Just wanted to capture a few random thoughts from WEG and the years leading up to it.
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AWESOME event, well presented. My complements to Georgetown, Lexington, the state of Kentucky, and the USA for having the cojones to do get the event and the skills to pull it off with class.
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Special thanks to Alltech and Jane and Steve Beshear for getting it done during the worst economic downturn since the great depression.
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BOOOOOOOO to all those who tried to make a fortune off the games and depressed attendance. I work for an oil company, and if we had raised the price of gasoline by 300% during Katrina I would have gone to jail.
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Hoooray for all of the volunteers who not only made the event a success, but did it cheerfully and made things very pleasant.
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BOOOOOOO for those who planned the mass transit/parking. I respect your efforts, but it wasn’t well done. We’ll do better next time.
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Yayyyyyyy! for the 500,000 attendees!
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AWESOME!!! for the genius who thought to bring schoolkids and others to the event for free. What great PR and a wonderful social opportunity for the horse community.
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UGGGGGHHHHHHH!!! for the many thousands of extra miles (we even went to WISCONSIN for a horse trial!) we logged this year because our normal events weren’t held at the horse park.
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BOOOOOOO to all of those who complained excessively and had so many sour grapes - and then usually didn’t attend anyway.
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YEAHHHHHHH!! for our USA teams. We did our best and were very competitive in a remarkably well balanced field in most venues. Just because we didn’t medal doesn’t mean failure; I thought the teams were logically picked and represented us well.
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TOO COOL!! for the Canadians – best wishes for the Olympics (and a place just behind the US on the podium).
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The Brits and Kiwis reminded us who’s dominated eventing the last 30+ years - congrats! The Germans scare the crap out of me going into the Olympics. And I’d KILL for the chance to own that Apollo horse.
Megan’s blog post pretty much summarizes our feelings: “It is so funny to live in Georgetown right now…. Our farm is only 2 miles from the World Equestrian Games. I was in the grocery store last week, standing in line for my groceries between a Swedish team and a Danish team…. It was really incredible. The world really has come to our little town!”
Heck I know I was just as excited as a lot of those little girls there. It took all self control not to spend my tutoring money (which goes to gas so I can get to the horse during the week) on breyers. I should never have even walked in that store, but I got so excited to see Sapphire has her own model now.