It's late and I leave for Five Points on Thursday so here are a few quick late night notes.
Link: Burghley Scores--Dressage on Thursday from 4:30am to 11:30am ET
The full press release from Eventing Ireland has much more information, including pointing out that Ireland originally only planned to take 5 horses but reconfigured the transport plane to take 6. The Irish coach, Ginny Elliot echoed a lot of other national coaches by pointing out that a big priority at the WEGs is to qualify for the 2012 Olympics with a top 5 placing, although these days I think that most riders consider winning the WEGs more of an achievement than winning the Olympics.
Ireland has named it's squad for the World Equestrian Games:
Mark Kyle - Step in Time (Owned by Tanya & Mark Kyle)
Liz Power - Kilpatrick River (Owned by Dermot O'Rourke)
Michael Ryan - Ballylynch Adventure (Owned by Carol & Tom Henry)
Patricia Ryan - Fernhill Clover Mist (Owned by Carol & Tom Henry & Sheila Foley)
Camilla Speirs - Portersize Just a Jiff (Owned by Bridget & Camilla Speirs)
Sam Watson - Horseware Bushman (Owned by John & Julia Watson & Tom MacGuinness)
Reserve riders:
Jayne Doherty - The Only One (Owned by Jonathon Doherty)
Capt. Geoff Curran - The Jump Jet (Owned by Maurice Cassidy & The Minister for Defence)
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Wiki Commons
The Germans have also named their WEG squad according to horseweb.de:
Andreas Dibowski - Butts Leon or FRH Fantasia
Michael Jung - Sam
Ingrid Klimke - Butts Abraxxas
Frank Ostholt - Mr. Medicott
Dirk Schrade - Gadget de la Cere
Simone Deitermann - Free Easy NRW
Reserve:
Kai Rüder with Leprince des Bois
Anna Warnecke with Winkle Bee
Andreas Ostholt with Franco Jeas
The Germans have dominated the international eventing scene recently by winning the 2006 WEG and the 2008 Olympic team competitions, and heck, they nearly won the 2006 Olympics although I probably shouldn't bring that up. Ingrid and Frank Ostholt were on both of those teams, and there's no doubt in my mind that Germany could win it again in Lexington. The only question left in my mind tonight is where are the Hoys? Thanks to RL for a heads up about the German team.
We have released the Ausie, Kiwi, Irish, and German WEG teams all in the same day and quite frankly I'm glad that we will be able to focus on Burghley for the next couple of days because I'm a little tired of writing about the WEGs.
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In a story that absolutely begs for The Carrot's commentary, it appears that FEI President Princess Haya gave the FEI $30 million in 2008 to build its new headquarters. I'm sure that if the FEI had released a press release about the donation back then we would have heard about it much sooner. Go eventing.
Ooo Germany, that's a strong team.