This is kind of late but I successfully did the free trial and cancelled it quite easily for the showjumping world championships in August. It didn’t let me watch live but it let me watch everything that i missed. It worked ok, I just did like a social media blackout and watched in the morning
I can kind of get what MJ is saying, but I’m not sure there’s a better alternative. TPTB have decided that championships aren’t going to be run at 5* level and will have shorter courses … if they were to make it a big, open, gallopy course so as not to throw the horses that are used to Badminton and Burghley off their game, but with smaller fences and not as long, then it would end up just being a nice canter in the park for the all the horses from the stronger countries and truly be a dressage and showjumping competition. The course today may not have demonstrated which horses are truly the top XC machines in the world, but it kept horses and riders safe and still had some influence.
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Thank you BWP
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Exactly.
If the course was any more flowing than it was today, we’d have seen 25 inside the time. I’ve gotten pretty bored with some of the European riders’ propensity for making excuses when things don’t work out for them. Not targeted at all of them, but many have really shown very poor sportsmanship IMO when, in reality, they didn’t ride appropriately.
SO PROUD of our US riders. Whatever happens tomorrow, they’ve earned the respect they deserve today.
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I think MJ was making those comments because he said he has been there a few times before and they used more of the property, this time they used half the space. So he didn’t know why. The Course designer mentioned in the after XC press conference that part of the reason was for spectators and tv coverage. Things which really shouldn’t influence Course design.
We will know tomorrow if the course was too much or not.
I’m glad it was a great day, and whether MJ is right or not is to be seen but I don’t think we should poo poo riders speaking up when they are doing it for the horses.
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Why is MJ allegedly whining when both he and his team are on top of the leaderboard with three double clears? That doesn’t make sense to me. Whether he liked the course or not, the Germans had no issues with it. Unless he’s worried it took too much out of their horses for tomorrow.
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In fairness to MJ, he made his comments BEFORE riding the course. What I’ve seen with the dressage scoring and now the XC, this event doesn’t scream world championship. It’s not even in the same zip code as events like Badminton and Burghley. When you tone down your World Championship to be so much weaker than the top events in the world, it diminishes the title of World Champion.
What they should really do, IMHO, is pick one of the 5* events and designate it as the world championship and just rotate it from event to event.
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That makes more sense.
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I didn’t take it as whining at all. He was asked by the media what he thought of the course and he gave his honest opinion. There is a bit of a language barrier, possibly, but I thought he was essentially saying that the course was too show jumpy and less of a traditional cross country test with galloping. This is not a new critique that MJ raised.
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I didn’t hear the interview so thank you for expanding. That makes more sense. I couldn’t understand why people were accusing him of whining about a course he dominated!
I do think the cultural/language barrier causes Americans to misinterpret a lot of statements.
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How big are tsertleg and mai baum? Most of the team looks so small compared to so many of the field.
Usually the only breeding info they have in front of them is whatever is on the horse’s FEI page (and we all know that’s only as reliable as the person that put the information in… which means things are wrong a lot…) and whatever they know or think they know in their own minds. Unfortunately things are wrong quite a lot just from misstatements, people misremembering, incomplete data, etc.
My company actually has a service that provides breeding data for live streams and events - we’ve done Red Hills, Tryon, Kentucky, etc and Dorothy Crowell has our data sheets for PF for the FEI divisions this weekend. Pedigree data and research is what we do! Some announcers and commentators are really excited to have the information, others refuse to even look at it, let alone use it. It’s been interesting. The response to the data, when it’s actually used, has been fantastic though! I wish we could get more buy-in from the events and live streams. I know people care about this stuff, and it’s so important to get it right.
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That is a stunning photo!
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Thomas is a little guy… 15.3
DH and I just watched it. What a treat to watch that man ride.
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Somethings right in the world.
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Indeed.
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Anyone know when show jumping will start tomorrow?
