We arrived at the Kentucky Research Center late Tuesday afternoon and were met by Katlynn Sacco, the liaison for the Para-Equestrian team and KER.
Joe and Anna Pagan, the owners of KER, have gone out of their way to make us feel welcome. Each stall has rubber mats and more than enough shavings, and they put the same footing in their indoor as we will ride on in the indoor at the Kentucky Horse Park. Anna and her mother took time out of their crazy schedule to go for a hack with Robin, Ralee, Oyente and I this morning, showing us their beautiful Kentucky horse farm.
The eight-stall barn offers many conveniences: Automatic waterers measure how much the horse drinks per day and there is direct access to a huge Coverall indoor ring. The outdoor ring has outstanding footing, and a crew is busy putting up an additional fence around the outside.
The Australian endurance team has also been at the Kentucky Research Center for the last week.
They had to travel long distances just to get to Melbourne. One horse coming from Western Australia was flown to Melbourne—that trip took seven hours. The other two came from Queensland and traveled via truck for two days to get to Melbourne, then they all travelled together 20 hours from Melbourne to Los Angeles, then another four-hour flight to Indianapolis, Ind., followed by a four-hour trailer ride, all on their own dime!
The return trip will take even longer—they will have to go through 60 days of quarantine (thank you to Darley Arabian Farm in Kentucky for hosting them), then they will fly from Lexington to Chicago, to L.A., to Auckland, New Zealand where they have to go through three more weeks of quarantine and then finally home to Australia.
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They will arrived back on Australian ground towards the END OF NOVEMBER—please remember this, the next time you complain about having to travel to ANY horse show!
Oh yeah, and they got no financial help. It basically came down to those who could afford to pay for this incredibly expensive trip and managed to qualify as well. This is the first time they Australians have not been able to bring the entire team since 1990.
