Training Day

On Friday the Kiwi's came through on the promise of Nation's Cup horses. We were relieved because of the, errrr, fluidity, of the entire itinerary thus far. As promised 7 horses per team were rounded up and assigned. That gave us the chance to "throw out" two horses and pick the best five that most suited our riders.

Thursday evening Robyn and I had the official IPE meeting with the IPE officials and other coaches and managers and we were assigned group C of horses and we were given their "resumes." I had to get the other team's managers and coaches to help translate the heights of the horses and heights that they jumped because it was listed in centimeters and that was Greek to me. I needed fence heights in feet and horse height in hands! Once the conversions were done the numbers made sense, I was pleased with the roster because the horses all looked experienced and safe. I shared the roster with the girls and they each picked the horse that most suited them.

Friday morning we met up with our group of horses. We had a varied selection in our group. (Each group is assigned so that it's the fairest selection possible, for instance we each had a pony, a greener horse and some more experienced horses instead of anyone being stuck with all ponies, or all greenbeans or all schoolmasters- it levels the playing field.)

Team USA horses:
JK Santa- Holsteiner gelding, 4 ft jumper, evented through preliminary, owned by a woman who had evented through advanced and was shortlisted for the Syndney Olympics!
Wynyard Mickey- Irish hunter gelding, evented pre-novice (our training level)
Whippy- 14.1 pony jumper, pony clubbed and evented to pre-novice (our training level), show jumped to 3'6
SS Imperial- TB gelding, Intermediate eventer, owned by one of the NZ IPE riders
Zebedee- 3/4 TB 1/4 warmblood gelding, pre-novice eventer, owned by one of the NZ IPE riders. Just gelded a few weeks ago!
Renzo- 6 yr old TB gelding, evented pre-novice (our training) but still green
Bay gelding whose name I've forgotten- TB gelding evented pre-novice

We had about 45 minutes to get all 7 horses ridden, evaluated and paired with the most appropriate rider. I was happy with the first horses that Kelsey, Kaleigh and Susan were matched with and I decided to try different horses for Kiersti and Alexa so it was a bit frantic to get it all done in 45 minutes and I had a minor scuffle with the IPE coordinator when she came and bullied me because she was bullied by the NZ coach who was mistakenly only given 30 minutes for her session. (The lesson learned was that NZ is nice until they're not which was a lesson I'd already been introduced to last year in Hong Kong.) I had to keep moving fences because the footing was so greasy- we were jumping on sod field and if you've been keeping up with our posts, you'll know that it rains quite a bit in NZ. I didn't want any horses falling (especially borrowed horses) so every few jumps I would move my fences so the take-offs and landings didn't get too slick. That took up a lot of time.

The final pairing ended up being Kaleigh on Santa, Kelsey on Imp, Susan on Zebedee, Alexa on the pony Whippy, and Kiersti on Renzo. All the horses were lovely- I would have been happy to take any of the 5 home with me. It was so incredibly generous of the owners to lend them out. In the morning they are running an Owner's Round as a thank you and incentive for them loaning the horses out.