WEG Day 5

Dressage Individual Finals

Today was all about dressage. It was the individual finals, and the top 30 riders from the team competition rode again for the bronze, silver and gold. I'll run down the rides for you, so if you're not into dressage this is going to be booooring!

The format is county, rider's last name, and commentary.

Sweden – Telde - piaffe problems but had a nice passage.
Great Britain – Eilberg - nice steady test
Poland – Milczarek – sticky piaffe, cantered in piaffe/passage transition
Germany – Balkenhol – Very nice test!
Norway – Jebsen – rearing and bolting around outside of arena before test, but no major errors in test. Pretty tense though!
Canada – Trussell – steady test
Australia – Sanna – cantered a lot out of first halt instead of trotting, also cantered in trot half-pass
Spain – Garcia Mena – Nice extended trot and passage, missed the 1 tempi changes
Finland – Kanerva – Piaffe problems and 13 1 tempis instead of 15
Japan – Hoketsu – lots of tension, broke from trot to canter a few times, missed 1 tempis
USA – Konyot – had some piaffe issues
Denmark – Hansen – broke from trot to canter, missed 1 tempis
Denmark – Van Olst – somehow I made no notes on this test!
USA – Bateson-Chamdler – missed 1 tempis
Poland – Rapcewicz – again I made no notes. :(
Australia – Parbery – nice ride!
Great Britain – Bigwood – nice test!
Canada – Holzer – slight piaffe issues, did 17 changes instead of 15 1 tempis
Swiss – Krinke Susmelj – very nice!
Great Britain – Hester – cantered in extended trot
Germany – Koschel – very nice!
Germany – Rath – smooth changes, spun a bit on pirouette
Denmark – Sayn-Wittgenstein – very nice!
Netherlands – Minderhoud – fantastic mover, blew a canter transition, leapt in air during pasage! Whee!
Netherlands – Schellekens-Bartels – resistant piaffe, otherwise nice!
Germany – Werth – nice, broke to trot before two tempis, missed I tempis

Then I got video of all the last riders – Steffen Peters from USA, Laura Bechtolsheimer from Great Britain, Juan Manual Munoz Diaz from Spain, and Edward Gal from Netherlands. In the end Edward Gal and Totalis won the gold with a 85.667. Then Laura Bechtolsheimer and Mistral Hojris won the silver with a 81.708, and Steffen Peters and Ravel won the bronze with a 78.542.

Here is my issue with the video. I bought a new camera just to take to WEG. I bought it from Best Buy and the guy promised me it took great video and was easy to use. I have been having so many issues with this camera. The software that comes with it is fine for the photos, but it doesn't process the videos. So I have to make the videos in Windows Movie Maker. Except that the format of the videos that come off the camera can't be read by Windows Movie Maker, so I had to download a video converter. Then I could make the videos in Movie Maker and then process them.

However, when I did this for some ready all the videos freeze up at about a minute in. Something about all the converting had corrupted the files somehow and they won't play. My plan was to upload them to my Facebook account instead of YouTube so they might not get taken down. But that didn't work. So I put them on my website. That didn't work either.

So the bottom line is I've spent hours and hours trying to fix this problem and frankly guys, I'm done. Something with this camera sucks and I don't have my other fantastic camera here with me. So while I want to post video it's just not going to happen. I'm really very sorry. I'll start on Day 6 with getting photos and posting them instead of the video. I know video is more exciting and all, but I just can't make it happen. There are plenty of people posting rides to YouTube, so it's best to try and catch them there.

Up for Day 6 – Freestyle Reining exhibition in the evening. Also I'm apparently wrong about there being nothing for kids. There are two things we haven't seen – the Kentucky exhibit and the Alltech exhibit, both of which have kids areas. I will check them out and get back to ya.