6/25/11: Spruce Life.

As usual, life at Spruce Meadows is a continual cycle of work hard, party harder! Frances and I had a good first two weeks competing in the National and Continental tournaments. Today I am competing in the Final Four competition of the meter 1.40 division. The third week of Spruce is called the Skyliner Tournament and consists of meter 1.10-1.40 Junior/Amateur team and individual classes modeled after the World Equestrian Games. My meter 1.40 team, which is comprised of me, Frances, Reed Kessler, and Meagan Nusz, was second for the second year running in the team class. We were SO frustrated because we entered the second round in the lead and had some bad luck, including Reed's horse Flight pulling a shoe while on course, that dropped us to second place. Last year Frances had a jump blow down as she was approaching it during the second round and chaos ensued, so we're beginning to think we're doomed to bad luck in this nation's cup every year! Nepal has been jumping great all week and today we are competing alongside Caitlin Ziegler and her horse Touch Down; Lydia Ulrich with Santos Utopia; and Sage Flynn with Hot Pants in the Final Four competition. In this class, the four riders rotate between the four horses and our combined scores on all four horses determine the winning rider. There is also a top horse prize for the horse that has the fewest faults with all four riders. I'm very excited! All the horses are very talented and the riders are comparable, so it should be a very fun day. I'll let you know how it goes!