All in all the CAC Games were a great experience.
Krystoff had a good dressage test, I shared his disappointment in that I knew he and his horse could have done much better. Ahhh the joys of being a competitor – it isn’t possible to ever be your best as you know you can always do better.
Cross country day fortunately saw sunny skies and the footing was able to dry up very quickly. I am so grateful for this lucky turn of events as I still feel like the course was ill prepared and it would have been a much different day if it were raining. I’m not sure if the ground jury and the course designer realize that they got very lucky, because I think they thought they were right not realizing they were lucky. I am very happy that they were lucky, because it turned out to be a great day of “cross country”. I put the cross country in quotation marks because the course was mostly whipping around the riding arenas with a couple quick jaunts down a dry road or two. It was still great fun as the stands were full of people going wild for the competitors. Krystoff was fantastic. He and Chopin looked better than anyone else out there! He did have an unfortunate 20 at the double corners. The show jumping course was beautifully designed by Leopoldo Palacios. I thought it was a very clever course – it required a lot of thought from the rider and there were very few clear rounds. Krystoff had 3 rails, which again was disappointing but as he road better throughout the course the horse jumped better and better. For a young rider on an incredibly green horse in their first time representing their country — they were amazing!! I still cannot believe they even managed to get qualified to be at the games!!
The best part of the week was reconnecting with my Haitian friends. They are such lovely and fun people… we had a blast!!!
