We’ve got another successful event at the Fair Hill International in the books. The two star started off slow – five of the first horses fell off and then things got going and we saw the results that we were expecting. In all there were a few stops and falls throughout the day but no major problems. It was a pretty nice day temperature-wise and I think the footing was as good as it could be. We sort of dodged a bullet with the rain the week before the event. All of the hard ground turned to good soft ground. The challenges on the course were spread around pretty well. We didn’t have any broken pins or MIM clips- really all we had to do was put out a bit of gravel and put flags back up when they get knocked down. A lot of the corners take a lot of abuse! Last year we had one get a flag caught in its tail. That’s one thing about sitting on a cross country course watching horse after horse go by: you’ll always see something new and unexpected!
We took down the portables this morning and all the permanent fences that he’s not planning to jump next year. It makes it easier to clean up the grounds when the jumps aren’t out there. Next year’s event will still be on the same piece of ground, so there probably won’t be any huge changes. The spring event might still be run on that property but I think everything is subject to change in the coming months as we figure out what the four-star is going to look like and how everything will work around that. Over time these questions will be answered but for now we’re planning to run a very similar track and won’t have any major dirt work. The tracks are still fairly new: the two-star is a two year old track and the three-star is a three year old track so we still have a few tricks up our sleeve for making things interesting.
I’m finally home for a couple of weeks, and have Full Moon Horse Trials left for this fall, then it’s all WEG: Capital W, Capital E, Capital G! We have a lot of jumps to build in the next four months. A lot of that has started with carving animals and things, and I’m meeting with Mark Phillips at the end of the month to go over the plan for the Eventing track and Richard Nichols mid-November to put some sticks in the ground and nail down his plan for the Driving Championships.
If you want to be part of be part of the action give us a call – we are still looking for help and it’s a great year to get involved! I’ve wanted to build a WEG course for 20 years, here’s an opportunity to do it the first year on the job.
