Day 4 - 4 August 2000
"The early bird catches the worm," they say but that's untrue when you have to deal with Denver traffic. First we took the wrong exit and then there were jams all over the place.
This ride took Mary and I one and a half hours. Mary now realised what JJ went through yesterday to get to the show grounds. "Tomorrow we'll have to leave by 5 AM," Mary proclaimed officially. OK, that's super!? When we arrived at the camper, JJ had already set up the booth, and that's the way to go.
Finally, the dressage competition started today. The team championships took place, and they were fun to watch. My general impression of the 2000 pack of young riders is that most of them ride decent schoolmasters on which they can acquire the touch and feeling of dressage. Of course some riders trained their horses from green broke through to Prix St. Georges level.
In between the rides I had to take care of the invoices, get some overhead digital shots of the shows, and scrutinise every single ride. By doing this I could make a decent in depth report on the class. I really liked Jacqueline Paxton's Cinbad. He has impressive canter work, super flying changes and wonderful pirouettes.
The horse with the most impulsion was Winter's Impression. Although he was not consistent throughout his test, he did show wonderful characteristics of an upper level dressage horse. Jodie Kelly presented the Belgian warmblood Jericho (by Lys de Darmen), a horse previously shown by Carlos de Cleermaeker from Belgium
Two days ago, we named Beryl Swanson and David Marcus the heroes of the day. Today the spotlight didn't shine on two riders but five horses: Dubiosis, Picone, Highness Norstar, Pinocchio and Rousseau. Just before number 29, Jonni Adams, entered the ring, all hell began to break loose. You saw the thick dark clouds come over the Rocky Mountains towards High Prairie Farms, but most people expected the storm to turn away from the show. Instead it struck us completely!
Lightening flashed in the distance, bringing the storm even closer to the show grounds. Mr Herbst, Mary Herbst's father, shouted "that's it, come off the horses." All riders, horses and about 50 spectators stood under a tin roof, sheltered from the first drops of rain. All the while, lightening struck all over the place and hail poured down. It was like Judgement Day. As long as all the spectators remained quiet (everything was co-ordinated and held together by Elisabeth Williams) the horses kept steady. Everybody stood scrunched together, because the hail was ice cold. Suddenly, the winds changed and turned back to warm weather. My first impression was that the blizzard was over. Just as we thought that the gods decided to spare us from their judgements, a second blow of cold air came swerling over the grounds. It was terrible, and in all reality very scary. Yet, under the circumstances everyone seemed to bond. When it finally stopped Elisabeth Williams announced that the class had been cancelled and the last 9 riders were to go tomorrow at 9.30 AM.
Meanwhile, back at Phelps' headquarters Mary was relaxing with a glass of wine, and JJ was off at the camera store. He escaped all the rain by being in town. We tried to clean up the camper a little because the water spilled sand and compost over the carpets. Worst of all, was that nothing was left of my nicely decorated golf cart. All crate paper was washed away, while pieces of duck tape still stuck on the roof and iron bars. Later, we drove to the hotel, and had superb Chinese take-out. The best thing about this dinner-for-three was that it only cost 6$. I tried to go online to post scores but that was impossible as the phone line was always busy (i.e. Mary was online all the time).
Photos: 1st: overhead of the arena - 2nd: Jodie Kelly with Jericho - 3rd: storm coming up