Rewind. Monday morning (Europe time) Clan Dressage deployed to Rio; horses from Liege (BEL) and grooms/staff/riders from Amsterdam. Jose Eduardo Garcia Luna, aka Eddie, aka 2015 FEI Groom of the Year, travelled on the horse flight to make sure all was well with the four legged beasties. Hallye Griffin, aka Mother Hen, aka Dressage Managing Director and Team Leader, travelled with the two legged beasties to cajole them in the right direction. Given a choice, I would have most certainly preferred Eddie's job to Hallye's! All two legged beastie flights arrived safely although I am not sure many managed too much sleep and a certain person had to put up with one of those flying horror situations; the overly large and insufficiently washed smell monster invading one's personal space. Grooms transported to Grooms' Village, quick venue guided tour and the pizza and unpack. Athletes and staff to hotel, settle in to rooms...and pizza. For some of us the night was young for there was manual labour ahead.
Kenny Bark (dressage/jumping farrier), Rick Mitchelll (dressage vet), Hallye, Leah, Christy and I set off back to the venue at 1:15 a.m. to meet up with the dressage grooms to await the arrival of the horses and kit. 3 a.m. the horses rolled in and all unloaded safely and quickly and appeared to settle very well to their Olympic homes. The kit arrived at 3:30 a.m. and then the fun began. Time to meet the DHS or the "disposable homo sapien".
The offloading bay for the kit is not that well lit and there are (now) two telehandlers [forklifts] operating. The eventers' kit arrived loaded on plastic pallets but the dressage kit was loaded on metal "air pallets" that were then resting on wooden pallets. An air pallet is essentially a big flat piece of metal with web netting over the kit to secure it. The air pallets are large and the kit not always totally evenly distributed so when lifted at the centre by the telehandler [forklift] the entire load can tilt alarmingly to one side: This is where the DHS comes in to his/her own. The DHS is deployed to stand (and bounce up and down) on the lighter end of the pallet thus causing an equilibrium in weight distribution, a horizontal transportation of the air pallet and kit . . and of course if it all goes wrong a squished and squashed DHS.
On Tuesday, it was the eventing grooms' turn to visit Christ the Redeemer, escorted by our Transport Manager, Wallace. By all accounts Wallace was quite the Tour Guide and carried out head counts every five minutes to ensure no AWOL grooms.
Last night turned in to a little bit of a mess with thunderstorms in Florida causing the inevitable travel chaos. Five out of six of our incoming travellers have made it, eventually, to Rio. Unfortunately Debbie McDonald, a key dressage coach, is still stuck in Miami even thou she made it to the gate prior to the departure of her flight but after they had closed the doors; just the most infuriating situation to be in. So if anyone is passing Miami please can they pick up Debbie! Fed-Ex remains an option.
Meanwhile the eventing horses popped a few show-jumps and then had a canter and the dressage horses had a light school in the main arena.
There are still a number of jobs for the organisers to get done around the venue and the first horse inspection is fast approaching. The FEI are now here in force and have taken up residence in their section of the tented offices..I have made note that they have the most comfortable office chairs of any of the offices - good planning!
Some of the eventing riders are off to watch some football tonight and the rest of us are off to dinner to have some cross discipline bonding and escape the rat race for a couple of hours. That said I hope the traffic is a little better than last night; 20 minutes to get to the restaurant and 1 hour to get back. Not my idea of fun!!