It was an interesting time last night at the Oaks in San Juan Capistrano.
The course (Dropbox link) was pretty typical. Lots of bending lines. The ring looked somewhat empty, but there were fourteen jumping efforts. A lot of the jumps were angled across the center line so maybe that made the rest of the ring look relatively empty. Fifty riders were listed on the start order (spoiler alert - this link goes to the results page, but all the riders are listed) but the person who was sixth in the order scratched. A nice crowd gathered to watch the class, which runs at night.
The first three went without major incident. Then things got interesting. Six of the next nine riders had issues with fence two, an oxer that was set as the in of a line along the VIP area. I couldn’t see it from where we were sitting and mere mortals aren’t allowed to walk over to the VIP side. Four horses stopped and then went on the second attempt. One horse stopped out. One person got her horse over the jump, but he jumped her loose and she fell off when he stopped at the next fence. Finally, one of the favorites fell off when her horse stopped there. Cue a long pause, maybe 10-15 minutes. Finally there was an announcement that a fence was going to be modified and that any of the first twelve who wanted a do-over could have one and they’d thread them into the order. The announcer did not use the word do-over. People kind of looked at each other and went what the heck. The modification consisted of removing some small viaduct fillers and red flowers from jump two. Since I never made it over there, I don’t know how it was configured–if the flowers were on top of the viaduct, in front, or elsewhere. The ring crew put the filler to good use, using it as a perch and storage unit (Dropbox link - chair not cropped out to show scale).
I’m not sure if the issue was the fence, the VIP area, or some combination. Some horses were clearly backed off coming out of the corner, whereas others slammed on the brakes more at the last moment. In any event, I think that the only two stops at that fence thereafter were two of the do-overs, both of whom stopped out. There were some horses that gave it a pretty hard look.
Finally we got to the flat phase. There were three flat groups (Dropbox link, shows numbers only, but you can cross check against the linked class results (same link as above); group A is the top group and they are typically ranked within the groups), comprised of a total of 35 riders. They actually made them work a bit–lengthenings at trot and canter, counter canter both directions, sitting trot–and there was variation between the two directions. There was one runaway in group C who was excused.
There was no work-off. There was a rumor that they have to turn the lights off by midnight and we were getting close. Final results are linked here (same link again; if you click on an entry, you get a pop-up with information that includes the trainer and owner; I have a sheet with the breeding).
So, has anyone ever seen anything like this? I thought there were no do-overs in horse showing? It was apparently the talk of the show grounds the next morning with most people in the camp of no do-overs. Most people I know can think of many times that a do-over would have been nice: the cut-out flag jump in the Whitethorne eq challenge (it wasn’t that high in the eq challenge) that caused a lot of stops in round one and made a repeat appearance in the round the following day, horses spooked by various animate and inanimate objects, horses spooked by odd shadows, a rider whose horse scooted off in a medal final work-off when some local yahoos decided to gallop past the ring, and so on. They’re horses. They’re prey animals. Stuff happens.
An official press release for the class has not yet appeared, at least not in my in-box.
