Dear Rita,
It’s not very often that I dedicate three whole blogs to one horse show, but I could write a whole book about the show at Fritzens! A more beautiful setting for a show does not exist. I thought I was transported to the set of The Sound of Music.
Winyamaro was just too cool for school in the Grand Prix. My young horse is stepping up to the plate and taking the bat out of more experienced hands! I am very pleased with his progress in self-carriage and the improvements I was able to make in the piaffe/passage transitions. Still many, many things to improve, but with our score coming up to 67.9 percent (another range from 65-70 percent, big sigh), I see a hopeful future for this horse!
Here is our Grand Prix from Fritzens:
Tina Konyot and Calecto are in good form! It was a pleasure to see this combination at Fritzens, and I am really encouraged that the European judges were favorable to this lovely pair. Slowly I see a Team emerging from the fog…
I got to know Chris Hickey and his crew over the weekend as well as meeting Anne Gribbons’ husband, Dave, for the first time. Perfect weather, good company, support from our Team Advisor and good results—ingredients for a fantastic weekend!
Anne was very positive about Winyamaro, which was much needed encouragement for me. She did refer to him as the “Horse of 1000 Half-Halts”—a clever observation on her part. I hope that the next time she sees him he will have become the “Horse of Handy Self-Carriage!”
Evelyn and Haim Swarovski outdid themselves for the CDI4* this year. This show was the 25th anniversary show at Schindlhof. To commemorate the event, they invited family friend, Eva Lind, to perform a private concert for all the competitors and friends on Saturday night accompanied by the Johann Strauss Ensemble! What a delight!
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The mini-concert was followed by dinner and drinks for more than 500 people, live music and dancing. Don’t ask me what I do for fun. Fun is what I do. And it’s always a pleasure to see all the horsey people replace their Ariats and baseball caps with high heels and fancy hair styles. (Check out Anne’s elegant “do” on the video!)
On Sunday, W decided to hold his own rock concert with his P!NK compilation for the musical freestyle. His pilot made a few errors (oh how I wish I wasn’t so HUMAN), but W appears to be somewhat unstoppable despite my failings as a rider. He is qualified for Gladstone, Rita. I have some serious thinking to do! I might have to take both Cadillac and W to the trials. I fear that W will book a flight without me if I try to leave him behind.
Here are some video excerpts from Saturday night followed by W’s own rock show. Enjoy!
I’m Catherine Haddad, and I’m sayin it like it is from Vechta, Germany.
Training Tip of the Day: Practice making the canter shorter and quicker to prepare for better pirouettes. Quicker is the key.
