Postcard: Fourth Show Jumping Selection Trial
Wellington, Fla., March 7, 2008 -- Anyone who's spent a bit of time watching the U.S. show jumping team selection trial process is familiar with this phrase: "The cream rises to the top."
So when show jumping coach George Morris and I chatted today about the fourth of five trials for the 2008 Olympics in Hong Kong, I wasn't surprised at all when he mentioned an ascending dairy product.
But if I predicted a few weeks ago that the cream at this point would be Laura Kraut on Cedric in the lead with just 6 faults, and Will Simpson with Carlsson vom Dach and Nicki Shahinian Simpson with FRH Dragonfly, tied for second with 12 penalties each, you might have been excused for saying, "Huh?"
Cedric I've seen in some of the smaller classes, and I'll be frank with you: I follow show jumping rather closely, but I'd never heard of Carlsson or Dragonfly.
So I mentioned to George that it looks like we might have some unexpected depth in the show jumping ranks after all, and he told me that was part of the plan.
"I'm very pleased with how this is going," he said, noting that raising the bar (literally and figuratively) at the Palm Beach International Equestrian Center has yielded impressive results.
"That's why these trials are absolutely critical, because we aren't able to dummy down," said George, who finds that to be an unhappy continuing trend inside the show ring and out.
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Some are concerned that the trials involve an awful lot of jumping, but he pointed out, "It has to be five rounds, because championships are five rounds. That's the only way you get a true reading of horse and rider. When you have a number of rounds, the cream rises to the top. You have to pick it off consistency. A horse and rider can be brilliant because they're lucky in one round, but it's impossible to be lucky over five (rounds)."
The riders who go into the last trial on Sunday are vying for seven spots on the short list. Three combinations already got byes: Beezie Madden with Authentic and McLain Ward with Sapphire before the first trial. (They were half of our gold medal team in Athens four years ago and half of the World Equestrian Games silver medal team two years ago.) Jeffery Welles and Armani got a pass after the second trial after two clear rounds.
"You don't have a crystal ball, but we picked three horse-rider combinations who have a history of great success at the very biggest places. We put them aside so we didn't have to spend their horses and jump their horses in an unnecessary situation," George said.
When the trials end, the selection process continues. There will be an "A" group of five riders and a "B" group of five. George noted there may well be very little difference between them. They will contest Super League competitions in Europe, and the team of four and one alternate will be picked off those performances.
So at this point Laura is standing tall with little Cedric, a gray ball of dynamite. He had one rail down today, but she blamed herself for the mistake. "I didn't make as big an effort as I needed to," she explained.
Will went clean today for the third time in a row after a slow start in the first trial, while Nicki had a knockdown, but adding up their past performances here was what tied them.
Today's trial originally was scheduled to be held under the lights last night to replicate the conditions riders will encounter at the Olympics in Hong Kong six months from now. But a torrential rain washed away that plan, and instead the class went in daylight this morning.
The trials were combined with a regular $30,000 Winter Equestrian Festival (WEF) Challenge Cup class, and the dual-purpose situation made things a little tough for course designer Pepe Gamarra. He got suggestions from those involved with the trials, making the competition harder than the usual WEF Challenge Cup.
"The jumps grew from all that rain," joked U.S. developing rider coach Melanie Smith Taylor after she walked the course this morning. The trials group wanted the fences a little bigger, so a vertical topped with a light blue plank, fence 9-B on the 13-obstacle course, caused lots of problems when it was raised to 1.6 meters (about 5-feet, 3-inches).
I asked Pepe about the challenge of putting together this particular Challenge Cup.
Listen: Course designer Pepe Gamarra on his route for the trial
The plank came down at least 14 times. It was a tight one-stride, 25.6 feet from the triple bar that was the first part of the double. But the difficulty was typical of the entire route.
"The course was more than tall, it was very technical and delicate," said Pepe.
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