Kentucky 2022 - Cross Country

We woke up fairly early on cross country day so that we could spend the entire day at the horse park. The four star went in the morning and then the five star started just after lunch. 

The classic shot

After declining Jen’s tailgating invitations for years, we finally got to go! We spent the morning there watching the four star from the tailgating spot while we enjoyed Jen’s amazing food. Legitimately it was the best food we had all weekend (we did cook for ourselves a few times, which was also very good, so that’s my advice). 

It was blogger central, which was fun! I finally got to meet some new bloggers after so many years of not meeting anyone in person. As expected, everyone was super nice. My insomnia made it really difficult to interact normally with other humans, but I tried! 

After an amazing lunch, we decided to go to the start (and end) of the course to try to watch every jump. It was kind an out and back course, so we were able to see the first and last jumps and zig zag between the tracks before we ended up at the head of the lake. 

Watching the four star from Jen's tailgating spot,
which I neglected to get a picture of

The jumps are HUGE, obviously, these horses are so incredible. Seeing it in person is other worldly at times, like what even is this place where the grass is green and the jumps are as large as a small house? 

We were lucky to not see anything too scary. The worst we saw was a horse landing a little hard on the ditch and wall and the rider popping off. Horse and rider were totally fine, just an unfortunate moment.

There was a really long hold out on course and we had no idea why. This was the challenge all day. I bet if we had been better at paying attention, we could have figured it out, but it was really hard to hear/pay attention to the announcer. So we were sitting at the Normandy bank wondering what was going on and the longer the hold was, the more nervous we were. Without being afraid of what was happening, it was honestly nice to just sit down and relax, but we were on edge worrying. 

Later on we found out that a horse had fallen in the water and had to be sedated and taken off course. No one knew anything else around us though. Only that afternoon when the day had ended did we finally figure out which horse it was and that the horse was going to be fine (we knew the rider was fine from earlier in the day), so that was good! Still really scary to be out on course and I can’t imagine what it would have been like to see it happen.

All of my pictures were from videos on my phone
if you can't tell lol

I was so impressed when the hold stopped and the horse finally came through our jump, what a jump to be held in front of! But whoever came through was amazing and just popped right through. And then we continued our walk! 

The coffin complex was absolutely amazing to watch, as was the sunken road. We finally saw Boyd Martin and Michael Jung come through when we were at the edge of the course. Seeing both of them up close was pretty cool, different styles of riders but both rode so seamlessly over the fences we saw them at. 

We ended up at the head of the lake watching the last few riders. We moved around a bit to make sure we got to see it from different angles. During that time, a rider ended up causing a jump to collapse, so that was interesting to see! We’d seen one earlier on the 4* course that was being stored collapsed and it’s really amazing technology. Not like I’ll ever jump a jump with frangible tech, but I still love that they’re working hard to make the sport safer. 

These open ramp jumps are pretty scary, yikes

At the end of the day, I was feeling so inspired. I’ve had a rough time with the dressage for the last few years and jumping has been a fun thing to do to take my mind off of it. I wondered whether this weekend would make me want to event more or make me shift my gears toward another sport where the jumps fall down. But after that weekend, I am very confident that I want to make my return to eventing. I sat down that evening and did some calculations on where I needed to get to in my career and how much I needed to save to buy my next horse, who I want to be an eventer. 

I love dressage and I always will. I want to continue to learn and take TC up through the levels. But I want to be in a sport where I don’t have such a sour taste. And for that, eventing is perfect. 

It’ll take me a little while to get to the point where I can buy a horse (since I’m going to want a hefty budget so I can buy something very safe and who is my very specific ride over fences), but I do want to switch disciplines. Or at least, add another discipline! So, two to three years from now, I’ll be in the market for something very specific and hopefully will be gearing up to run my first BN in fifteen years.