Karen's Blog - August 25

Chance Encounters
I ran into Gran Gesto’s owner Anne Welch in the unglamorous setting of the bathroom yesterday. Even though there were 48,000 people here for the Grand Prix Speciale, it is somehow not difficult to find your friends, especially when your designated meeting spot is a Warsteiner tent.

I’ve heard from two separate Canadian sources that there are many rumours circulating about as many as seven lame horses in the dressage. I watched most of the jog, and the only horses that looked dodgy to me were held. I thought Brentina looked great. And in the GP I can say she definitely didn’t look lame. She is not the most athletic mover anyway. And as far as other lame horses go, I haven’t seen any out there in the ring.

Cross Country: Skinny, Skinny and More Skinny
The recurring theme on the course was, you guessed it, skinnies. And they took a fine share of victims. I saw William Fox-Pitt run out at 15C, one of the crueler ones, to be immediately followed by Andrew Hoy with the same run out. Those that did it well made it look like a grid with wings; it was a Normandy bank to a bounce over a log with a steep downhill landing and then three strides (Australians) or four strides (Germans) to the narrowest hedge you ever did see. Predictions that the first water was the ‘big one’ were correct, but the last water took a few, like Phillip Dutton, by surprise – if they made it that far. Around half way through the day we went more than half an hour without seeing a horse at the second water, which was the last big challenge for tired horses. Ian bailed at fence 3, and Kelli never started, but as I haven’t talk to them yet I don’t know exactly what happened to either of them. Apparently Kelli’s horse was ‘not quite right’ this morning. Ian’s horse was apparently too enthusiastic and slipped on the approach to the third fence. I sure hope our jumpers and reiners have a better time of it than we saw this week. Nothing like going out on course to watch your countrymen and to discover that unless you were at fence 1 or 2 you are out of luck.

The other kind of skinnies on course were the many funnels, usually created by ditches crossed by little bridges, at which human traffic ground to a halt. The predicted numbers for today were around 100,000, and it certainly looked like that from many vantage points. The real numbers were somewhat lower, at 44,000. Umbrellas turned out to be thankfully unnecessary. The weather was quite ideal, and the footing (on course) looked as though it held up very well to the last horse. There were some pretty significant muck holes caused by spectators however, and of course they were in the places everyone had to pass through to get on and off the course.

Freestyles – The World’s Biggest Audience
It has to be the biggest crowd ever for a dressage event of any kind. The standing room area is so full that it is almost impossible to traverse it. Tribes of fans (the Dutch in Orange are the most visible) staked out their pieces of pavement hours ago. The announcer asked people who don’t have tickets with seats in this stadium to go to Stadium Two and watch it on the big screen. Yeah, right.

That Danish mare. There was nothing to touch it tonight under the floodlights, for pure magic. Most of her music wasn’t great except for the ‘voulez-vous coucher avec moi’ for her final passage, which was awesome. But she didn’t need music. She shone so brightly that she overwhelmed any music anyway. I know that sounds mushy but it’s true. She was the real champion tonight. Anky’s freestyle, same music as from two years ago, just seems to have lost its sparkle for me, but that may be because I have decided I definitely don’t like the way she makes the horse go. And the judges gave her the usual 90+ for artistic, even though she was clearly behind her music for a lot of the time. Even my husband Jan could see that!

Okay, the music. A lot of it was dismal. Some of the freestyles had parts that really worked, but I can’t say that I was blown away. Now that might be because of what I do for a living most of the time when I’m not on my busman’s holidays being a journo. I am very proud that the music I made for Berna definitely stood up here, and that she got so much cheering. I know the cheering is for her, but reader please humour me…a bit of the cheering must surely have been for her music?

Anky, champion again of the freestyle, didn’t look that dignified tonight on the loaner horse the honour guard she bolted into the other night lent her. They tried to disguise him in the cooler that Salinero won (and they did fool Jan), but there was no hiding the lack of paces on the nice safe police horse that led the way around the stadium ahead of two of the world’s greatest, Blue Horse Matine and Satchmo. After the near-death experience of the other night she clearly wasn’t ready to do any victory laps on Salinero.

Instant results
One thing that is very much what I expected from the Germans is the website. Results are updated online a few minutes after every rider finishes. It’s also pretty user-friendly. It even has some video streaming, though I’ve been told it’s a bit jerky to watch. www.aachen2006.de is the place to go.

!related!