Author: Amanda C

Not gonna lie, after all the wine on Friday night at the party, Saturday morning was ROUGH. Luckily there wasn’t anything happening super early at Bundeschampionat that we felt like we absolutely had to see, because both of us were zombies. Zombies with varying degrees of headache that had major caffeine requirements and were definitely over-sensitive to the bright morning sun. Four hours of sleep after a lot of wine did not cut it for me.

We missed the eventing horses’ dressage, but caught the tail end of the eventing pony dressage and basically stayed parked by the ring for a while to watch the eventers’ showjumping. Neither one of us wanted to move that much anyway.

By midday a little bit of frozen yogurt with strawberries had perked us up a bit, as did intense stalking of the 5yo by Mighty Magic. By this point I’m basically a professional MM offspring stalker, so one of my biggest objectives for the show was to get eyes on him. Overall I had marked 3 horses in the program as “ones to watch” based on the pedigrees I liked – the MM, a Diarado, and a Grey Top.

There were several quality horses in the 5yos, which was nice to see. All 3 of the ones I’d marked were definitely still my favorites once I saw them go, and – spoiler alert for tomorrow – my 3 were all in the top 4 by the end. I think the one that stood out to me most on Saturday though was the Mighty Magic (me, biased? Nooooo…). His rider made a big boo-boo at the first line and he proceeded to bail her out in pretty spectacular fashion, without even turning a hair. That’s a quality I definitely appreciate in a horse.

 

After watching the eventers showjump, we walked over to the big jumper ring to watch the 7yo 2* class. I wanted to see a particular stallion, Diacontinus, mostly because I find his pedigree very interesting for eventing (Diarado x Contendro x Argentinus) and for a jumper stallion he got pretty high dressage marks at his stallion testing. He was quite handsome and did not disappoint.

After the first round we were a bit bleary-eyed and we’d seen so many horses that they were starting to blur together, so we peeled our butts off the bleachers and plodded wearily to Aldi to grab some easy dinner to cook at the apartment. So cheap, and good food too. Can we talk about why food is so much better in Europe? Nevermind, that’s probably another rant.

We collapsed into bed pretty early that night, both out of sheer weariness and in anticipation of the next day: the last day of the finals, and the crowning of the 2017 champions!

So, I didn’t intend to leave you guys hanging on Friday. It was working out pretty well to where I’d get back to our accommodations in the evening, I’d put up a blog post, and the time difference would make things line up just fine.

Until Friday.

What happened Friday? Well, it was the first day that we were at Bundeschampionate, for one. And we met up with Gerd, the breeder of one of Michelle’s mares, who had a horse competing there in the dressage. Like pretty much everyone else we met along the way, we were fast friends, and he quickly took us under his German wing. Mostly at the wine bar. Germans plus alcohol… can you see where this is going?

For most of the day we were on our own while Gerd was with his horse, so we spent a long time hitting up the trade fair (omg, it seriously rivaled Rolex)

then watched a little bit of everything – jumper ponies, jumper horses, XC, and dressage – and got ourselves oriented to the facility. There were A LOT of rings and a lot going on.

I have a lot of opinions about the 3yo dressage stallions we watched, but I don’t think any of us have the time or energy for THAT particular rant right now.

At the end of the day we rendezvoused with Gerd again, expecting a quick little chat in the ringside tent over a glass of wine. Ah, that’s cute. Somehow it morphed into a 6 hour wine bar extravaganza where we made a whole lot of brand new German BFF’s and somehow ended up at the rider’s party, which was complete with some serious lights and dance music. Oh, and currywurst, which is super good at midnight with some pommes. The things you learn at BuCha.

Long story short, this is why no blog post on Friday, since we ended up being at BuCha for like… 16 hours total. The next morning was painful too, so I just didn’t have it in me. We learned really quickly that we cannot keep up with the Germans.

But hey, how often do you get to hang out with a bunch of REALLY good breeders (and riders), IN Warendorf, AT Bundeschampionat, drinking wine and attempting to speak some really broken German? The lost sleep was totally worth it.

Oh, and what did I get at the trade fair? 

Exactly what I was looking for! Henry got some fancy leather bell boots, too… he’ll model them soon.

I’m currently in the car, somewhere in the Netherlands, on the way to Germany. I’ve got two hours to kill, so blog post it is! 

This morning we left Bruges (after a pretty great hotel breakfast… they had giant hunks of chocolate on the fruit table…)

then we hit the road down to Asse, outside of Brussels, to visit Tal Milstein Stables. This place is absolutely top notch – beautiful facility, excellent competition horses, and nice stallions. I mean… WOW. 

We met the stallion manager Kenneth, and then the owner Tal, both of which were extremely welcoming. We watched some of his horses go while we chatted bloodlines, mares, and stallions. He has a really nice collection there (although his flagship stallion Alicante was away at a show) and it was excellent getting to see some of those guys in person.

Tal was also really fun to talk to, and treated us to a nice lunch (pizza! I’m hitting all the food groups here…) before we got back in the car to head to Zangersheide.

We got a quick tour of the facility, including the lab, offices, and barns. The highlight of which, of course, was the stallion barn!

We saw so many boys I really can’t even remember them all, but it was such a great opportunity to be able to see these famous, big name guys in person and get an idea of their character. 

So tonight we get to Warendorf, and then we don’t have a lot of driving to do for a few days. More stallions tomorrow, and day 1 of Bundeschampionate!

I left off yesterday when we were in our hotel in La Bouille, France, getting ready to head out to see some more ponies and then head to dinner. Earlier in the day we saw the stallion Usandro, owned by Elevage Alias (Milèna). Now we were headed out to the other farm where all of the other Alias sportponies live.

I have to say, I wish we had the niche for these kinds of ponies in the US. These aren’t fat, lazy little plugs that tote Susiekins around the 2’6″. These are basically pony sized showjumpers. In Europe they put kids on these little Ferraris that are talented, forward, athletic, and sometimes a bit cheeky. They’re fast and can JUMP, and these kids are pretty great little riders. I’m not sure I’d have the balls to gallop a pony around 1.15m courses with the pedal to the metal, but they do. Such a different world, with how they bring up their young riders. These ponies are NICE, and there is a solid market for them here. Lots of pony-only jumper classes, even pony-only Grand Prix. We totally need to get on this bandwagon, both for kids and for smaller adults.

Aside from the very fancy ponies and adorable babies, the barn itself was so charmingly European. Stone wall barn with straw-bedded boxes, a nice little arena, covered walker, conditioning track, and this, my favorite feature:

A cold stream with a little stall-sized pen, where the horses can hang out and soak their legs after a hard work. If that’s not amazing, I dunno what is. Who do I have to kill to get one of those?

After our tour, and meeting all the ponies and babies (omg poneh bebehs) 

we had some nice rosè at the farm before heading into town for a fantastic dinner: steak, gratin dauphinois, and a salted caramel macaron for dessert. So much yaaaaas. Milena from Elevage Alias was a fantastic host, we had a great time! But by that point we’d been up for like 42 hours, so we collapsed back at the hotel and got a good solid 7-8 hours sleep.

This morning we drove back into Belgium to Bruges. Nothing horsey today, just being tourists in a really freaking COOL gothic-style town. I absolutely love it here and MUST come back when I can stay a bit longer.

Our two main goals for Bruges were waffles and frites, and we’ve accomplished both of those. I might barf, but I have no regrets.

Tomorrow we’re back on the road headed east toward Germany, with a stop or two along the way to look at some more stallions. 

This is so fun, y’all.

We did in fact make it out of Austin and over to Atlanta for our connecting flight with no problems. However, a slight schedule conflict with our French contact had us doing a little bit of last minute tap dancing with our itinerary. 

Basically we just swapped our first two days… instead of heading straight to Bruges we got in our rental and drove over to the Normandy region of France. We were able to change our hotel reservations to make it work, so aside from giving my OCD a serious work out, it all ended up being perfectly fine.

We stopped along the way at a petrol station and got what was, hands down, the best gas station food I’ve ever had. A big, super cheesy croque monsieur dripping with sauce. Omg.

We got up into the Rouen area around noon and stopped off first to see a jumper pony stallion, Usandro. He’s ridiculously adorable and a true little powerhouse jumping bean. Also super sweet. He may be available via frozen on the US market soon… stay tuned. 😉 

Then we were off to another rider’s barn(s) to see all of his young horses. I got a bit sunburned traipsing up and down the hilly pastures of Normandy, looking at ridiculously well bred French showjumpers. Definitely have had worse days.

Now we’re at the hotel taking a quick break to clean up before a quick stop to see more ponies, then dinner. I am beyond ready to SLEEP, but the jet lag is worth it.