Kentucky 2022 - Show Jumping & Shopping

The last day of the event was really great. We woke up late-ish and I had actually gotten enough sleep and a good amount of sleep, so I felt pretty good, or would have if my entire body wasn’t sore from the day before! I’m definitely getting myself fitter (and not having a hip injury) the next time I go to this event. 

Seats for show jumping also thanks to Nicole!

We first went to the Correct Connect booth in the trade fair because I’d seen a jump strap I wanted. I’ve never really used one, but I want to get used to using it and figured it’d also be helpful for my niece learning to ride too. While holding the jump strap, I saw that they made super cute breeches in a very light fabric. And so I walked out with a jump strap, and two pairs of breeches, and two shirts to match. I also got a free halter, but it’s gold and brown, which are the opposite of my colors, so I’ll probably donate that. 

We walked around for a bit, but I didn’t find anything else to buy. I did talk to the Free Jump stirrup people but ultimately didn’t buy stirrups for my niece on this trip. She doesn’t need them until she wants to ride by herself and I think we are at least three months out from that. She’s also very little so if I’m going with a safety stirrup, I want something that is actually going to break away if she falls. I think she’s too little for the Free Jump stirrups to actually work. But it was good to learn about them! 

I also had to get this shirt, I love the
color and the fabric was very cool

I legit tried to spend money, I did! I
wanted to buy these boots for schooling
but Ariat does not think that tall
calves go with small feet

When show jumping was an hour out, we went to get lunch and then find our seats. What a fun experience it was to be there in person! We watched the early rounds, learning how the course was riding, but then once we were in the top six or seven, it got super serious. The crowd was silent except for some gasping after tough distances, groaning when a rail came down, and clapping after the insane combination and the entire round. 

There was one option to either make a couple of tight turns to one jump, or to go around over another. It was interesting to see who decided to do what. 

Michael Jung won the event of course. What I didn’t know at the time was that this was his fourth win at Kentucky, which is a record for the event, and it was the lowest score ever won at a five star, making it a world record. How incredible. The man is the best rider in the world, there’s just no doubt. It was so amazing to be there to see him ride in person. 

What a horse, seriously

At the end of the day, I snagged a couple of saddle pads from Smartpak that were on sale and we walked around the property. We ended up seeing fischerChipmunk getting unpacked and hosed off as we walked by. What a cool horse! He was yawning and relaxing as his people fawned over him. 

On Monday, we went to see a thoroughbred breeding farm to see some baby horses. That was super fun! We also went to the museum of the horse at the Horse Park, which was also great. Soon though, it was time to drop Nicole and I off at the airport so that we could fly home and get back to work. And then we were on our respective planes and I was back in California in the very similar weather. 

Look at the little baby! This one warmed
up to us quickly for some scratches

The farms out in Lexington are also unreal!

I’m SO glad I went to Kentucky. It was such a blast to be able to go for the first time ever. It made me so grateful for my new job that allowed me to go so early in my tenure there and for my friends, most of whom agreed to go with me when I announced that I was GOING this year and wanted them to come with me. And they dealt with my incredibly weird affect while I was struggling with my insomnia, thank you friends! Unfortunately I got home and it got worse, but I'm hoping I have broken it now. 

I am DEFINITELY putting this on the calendar as an annual tradition. Even with some of my shopping decisions, I was way under budget for the trip and am excited to come back as often as I can. What an experience! 

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. 

Kentucky 2022 - Dressage

Oh man, I have been wanting to post these posts for this entire week! But work has been so busy. The two days right before I left and the three when I got back were absolute madhouse. I did get some exceptional food for Cinco De Mayo yesterday though and we have today off so I'm spending it with the horses of course. And setting up these posts!

Unfortunately, with work being so busy the couple days before and my insomnia returning with a vengeance last month, most of my weekend in Kentucky was spent in zombie mode. But luckily I took a lot of pictures, so I'm sure I can piece together what happened!

Thursday! L spent the dressage days
seeing thoroughbreds so it was just
the four of us for a couple days

My brother came to pick me up on Wednesday morning because he lives on the other side of the airport and the SO was in meetings all afternoon. It was fun to chat with him on the way to the airport (and tell him that his child is going to be obsessed with eventing one day) and then in no time, I was waiting outside the gate. I grabbed some food and moved myself up in the plane because my flight had been delayed and I was facing a short layover. 

When planning, it had turned out that Nicole and I had booked the same flight from DFW to Lexington, so we chose seats next to each other and she was able to hold the plane for a moment for me to get there! Both myself and my bag did make it to Lexington. 

Proof we made it: ponies were the
first thing we saw when we landed

The coolest part of all of this was landing in Lexington and seeing how horse centric the city is. The Bay Area is essentially the opposite of that, with most of my coworkers being shocked that there are horses anywhere near us. There were advertisements for thoroughbred studs and farms, tons of horse statues and pictures, and signs that said Equine something or other all over the place. 

We got a ride from a very Kentuckian Lyft driver to our AirBnb and met up with L there. Our other friends were driving in from Louisville and by 1am, there were six of us in our cute and quirky AirBnb! 

Insane to see it all in person!

Wednesday night I did sleep better, but that isn't saying much and that plus the jet lag meant that I was an absolute zombie the entire day on Thursday. I have vague memories of wandering around the horse park and also of Peony chatting excitedly with Amanda and Hillary while I tried to stay conscious and took in just enough to realize that I came across as a huge weirdo. Great!

Luckily we didn’t have anything we *had* to do on Thursday, so we hung out in the morning, made some breakfast, and then made our way to the horse park. 

 

Of course we had to go see this guy

I’ve never been to the horse park, but I’ve heard it’s incredible and I can confirm that it’s incredible. We didn’t have seats for dressage on Thursday, so we kind of watched here and there but spent most of the time wandering around shopping. There were tons of tents set up with lots of brands I’d only heard of. 

My goal for the trip was to find a helmet for myself and stirrups for my niece. I want her in safety stirrups since she's a little daredevil (she is already cantering with me double at 2 years old lol her favorite words are "MORE FAST AUNT MIMI") and will probably fall off a lot, but I want to find the tiniest ones I can because she's in like, the 14th percentile in human size and will probably stay that way since her mom is so tiny. Neither of those I ended up finding, oh well. If anyone has any non-peacock safety stirrup recommendations for a tiny person, let me know. I want her to start riding on her own later this summer because my legs are tired from nudging the pony along. 

I came close to buying a OneK but their medium is just the tiniest bit too tight on my head. I love how you can change up the plates though so I was very close to just buying it and seeing if it'd break in a bit. It would have been so fun to have different plates for my different horse sports! The best fit came from a Charles Owen AYR8 Plus, but that’s a $520 helmet and it was not on sale, so not worth buying just to have to bring it home. But it was good to know that it fits, so when I do go to buy a helmet, I will just buy that one.

I did buy a jump strap though!

Thursday night, we ended up ordering food for pick up from a local restaurant, and that, plus the lunch earlier that day which was supposed to be Mediterranean but they offered us BBQ for a sauce, started us off realizing that Kentucky’s food is… it’s fine. It's edible and it's fine. 

On Friday, we did have seats, so we slept in and then headed over to the horse park to watch dressage for real. Thanks to Nicole, we could see the court easily, unobstructed by pillars! We were also protected from the elements, although it was sunny all weekend. 

Seats, courtesy of Nicole, thank you Nicole!!

We saw some of the bigger names go and I was generally really impressed with the dressage. The test looks fun and flows well, with some challenging parts, such as going from an extended canter to a stretchy canter circle (which I do really like, it used to be part of Second level and putting it after an extended canter, amazing, I love it). I definitely want to ride it on TC when we get back to that point. 

Obviously Michael Jung was in first place after dressage, it was a beautiful test. Boyd’s test was also really fabulous to see in person and he did this amazing counter canter circle to come up centerline which I was *obsessed* with, I'm definitely using that when TC and I get to Fourth level. What a brilliant way to enter the court to guarantee you're straight AND that your horse isn't going to go do a line of tempis up the centerline (erm, Rico and I got a lot of 5s on centerlines). Not all show facilities will allow for this around here, but I am determined to enter in counter canter from now on when I can.

There were some less well known riders (I mean, to me most riders are less well known so don't take my word for it) who put in really quality tests with correct basics. No one is perfect of course, but the quality of the basics were seen in the quality of the extensions, stretchy canter, and rein backs, and there were a lot of great basics. 

INSANE and very well deserved score

Smartpak ran a course walk with Boyd Martin, so we did end up going on that and getting to see some of the course. To someone who is jumping solidly BN right now, the jumps looked HUGE. It was cool to hear what he thought about each of the harder parts of the course though. I really like the technical aspect of the sport! 

On Friday, we ended up going out to dinner and continuing our uninspiring tour of Kentucky’s food scene. We did get really good ice cream though! I’ll give Kentucky that, they do unhealthy food really well, which I can definitely appreciate. I think it was that evening that we decided to cook for ourselves from then on. 

Friday night we decided to go to bed relatively early to get up early for cross country day!