friday fotos: 5yos @ fair hill

TGIF!!!! For your efforts in surviving the week, here are photographs cell phone video stills from the 5yo Young Event Horse East Coast Championships held at Fair Hill's October Festival a few weeks back.

They ran through a derby-like course with the first half set as stadium fences. The height grows progressively through the course of the season, finishing at about training/prelim heights. 

After the stadium, they continued directly onto the xc test.

Most of the jumps were of very inviting design - encouraging a good gallop and forward jump.

Tho naturally the course also included the hallmarks of all classic cross country tracks.

Plus riders were encouraged to demonstrate their young horse's gallop - both between the jumps and in a designated 'gallop lane' following the final fence.

The stadium portion itself was fairly straight forward - mostly single fences except for two lines: a 6 stride (the second of which came down almost every ride) and a 2 stride in and out, above.

I was quite impressed that these 5yo horses were so game to tackle the course - we saw very few oopsie moments, tho there were a couple misses at the bank (and one fall into the henceforth dubbed "exploding" trakehner that we missed). 

This particular rider pulled out an impressive save tho after scrambling at the bank and still managed to get out alive over this house two strides later.

There were, naturally, quite a few familiar faces among the riders, as this was predominantly a pro class.

Which made the green moments all the more.... fun to watch haha. Pro riders, but the horses are still just 5!

Mostly tho, it was a very cool class to watch.

Lots of gorgeous eye candy, obvi. But also, in case you can't tell from the pics (and video below), we were really able to get right up close and personal with the action.

Trainer Dan always used to encourage me to go to big recognized shows to specifically watch the big world class pros (the Phillips Boyds Bucks etc of the world) ride their BN / N horses around.

He said there was the most to learn from watching them ride these greener horses, as opposed to watching them on their very seasoned and well schooled horses where it's harder to see what's going on in the communication between horse and rider.

So in some ways, this class was the perfect opportunity for that. Esp as some riders apparently specialize in the young'ins and had multiple horses in both the 4yo and 5yo classes. 

Mostly tho, this was basically just an opportunity to ogle some gorgeous and classy horse flesh.

While also trying to learn ore about developing my own eye in terms of identifying and recognizing talent, style, ability and technique in an upper level event prospect.

I admittedly have a decidedly amateur eye - ain't gonna count as anybody's idea of an expert judge any time soon lol.

But, ya know. I have a curiosity. And I enjoy watching the ponies go. So even if I'm not an on-point judge of exactly what is crossing in front of my eyes, I can still be an enthusiastic spectator!!

Tho actually, after watching so many horses go through the course of the two day program, it did become easier to see what sets an event horse apart from a horse maybe better suited for a different discipline.

Mostly tho. I was just in it for the ponies haha. And for capturing loads of media (there's still the 4yo class, and all of the 2* and 3* cross country that I haven't even touched yet!) to share with y'all. 

video of the class here

So. Ya know. Hope you enjoy it too!! Happy Friday Foto Finish, everyone!