Hope you enjoyed the photos from Rolex yesterday, today I will share the rest with you. No, I am not venturing into eventing folks I just love watching anything to do with horses. Think I will stick to riding the trails and chasing an occasional cow or two. Frankie and I worked on backing down the drop off hill yesterday and also on trotting at hand. He got the backing part down but trotting at hand will require some more work. It is necessary if I am to show him in conformation classes at the ranch horse shows. Now onto more Rolex stuff:
After watching several horses go at the head of the lake jump we moved on to view the sunken road jump. This one was actually the jump before the lake one.
Here the rider had to jump a fence constructed of what looked like driftwood then jump down into a sand pit, jump back up out of the sand pit and over another big wood jump. We did see one refusal on this jump at the last element, however in eventing they can just try to complete the portion they refused instead of doing the whole sequence again.
In the picture above the rider has cleared the first fence and is heading to the jump down portion.
Unfortunately my camera has a really long delay so I could not get the gray horse in sequence for you to see. This is the middle part of the "road" the sand pit they jump down into and out of.
Here the rider has jumped back up out of the pit and is approaching the final jump of this sequence. There was not much room between the jump up and this next jump
I would guess maybe three strides for these horses. Just incredible stuff to watch!
We then move on to another jump called the log cabins, yes they were two little log cabins to jump. I could not get a true picture of this layout for you but the line between these jumps is what made it so difficult. They had to jump the first one on a hill then do a sharp 90 degree turn to the left to go up another hill and jump the second one. To make it harder there was a chimney on the second one in the middle of the roof, which meant they could not jump the center of the jump without hitting it.
In the photo above the rider is clearing the first cabin, can you see how she is having to turn the horse for the next jump even before the landing??
Here is the second cabin she did a really nice job on this jump!
This is actually another horse and rider doing the second cabin I just love the sky in this picture.
We did watch some more jumps but I retired my camera and just watched the rest of the day. Unfortunately we did hear of one horse that collapsed on the field and later found out he hit a jump and broke a leg, he was euthanized on the spot.
Sad news and it did dampen the spirits, but as with any sporting event accidents are inevitable.
Later that evening us girls convened on my new little farmhouse and proceeded to get happy with cocktails and reminiscing. We stayed up til midnight and laughed until we cried. All in all a great weekend that I will remember for a long time to come.
Hope you enjoyed the ride!
