Today the mounted competition began! First, we did last minute touch-ups to tack and horses, making sure that they were as clean as possible. Then one at a time, my teammates headed off to turnout where all of our hard work was judged. It sounds like we got a few points off and some exceeds standards, but we won't know for sure until tomorrow morning. After turnout, they entered the dressage ring. One rider said she felt her test was the best she had ever done. The other two people on my team were less than pleased with the their performance, which they felt was influenced by a very unorganized atmosphere. By now official scores should be posted, but I haven't heard. An hour after their dressage test they had to go turnback. Basically, we re-cleaned the horse and tack to perfection and then were judged by some very high standards! As far as I know, we passed that with flying colors.
Every morning, HM scores are posted. This morning we were quite discouraged to find we had a total of five penalty points! Thankfully, four points were taken off because the situation was out of our control. The reason we had been penalized was that our buckets were lower than the proper height. However, it wasn't our fault because the stalls were too short. The last point was given to us because one of our team member's halters wasn't labeled. In fact, it was labeled, but the label was quite small and the judges must have missed it. We made an official inquiry and now we are point free! This is a picture of the Chief Horse Management Judge in our tack stall.
This is my team, and a friend who stopped by during visiting hours.
There were some awesome things too watch in the Alltech Arena, like polocrosse and games.
Tomorrow is cross country!
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