Still in the middle of WEG here. I have enjoyed watching some of the venues. I caught some Dressage the other day and watched the cross country this weekend with spectacular horses and riders. But my biggest thrill so far has been watching the individual competition of Reining!
My work was nice enough to provide tickets to me for the individual finals last Thursday. I made the mad dash across the grounds to the indoor arena in record time!
I got to watch the entire competition and the house was packed! I had great seats
2nd row in fact! My fellow co worker from the IT department was there and had his camera, you guys can thank IAN for these wonderful pictures I am gonna share. Of course he did not snap to many as we were engrossed in watching the competition.
All four Americans qualified for the individual finals, they were later in the competition. The caliber of these horses was phenomenal I tell you, everyone was riding to win!
The first rider was Tim McQuay on a beautiful palamino and he took the lead with a 222 score. Here is a shot of him.
We were ecstatic that USA had taken the lead but there were many runs yet to go.
next up was Craig Schmersal and he let it fly I tell you these guys held nothing back! Check out this slide!
Next up was Tom McCutcheon another Texan for team USA. Right from his opening stop I could tell he was in it to win it. This horse was spot on folks. His stops were blazing and his fast circles were amazing, had me holding my breath. He rocked the house and finished with a 228! Here is his opening slide!
We had one final rider to go and that was Shaun Flarida and his beautiful stallion.
Midway through his performance I could tell something happened. I saw Shaun reach out for his saddle horn to steady himself after the lead change. He finished his pattern but I could tell he was not asking the horse for much. We found out after his run that his stirrup leather had broke and he was riding with one stirrup. His score was a disappointing 207.5. He was favored to win and I really felt for him when this happened. I did not get any pictures of his run unfortunately.
So when the dust cleared and the scores were tallied, USA won gold and silver with Tom McCutcheon and Craig Schmersal! I stayed for the medal ceremonies and must tell you I was moved when they raised the flag and played our national anthem. A definite great day in my life!
I am going to try and watch some vaulting and combined driving this week and will of course keep you posted.
happy trails......
4 comments:
Sounds like you're having a blast! Nice header!
Hi there! Great to see you and Frankie having riding time together....he looks great and reminds me so much of Romeo! Reining is so interesting. A friend of mine, her daughter rode with Shaun F. this summer and had a blast!
Ahh I'm all choked up with Texas pride now! What a heartbreak for Shaun but it's one of those things that can happen to anyone I suppose. I think he did the right thing not endangering himself or his horse by pushing things harder and it seems like he still got a respectable score. I'm so happy for you that you get to be there firsthand to see it even if I'm green with envy at the same time lol
~~JennyB, Horsefeathers
You got to see the reiners in person, that is so darn cool. I had to be content to watch them on the tube. I had seen Shawn Flarida's go in the team competition and that horse is absolutely amazing so I was really disappointed to see his equipment failure in the individual medal class. You know if you add in the 15 penalty points, that score comes up to a 222 even with the horse not going full out so you can imagine how really great he is. Boy would I love to breed one of my mares to that horse.
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