The inhabitants of Crockett House rose early this morning for a change. We were fairly late home last night as went to watch the Freestyle dressage which was great! Edward Gal won with a huge score but the crowd favourite after Totilas was certainly the Spanish rider Juan Muñoz Diaz and his wonderful Lusitano stallion, Fuego XII. When the judges’ scores were announced for this combination, the crowd decided that they were a bit mean and they booed the decision! It was like being at Aachen combined with a reining audience! It was an entertaining evening and the stands were almost full, giving the best atmosphere so far in the arena. As there were so many people there, we opted out of the massive queues for food or beer (very good beer) and decided to head for the authentic Kentucky Fried Chicken experience straight afterwards. Of course, it was closed so we headed for Wendy’s instead – also closed except for the drive-through where we held up everyone else by trying to make sense of the menu and generally acting like hysterical children. Oh we’re having fun!
Or we were until today – now we’re in mourning for the Australian eventing team. It started badly for the Australian side when the first team rider, Paul Tapner pulled up on course with an injury to Inonothing. We were ready and waiting by a big ditch jump and Paul seemed to be going really well but never reached us. It didn’t seem too serious an injury for Inonothing which is a relief but obviously was a bad blow for Paul and the team. But we knew that the others would do their absolute best to get round. Stuart Tinney certainly didn’t disappoint – Kiwi (Vettori) looked as if he was going as fast as his legs would take him and they were jumping with precision and style. They finished clear with just 0.4 time faults – a great effort and our hopes surged as we walked around the course.
US based Aussie individual rider, Peter Atkins and HJ Hampton came flying by (with helmet cam on – looking forward to seeing the next Go Henny video!) and they had a great round, going clear with only 2.8 time faults which brought them up to 23rd place. In general there seemed to be run-outs, falls and retirement on course happening left, right and centre. As Stuart said in the blog a couple of days ago, this was a big, BIG course which needed very accurate riding and we saw lots of very experienced combinations running out at fences and 21 riders did not complete the course. Chris Burton had a couple of run outs on the course which we didn’t see but he certainly was encouraging Leilani not to do it again when we did see him and he looked very determined! They looked super at the HayBales fence we saw them jump.
Our next team rider out, Sonja Johnson and Jag were held up for a while before starting but they looked fabulous when we saw them in the early part of the course. Jag had his neck eagerly stretched out and the fences seemed to present little problem – indeed they went clear but picked up 7.6 time faults putting them in 32nd place at the end of the day. So two team members were safely round and we were eagerly waiting for Sam Griffiths at Fence 7. Happy Times and Sam bounded down the hill but unfortunately had a run out at this fence. Ah well, several others had had the same problem there. Then disaster struck and we saw Sam and Happy Times on the big screen bite the dust at the Wishing Well. Thankfully, both got to their feet and seemed not badly hurt but the Australian team was out of the competition. 
With only a few horses left to go, we decided to beat the traffic and head back to Crockett House for a consolation drink. All eventers know that this is a tough sport but life goes on. We raise a glass to the team – bad luck for Paul and Sam, a great experience for Chris and well done to Stuart, Sonja and Peter for getting round a very tough course without jump penalties. Photos by Toni-anne Collins
