Sunday, April 15, 2012

On course

I had a great day today at the Plantation Field Horse Trials. This is a two-day, three-part event where horses compete in dressage, stadium jumping and cross-country. I was what is called a "fence judge" for the latter part of the competition, which means that you sit out on the course and report in by walkie-talkie on whether each horse clears the jump to which you are assigned.
Pick up a walkie-talkie and immediately you start sounding like you're in a war movie: "Roger that," I heard myself saying at one point. And I've noticed that each judge has his or her own style of reporting in: some sound like excited sports announcers; others end every announcement with a rising tone of voice, like they're asking a question or are not quite sure.

Fortunately, I had absolutely no problems at "my" jumps: all the horses cleared them with no refusals or falls. It's fun to hear the riders praising their horses after a clear jump: "Good boy!" And the people who run the competition have it down to a science so that everything runs very smoothly.
And the weather was lovely, which is not always the case: one of the organizers recalled that last year it was 40 degrees and raining so hard that they had to cancel the final day.

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