PACKING FOR WEG 2010 KENTUCKY?

The Thoroughbred Park Sculpture Collection by Gwen Reardon
(Photo : Gwen Reardon)

ALTECH FEI WORLD EQUESTRIAN GAMES

If you are not packing for Kentucky, what are you doing?

With the world's biggest yearling sale, Keeneland September Sale, underway for just over a week and the World Equestrian Games starting as the sales end, it would seem that if you are not in Kentucky or packing your bags to leave, then you must be missing something!

Reports from the sales are that trade continued to be robust during Monday's session, which was headlined by the $450,000 paid for a colt by Tapit.

As the sales wind down to end on Sunday 26th September, the World Equestrian Games kick off on Friday the 25th September at the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington. There will be an influx of people from all over the world, not least of which will be a contingent of South African's to support our riders as the show the rest of the world what South Africa is capable of.

Most exciting is that our eventers are competing on South African horses, internationally, for the first time. News from the team is that the horses arrived safely in Cincinnati and travelled like old campaigners. They will be trucked across to Lexington today to take up their temporary residence in the Kentucky Equestrian Park.

The flight from Europe formed just one of the 10 charter flights transporting the almost 450 horses, departing from Belgium's Liege airport between 16-29 September, to the United States.

The eventers, Paul Hart, Douglas Welsh, Heidi Wood, Martyn Swanepoel and Graham Winn start competing on Friday 30th September in their dressage classes, with the Cross Country on Saturday 2nd October and culminating on Sunday 3rd October with their show jumping. The closing ceremony will be held on Sunday 10th October.

The first of the SA riders to compete will be Shane Borland in the Reining classes on the first day of the games, followed the next day by the Endurance team, including Dominique van Zyl.

Click here for the full 2010 Altech FEI World Equestrian Games event schedules.

We look forward to great results from all of our South African teams and wish them the very best of everything from the Vuma team.

Click here for the full SA equestrian Team.

SA EVENTING NEWS FROM FRANCE

Compiegne Equestre

SOUTH AFRICAN RIDERS AT THE COMPIEGNE CCI*

Suzanne Boswell writes about our SA riders event in Compiegne :

What a successful weekend for our South African eventers at the CCI** at Compiegne, France. There were 101 starters with 80 riders and 12 countries being represented at this show, including the legendary Mark Todd!

After a very successful dressage phase our South African riders Paul Hart, Martyn Swanepoel, Graham Winn and Hayley Parker were well placed in the middle of the field. The best dressage score was a 33.2 from Jung from the Netherlands!

The entire team was wearing their SA flag hat covers and it was a very proud and poignant moment for SA eventing!! Paul and Heartbreak Hill were first to go into the country. They went clear for jumping but had some time faults as their team coach, Jean Philippe wanted a steady clear round.  Paul said Harry could have gone much faster but he was ecstatic about his round. Next to go was Martyn who had an unfortunate stop at No.4 and finished about a minute over the time. Graham was next in, Zorba went off at a cracking rate but had an unfortunate fall at number 3, both horse and rider are fine thankfully. Hayley had a run out at the skinny at 17 and also incurred time penalties.

On Sunday was the showjumping. The jumps were big and the oxers were very square which is something our course builders should take note of here. The course was quite spooky and there were hundreds and hundreds of spectators. Each of our riders took 3 poles. Jean Philippe was extremely pleased with our team performance. visit www.psvphoto.com to see pictures of all 3 phases.

The next event will be Saumur from the 20 to the 23rd of May.