Meagan's first ride

Thursday  Again we went to school early — in the arena at 6 AM — along with 14 or more other riders — fortunately Bentley was calm and we got out quickly before 14 – 17 horses were all cantering, pirouetting, doing lines of changes all at once — saw a few pileups at X, each rider looking accusingly at the others. We finished Bentley’s relaxing stretching in the warm up ring with just a few others.
I am starting to see people I know — Jan Brink from Sweden. Sven Rothenberger with whom I competed in my day whose kids have been cleaning up from the time they were pony riders.  Mr Markowski, head of the ground jury and Dieter Schule who judges a lot in the US. Klaus Martin Rath is everywhere as the organizer.

When we walked over for the competition tonight it was, I would guess, in the low 20’s, high wind, and snowing. After spending a little time with Meagan, I went over to watch the 1st 7 riders. It is interesting how the draw for order of go can go. The top European horses were all in the first half and tomorrow they are all in the second half — both draws were done yesterday in public.

So by the half way mark the scores went from 74.5 Fabienne Lutkemeier of Germany to 54.4 for the Brazilian rider, Victoria Riskalle. When Bentley arrived at the warm up ring the fabric walls of the huge tent were billowing and making noise, the snow was blowing in under the walls, and you could hear the snow blowing against the roof. He was WIRED! Bill tried to hand walk him, but it became obvious that it would be better to have Meagan on him. We finally found a spot where he would stand long enough for her to get on and she moved right off at a trot. So there were not only the 7 warming up to compete but also a few overbearing  Grand Prix riders who rode by their own rules. Bentley was more on edge than I have ever seen him and Meagan handled him beautifully. She was obviously nervous to start with, but both she and Bentley gradually settled into their routine. Of course Bentley can over react (to put it politely) to noise and he is also insecure about leaving the group. So we had everyone at their station to get her into the arena. Bill was near her to lead her if needed and myself and a friend were at the entrance to the show arena to be certain that the curtain was immediately pulled back totally and that everyone was out of the way so Meagan could power forward to get into the arena before the previous rider had left. All went well. They had a very good start to their test, but I kept whispering to myself “more forward, more power” which is not usually a problem..... But it was. Bentley has used himself up with all the nervous energy in the warm-up and he just deflated during the test. No mistakes, just no oomph. I have actually never seen him like that. We had the usual amount of warm-up time, but the extreme nervousness just took it out of him. Her extended trots and canter are normally superb and even they were barely average. Meagan rode very well, a clean and accurate test. So she got a 63.368 — a fair score, but the worst she’s ever gotten I think. But with that she finished 6th!, behind all the top Europeans, but ahead of eight others! I was proud of her. She is amazing at handling difficult situations.

So tonight is a party for all the World Cup riders and families back at Schafhof and then Meagan does the Individual test at 9:46 tomorrow morning. Now that we know that Bentley will settle fairly quickly even if he starts as a nervous ninny, we will plan a shorter warm - up.

Here are the complete results: http://eventcontent.hippoonline.de/542/542online1DEU.htm?style=escon