Cross-country day has arrived! But it doesn't actually get underway until 11 since the CIC*** is show jumping in the morning so there's plenty of time to get organized, walk the course again, and find any and every way to keep busy. My go time was 12:46 so I planned to head to the main arena to walk the combination there (in the 15 minutes between the finish of show jumping and start of cross-country in which they took down the whole show jumping course and warm-up) and watch the first horse come through. It was NZ Olympian Jonelle Richards and she made it look easy but her speed did get the best of her at the corner combination towards the end of the course... It was difficult to see much with all of the crowds so I headed back to get ready.
Quincy's cross-country preparation
We planned Quincy's usual long warm-up so we could have a cooling off period because (believe it or not!) it was a pretty hot, sunny day and the going was quite firm. I'm not sure exactly what it was, and if I had I would've changed it, but Quincy and I were just not in sync in the warm-up. It was difficult to get his focus as horses were going in every direction and the jumps were placed all around the field...so I was not getting a good feel of being able to go forward to the fences. Then we had an even longer delay as one of the German horses fell in the Dew Pond and took a while to clear the way. The competitor in me wanted to go out on course and push the envelope to tackle the course within the time but the trainer in me wanted good, confident jumps the whole way around. That side won out and I started a little conservative but after Quincy sailed the ditch and brush I felt like we were getting in a good rhythm. He jumped great into the Dew Pond, turned super and met the out right in stride but caught his knee on the way up and twisted pretty badly. Galloping away I felt like he was suddenly a little less enthusiastic and we were only 2 minutes into the course so I stayed with my conservative ride and gave him a little more time in the ring to see the basket combination. He jumped it perfectly and we were off onto the long galloping section where I did start to push on but according to may watch we were already almost 30 seconds down, a bit deflating that early in the course.
Quincy kept to his usual casual nature and was not very impressed by the giant tables but handled them well and was then awesome through the toughest section of the course: the drop combination, water combination, double brush corners, and angled double brush mound combination. All of that came up quickly and I realized I was down even further on the clock since there was not much space to gallop on during that stretch with several hills and a lake to go through (literally).
So by minute 7 my watch showed us almost a minute down...but he was jumping awesome and handling everything with ease so I just tried to stay on a good rhythm and live with the fact that I was having to waste time setting up for the combinations.
The last 3 minutes had several very tough combinations and big efforts and after the flat feeling I had early on I wanted to be sure I had enough horse left at the end. That I did! Quincy finished in amazing form and had plenty of gallop although we did finish 47 seconds over the time..it's always easy to look back and think that I could have used one (or 5) less tugs here and there and that I could have kicked on after the fences to have gained a second here and there but in the end we got home safe and sound and so very many did not.
After spending awhile kicking myself for the time faults I finally got pulled into the celebration that had been going on among my fabulous supporters from the moment we crossed the finish! I am so fortunate to have such a great group and the fact that Lansdowne had great purple shirts for them to buy made the whole thing even more fun :). There was champagne at the barn then I headed out to make the most of my day and study how the big boys get it done... Jeff stayed behind to look after Quincy and Alston and my mom headed out to find the required post cross-country pizza. All the efforts payed off as Quincy looked great when we jogged later that afternoon. He was happy to have plenty of people to be passed between so that he could get lots of grazing time.
One important note: being in the barn with the New Zealand team really paid off when Mark Todd asked to use my step stool...I'm pretty sure it now carries Mark Todd greatness so we may help fund our next trip by charging a fee to anyone wanting to use it...
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