim CIC** in 2007, from a pulmonary hemorrhage. Really tragic, and it unfortunately just goes to show that death happens everywhere. A horse died this year after XC at Beginner Novice too. Horses die at combined driving events, while rounding up cattle, trailriding, hopping over small fences, giving birth. I knew of a horse that, while his owner was dismounting after a light hack, seized up and bled out through every hole in his head, dead before he even hit the ground. Horses die, and I hate it.



King Pin, by the way, died of a rare condition that involved massive hemorrhaging of the major vessels in his abdomen - unrelated to jumping or running or trauma. Godspeed...



EDIT: By the way AGAIN, I thought I should metion that there are 115 people competing in Open Novice at King Oak. 115. That's a good five or six while divisions of Open Novice - Novice A through freaking Novice E or F. That's insane. And we still haven't been able to go XC schooling.... heart palpitations.

The Shortest Rolex Update Ever

I'm here, Rolex is amazing, the weather is beautiful, The Good Witch got totally screwed on her beautiful dressage test (awarded a 53.0 for a beautiful, fluid test, placed far behind 'big name' riders with multiple blaring errors in their tests), had a great and strong XC run until the Corners and then took off on a half-stride, hung a front leg, helicoptered over the fence and fell. Both she and Jennifer are OK but they loaded both onto vehicles and transported them away. Mike Winter's Olympic mount Kingpin, 5th horse on course in the AM, looked great coming to fence 9, then came to fence 10 with his head hocked, took the fence, came down with both his back legs on it, somersaulted and fell - died on the scene, possibly in midair. A full necropsy is being performed, but it is speculated that he died from a pulmonary embolism. Preliminary necropsy inspection states that there were no broken bones that had been found, but there was bleeding in the abdomen. Mike Winter went to the hospital but they think he's okay.

I hate to say it, but they really 'dumbed down' the XC course this year - much simpler than I ever remember it. Is that what we need though? Is the four-star level unobtainable to the mortal man? SHOULD it be? Have we done all we can do for safety?Everything I saw looked frangible - nothing like the killer flower basket jump last year that claimed Frodo Baggins. And what CAN you do at the very top level when temperatures are in the 80's and you're galloping and jumping for 11 minutes? Horses can and do suffer major body failure when under the influence of such stress. Horses can and do suffer major body failure standing in their pastures too.

I'll tell you something though. Eventing is under violent fire. Everyone is on about how it's a 'killer sport', slaying horses left and right. Last year, there were an alarming number of horse deaths in eventing, no one can deny it. But did anyone look at racing for instance? How come with the tragic deaths of big names like Barbaro and Eight Belles, nobody pointed fingers at the dangers of racing? Nobody flushed out the crooked likes of trainers, jockeys and owners who run their young horses too hard, too fast, too young? A recent study shows that over 5000 racehorses have died at the track since 2003, most due to catastrophic breakdown. That's over 800 a year, most at seedy backwoodsy tracks - and how many deaths DON'T get reported? Does ANYONE else thing that maybe RACING is a more dangerous sport? Are the big, twisted names there paying off people to keep their mouths shut?

Eventing is a honest sport for 99% of it, and the honest people behind it are looking for honest answers to the big safety questions nobody has asked until now. In the 1936 Olympics for eventing, for example, only fifteen of forty-eight horses competing in that event negotiated the number four water obstacle with no difficulty. Twenty-eight horses fell, and three refused to jump it at all. The obstacle injured three horses so badly they had to be destroyed on the scene while dozens of others lost confidence or at a minimum lost time on the course due to the experience. One rider had to chase his horse for several miles before mounting and continuing on. The water obstacle ended up being incredibly deep in the center, and full of soft mud on the bottom - breaking legs as horses landed.

But nobody pointed fingers back then at safety, just at Berlin and Hitler (rightfully so, of course).

Now, if a horse trips over a tiny dent in the grass, everyone is up in arms about the safety of eventing.

There has got to be a better answer than all this. We've come so far towards making everything safer. I've never seen such a massive, collective uprising of people making a move for a better tomorrow. But why do people thing it's STILL not good enough?

More, and pictures, later.

Rolex Bound

Tomorrow I'm leaving for Rolex! As for today, I had another absolutely stunning dressage lesson on Gogo. I widened my hands again when she went to come above the bit during our warmup, and she really seemed to accept that and move into my contact. We had an AMAZING canter near the end, some fabulous transitions, some fancy travers-renvers transitions, and some outstanding moments of sitting way back and taking a nice load of weight onto her hind end during some of our half-halts. We even had a lovely stretchy circle at the end where she came right back to me, how bout that.

She also had her feet done tonight, and they looks beautiful if I do say so myself :D I have a bunch of pictures and I fully intend on writing up a post about them, but as for now, I need to keep packing for tomorrow. I will, however, leave you with a picture of the shirt I made:



We're cheering for The Good Witch!! :D

Tomorrow, Gogo gets a very early morning modified conditioning hack (like the ones we did all winter), and then she'll have three days off. Not really ideal right now, but that's the way it is. I'm not about to let anybody on her at this point, or ever! I still have to work in the AM, so it's going to be a REALLLLLY early morning for me - probably starting at 4AM. Suck.

But it's all worth it!! I'll get a zillion pictures and video, I promise :D I also promise I'll put up some of my pics from the last three times I've gone, cause I have some AWESOME ones!

YAAAAAY ROLEX!!

Rain, rain, PLEASE go away

All last week, I had been hoping that I was going to get to go x-country schooling on Monday. It was gorgeous and warm allllllllll week, and Monday was the only day I could have a groundperson, so I was hopeful that it would hold out. And... it did not. Of course. Why would it? Yesterday was dreary, cold, and sleet-y. On top of that, my dog came in from her morning romp absolutely three-legged lame, so we had to go to the vet in the afternoon anyway. (As it turns out, being a greyhound she has a corn on her pad... which I had to diagnose myself, the vet was TOTALLY unhelpful and a waste of money and time!)

So THAT sucks. With this weekend being Rolex and all, I won't be able to do anything until NEXT Monday, if the weather holds, and if the weather doesn't hold? I've got one more Monday (or maybe a Saturday if I can convince Shannon) and that's IT before King Oak. I am reallllllllllllly jittery about that! We NEED to get out and at least get over some jumps in a x-country setting so her brain doesn't explode the first time we do it. Historically, the first course of the year is always a little bit hairy, just because she hasn't done it all winter. Maybe this year will be different. But I'd really rather NOT take that chance, thanks very much! So keep your fingers crossed that the weather holds.

In other news, we had another awesome conditioning hack on Sunday, this time back to the Larkin Bridle Trails where I went for our first 2-hour hack. We're up to 25 minutes of trot now, with the remainder of the two hours walking. She's still having an easy time of it, and didn't break a sweat or hardly breathe at all by the end of it. She did, however, have a total panic attack about the bugs - head flinging, twitching, tossing, obnoxiousness all the way home, unless there was an open area where there was a breeze. At some point, I put her to work and did leg yield zigzags back and forth and back and forth across the trail to try and get her mind on something else, but to no avail. I eventually just gave up and listened to my iPod and ignored it. We passed two horses at some point, and she didn't even slow down or look at them once - just trotted right on by like they didn't exist. But later in the ride? We passed a tiny little farm, and a rooster crowed. CUE FLAMING HEAT. She started screaming uncontrollably and peeing all over the place. And when the rooster crowed again? You bet, more screaming and peeing. Seriously, Gogo? Not even the same species! I could make a very lewd joke right now but I'll refrain.
So that explains why she's been so touchy about the bugs, and a little bit tense through her topline starting out. I'm hoping once her flaming-ness goes away a bit, she'll be a little more tolerant. I hear through the grapevine that King Oak is very buggy. So let's just hope for a 120mph hurricane that morning so all the bugs will blow away.

Yesterday, I was bumming about not going x-country schooling and figured I ought to jump instead, but I was just in a bit of a funk over my poor dog's lameness and all the dreary weather, so I decided that I'd take a bit of a break from our hectic show schedule and just have some fun. I was totally inspired by Daun's post about just going for a nice bareback cruise, so I did too. (One of our boarders came into the tack room after I was done and proclaimed in a very put-out voice that I was clinically insane for doing it. Thanks.) We hacked out through the orchard for a few minutes, then went into the outdoor (which is not fenced in, by the way) and actually did some legitimate bareback dressage. I've had some difficulty in the past with Gogo's relatively bouncy trot (for a bareback ride, that is!) and her very up-type canter while riding bareback, so I figured I'd see what I could do. And lo and behold, when she came round (or, well, roundER than she had been going), I suddenly had a place to sit that was totally comfortable. And when we cantered? Totally balanced, totally comfortable, both ways. I didn't feel like she was dropping out from underneath me during every stride like she tends to want to do, and like I've felt bareback in the past with her. It was lovely. And comfortable. And FUN. I used to ride bareback ALL. THE. TIME. when I had my first horse in his semi-retirement. All winter long before I bought Metro, I never put a saddle on him. I even jumped him 3' bareback a few times (wasn't supposed to be doing that... thank god we didn't get killed!). When I first got Metro, I used to take off his tack after every ride and go lope around bareback... he had THE most rocking horse canter in the entire world and it was so comfortable. I miss those fuzzy boys.

Today, I had a rather fabulous dressage lesson. She started out pretty tight in her back, and I tried something different - when she came above the bit, I widened both hands. When she relaxed and stretched down, I brought my hands back to normal position and relaxed them. She figured out pretty quickly where I wanted her to be! Maybe this is one more tool I can work into my warmups. Our transitions were rather stellar today, and we spent a good deal of time schooling crisp halts - Gogo tends to want to kind of shuffle into them, and cross her front legs over from right to left (escaping through my apparently wide-open left aids!), so we made a real effort to make sure they were PROMPT, SQUARE and STRAIGHT. That REALLY improved the quality of the trot we had too. We also got to school some shallow canter loops, which can be difficult for her due to her rather enormous canter stride. I can play around all I want with exercises to develop collection in the trot, but her canterwork is going to be HARD to try and collect. I haven't really even gone there at this point much, because the quality of her working canter is very imporant to me, especially at these lower levels of eventing, and I want to make sure that it's seriously 100% before we delve into these harder questions. I don't doubt that she's ready to work on some exercises to help develop collection in her canter though, so I imagine we'll start asking her to load those hind legs more and bring the enormity of her stride into a more contained way of going. Her lengthenings/mediums are getting HUGE. I love it.


All the leaves on the trees are starting to explode, giving everything a green fuzzy haze. The grass is growing rapidly, the forsynthias and apple blossoms and daffodils are all in full bloom. The rain smells fresher, the horses' sweat sweeter. Summer is coming, and I can't wait. Aside from all this wicked rain, I love springtime around here. We had thunderstorm roll in today with one ENORMOUS thunderclap - I was bringing the three year-old in from the field, of course, rather hurridly from the suddenly downpour when suddenly lightning flashed. I had about two seconds to register what it was before the thunder, and the little thing jumped on top of me and about trampled me in his panic. Back in the barn, I discovered a bunch of wide-eyed, worriedly nickering horses, and one of the horses that had been in the crossties had broken his halter, left it still hanging in both ties, and had wandered away naked to the garbage can and was eating something out of it. Hmmm...



Twelve days from now, it'll be the five-year anniversary of Quincy's death. I don't think I quite understand where that time has gone.

And two days from now? I'll be in Kentucky screaming for my favorite riders, running pell-mell around the x-country course, shopping 'til I drop, and snuggling with my fiancee. Seriously, could there POSSIBLY be a better way to spend a weekend?

Gogo developing a lengthening across the diagonal. And me posting awkwardly.