SOUTH AFRICAN EVENTING TEAM : 12 DAYS TILL TAKEOFF
Tuesday, September 7, 2010 at 10:31AM 
Paul Hart and Heartbreak Hill
(Photo : Vumafeed)
WORLD EQUESTRIAN GAMES
2010
The South African Eventing team depart for Kentucky in 12 days time.
Reporting on their progress from their training camp in St Jean, on the west coast of France, Paul Hart tells us that they are well on track and he believes that the horses are going to peak at the right time!
Paul says that St Jean is beautiful and they are doing a lot of beach riding for fitness, which started in earnest last Saturday. The going is great and not too soft.
They are training towards their optimum time for WEG which is 12 minutes at 570m/minute. The WEG track is 7km long and they are incorporating a lot of interval training to ensure peak fitness over the cross country course.
Their morning training continued yesterday and Paul had the following to say :
"We went to the beach to do fitness training yesterday again. We got there at seven am to perfect conditions.
We started with 20 minutes trotting and then seven minutes canter at 500m/minute followed by a two minute walk and back to canter for another seven minutes and then another two minute walk followed by a 10 minute trot on the beach and a minute walk in the sea for their legs.
Harry loves the sea and every time he thinks I won't notice he tries to roll in the water! In the afternoon we lunged for twenty minutes and then hand walked them for 30 minutes.
We are also cycling about 25km a day so we can stay fit!"
It sounds like our team are well on track to do us proud and we wish them the best of everything as they get closer to their goal.
The World Equestrian Games start on 25th September in Lexington, Kentucky. Will you be there?
