Moving on, the ENCAA challenge is down to the top 16 horses. The Round 2 matchup today features Karen's best horses against each other: (1) Biko vs (4) Prince Panache. From the British Isles, (1) Toytown takes on (4) Ringwood Cockatoo.
COMMENT OF THE DAY:
From Anon in Australia
I had to vote for Bounce. Love love love Vaughn - great horseman and trainer. Don't feel nearly as warm towards Gill - she runs a great event, though (Adelaide 4****). Peppermint Grove was a nice horse, not a great horse. Bounce was a great horse.
YESTERDAY'S RESULTS:
It was extremely close between (4) Poggio and (5) JJ Babu, but somehow Poggio managed to squeak out the win. Both great horses, it's a shame only one gets to move on to face the daunting Dan. In the Aussie/Kiwi side, (4) Bounce handled (5) Peppermint Grove with relative ease and will try to take down fellow Kiwi, Ready Teddy.
O'CONNOR REGION
1. BIKO
www.oconnoreventteam.com
With 17.3 hands of
bright bayness, his splashy blazed face became the most recognizable feature of
American Eventing in the 1990s. Ridden by Karen O'Connor, Biko represented the
US at the 1994 WEG (finishing 11th) and was a member of the 1996 Silver medal
team at the Athens Olympics. Also among his numerous highlights are a third at
Badminton (1995), 8th at the European Championships (1995), and fifth at the
first Rolex CCI**** (1998). Along with being made into a Breyer model, Biko was
given the ultimate honor as being named the USCTA Horse of the Century in 2000.
vs.
4. PRINCE PANACHE
4. RINGWOOD COCKATOO
Considered by some to be the most successful German event horse of all time, "Cocky" was certainly one of the most talented. When you combined one of the best eventing dressage riders on the planet with the best eventing dressage horse on the planet, the team regularly entered the weekends with leads exceeding five points. Cocky won ten CCI and CIC 3*'s in his career, finished second at Kentucky in 2009, and won the Pau CCI4* in 2008. Except for the controversial start/finish line ruling at Athens, Ringwood Cockatoo would have won individual and team Olympic gold.
Hard one between Ringwood Cockatoo and Toytown but Toytown was the most generous horse I have ever seen go xc. Look at his WEG round how much he dragged his rider out of serious trouble when other horses said no. RC was not so generous and I have seen some cracking refusals by him (Euros)and Bettina always went slowly xc to try and not make a silly mistakes because it did not take much for him to throw the towel in. Luckily Bettina always had an amazing dressage to cushion it all a bit.