Lexington, KY – With Wednesday at the Rolex Kentucky Three Day-Event presented by Bridgestone comes the first horse inspection – which christens the official start of the competition. Running also as a Test Event for the 2010 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games, the eventing riders at the Rolex Kentucky Three-Day Event this year have the company of some of the top dressage and jumping riders as Test Events for those disciplines run concurrently.

The Kentucky Horse Park is a busy place this week.

Bestowed with glorious conditions at a newly designed horse inspection venue, 53 horses were presented to the Ground Jury. The Ground Jury has been slightly improvised due to two members not being able to make it from Europe, having fallen victim to the international airline crisis surrounding the Eyjafjallajökull Volcano in Iceland.

So Marilyn Payne and Christian Landholt were the pinch hitters (for Sue Baxter and Anne-Mette Binder), and along with Ulrich Schmitz (who only had to come from his home in Phoenix – so he remained the only original Ground Jury member) the competition got underway.

Phillip Dutton will be the busiest rider of the weekend, he has four horses entered – he intended on taking one of them (Woodburn) to the Mitsubishi Badminton Horse Trials in England next week but those plans were also thwarted due to the volcano.

All 53 horses were accepted by the ground jury, three were held - but all deemed fit to compete upon reinspection.

“I am very excited to be here,” said Will Faudree, who is making his sixth appearance at the CCI4*, but his first with Pawlow. “It has been really fun with this horse because I have brought him up the levels and I am excited about being here. I am glad the jog has happened so now the competition has started.”

Course Designer Mike Etherington-Smith, also stalled in Europe because of the volcano has done, as always, a masterful job with cross-country course: a question of scope more than technicality, the course should give everyone a chance to have a great ride.

The first day of dressage gets underway on Thursday at 9.30 am; Dutton leads the way with Ann Jones and Rebecca Broussard’s Kheops du Quesnay.

ENDS

Please contact Joanie Morris at [email protected] with questions.

For more information visit: http://www.usef.org/_IFrames/breedsDisciplines/discipline/competitions/Rolex.aspx

To sign up for Universal Sports live webcast, please visit: http://www.universalsports.com/premium and click on equestrian.

The Kentucky Cup Dressage and the Kentucky Cup Jumping events, which serve as test events for the upcoming Alltech 2010 FEI World Equestrian Games, will be held in conjunction with the Rolex Kentucky Three-Day Event Presented by Bridgestone. To learn more about these events visit: http://www.alltechfeigames.com/content.aspx?id=3584

Pictures, blogs, video and all kinds of other information can be found at: http://www.clubequestrian.com/coverage/rolex_3day_event_2010.aspx.