It’s all good ’til it goes bad.
Another Saturday afternoon spent at the Vermont Summer Festival photographing the Grand Prix. This week there were twenty riders; anticipating a larger crowd at next week’s $50,000 finale Grand Prix.
Only two of the twenty pairs went clean in the first round, and two retired after multiple refusals. Lots of lines that had to be taken either short or long, unless you were riding an 18-hand behemoth, which one lucky rider was.
The traditional peanut gallery had assembled alongside the grandstands, offering all manner of vocal and pantomimed advice to each rider. My personal favorite was the man who sat behind my ringside post and loudly commented on each of the first ten riders—and was egregiously wrong in each assumption. Rounds ten through fifteen he began to stop giving advance commentary and waited until things actually happened to vocalize his thoughts. That, too, failed.
For the last five he gave commentary an average of two fences back. Horse going over fence number five? “Well, he was a little tight into three.”
Priceless.
But as always, the horses were a pleasure.
Tags: Equestrian
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