It’s 7:00 according to the posted schedule.
Interesting tidbit from the COTH article - Fix Blue was essentially a catch ride for Skylar Wireman. She rode him for the first time this week. Pretty impressive to take reserve champion on a new mount.
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That was a tough course.
Jump Off
A.Granato
K.Cook
A.Volpi
T.Foster
Is that a different horse from the one she rode at Harrisburg when she was fourth in the Medal? I thought that one was a catch ride for her as well.
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Yes - she rode Natalie Jayne’s big chestnut Eretto at Medal Finals. Also a catch ride but I believe she’d ridden him previously.
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Granato 4 faults.
K.Cook refusal first fence.
A. Volpi clear!
Tiffany Foster clear for the win.
Congratulations to Tiffany Foster for the win and to Alessandra Volpi. Reserve and double clear is quite an achievement at 21 years of age.
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We were there watching in person, and felt Skylar should have been the winner. Dominic is a beautiful rider and I’m a big fan, but his jumper phase round was not his smoothest, there were inconsistencies in pace and distances that shouldn’t have had him anywhere near an 89/90 score. Dominic’s work-off ride was really nice, and he absolutely deserved to be in the top group, but the judges penalized others much harder in the jumper round than they penalized him, and after watching all the rounds, it was perplexing to see him catapult to the top after that trip. Catalina and Skylar both had really beautiful jumper phase rounds. The course was tough for sure, and it led to clear judgment calls on whose mistakes were more significant. Hated to see Grace Debney drop out of the top 10, she’s a lovely rider and she had mistakes for sure, but hers were penalized surprisingly harshly relative to some others.
I was watching the stream, but I was surprised by how high Dominic’s score was in the jumper phase. He is a beautiful rider, but I thought the distance to the chocolate jump (I think that was the one) was going to knock his score down a bit. It almost made me gasp at the time. Maybe it wasn’t as noticeable from where the judges were sitting.
You weren’t wrong, it absolutely should have knocked his score down and there is no way they could have completely missed it because he had to pretty much gun the horse at the distance and still ended up quite long to it. His first jump was also really weak. And there was something else that didn’t turn up quite right too. So there were multiple sketchy distances and significant pace changes that he wasn’t penalized for. He’s a beautiful rider, I love watching him ride and he deserved to be a top finisher, as proven in the work-off round, but the score for the jumper round didn’t reflect what actually happened in his round. After he finished his jumper phase, my friend joked “don’t worry, he’ll still get an 89 or a 90” and then they announced the scores and yep that was for real. It felt like they picked their preferred winner in that moment, regardless of what had just happened in the ring. There was no suspense about the results after the work-off, because if they scored him like that, they certainly weren’t going to move anyone ahead of him after he had a beautiful round in the work-off. If I’m not mistaken and Skylar still has time left in the Big Eq, I feel like her day will come, she rode beautifully and seems to handle the pressure well.
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Skylar has one more year.
I thought that the judging was disappointing. Our barn is not great at the equitation, but we always send a couple riders to each of the finals. We’re not going to win, but want the kids and horses to have a positive experience and try to frame that as the goal. My horse was in the class, he was a good boy and though his rider had one chippy jump, she felt good about her performance, the horse was brave and it was cause for celebration. But this judging has me thinking differently. It really is a disservice to the sport to have the same list of winners, in a particular order, no matter what. Sure, the winners are all excellent riders, there is a reason that they’re the winners, but judge this round, right here, just in case there’s new blood in town!
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