Things are getting busy now. We went to the village at 730 this morning to try to buy some tickets and drop some stuff off for the eventers. The latter was successful but the ticket office doesn't open until 11 according to the lady in the Starbucks. Speaking of Starbucks, being that it is Saturday, the one at the hotel doesn't open until 8.00 so we actually had two successful missions at the village.

We then checked in at the grooms hotel and we had to do a little maneuvering as there was slight confusion as to where and when they were arriving.

We flew back to the venue just in time to join the sparkling US horses leaving the stables on the walk to the horse inspection. Our grooms do a fantastic job. The horses couldn't look shinier. The all passed without a second glance. Big Tyme, who can be known for a bit of rowdy behavior at the jog was presented by Steffen Peters for his teammate Marisa Festerling. He didn't put a foot wrong. Paragon squealed once he was accepted for Heather Blitz, Magic thought there was someone chasing him and Steffen and Grandioso flashed his fanciest trot.


Getting Ready to Jog 

We did some team photos and then the riders headed back to the hotel. They had ring familiarization tonight at 6 pm. First horse in the ring tomorrow at 845, the team competition goes all day.

We then went to the airport and all of our eventers landed safely. We had two first time fliers (Donner and Absolute Liberty) and they all travelled like total stars. After seeing all of them through, we took Gary Johanssen (USOC lawyer who came to see the horses at the airport) back to his hotel and then went to the village to get the elusive tickets.

Absolute Liberty was Happy to Fly

Steve Teichman, our farrier, came with me and he hadn’t been to the village so we went on a bit of an impromptu tour, and then spent about an hour getting the tickets. Steve said it best, “I hate to think how much time you spend doing stuff like that.” It’s tricky to get certain things done these games because there are so many moving parts, so between us, the USOC staff and the NOC assistants (local people – usually college students assigned to the teams) we can get stuff accomplished. Sometimes it just takes a while.

We then went out to the eventing venue with Memo and the eventing horses and grooms were settling in to the venue. Modern pentathlon is currently going on at their venue so it will quiet down a lot once the men finish tomorrow, the American women won modern pen today – so far we are winning medals all over the place. 

After a lot of analysis on how to fold the USA blankets so the USA looked right on the rack – I couldn’t scrape my brain for my old friend (super groom) Nat’s magic ways. We settled for just neat folding with the USA showing… I took the eventing grooms to their hotel and got them organized – they are a good bunch, some familiar faces and some new ones. I then brought them back to our hotel for a meal and then they were tired so off they went to bed and this is officially the end of a long day.

First medal is on the line tomorrow and our chances are in very good hands.

GO TEAM USA.