Monday, October 8, 2007

New Albany Classic, The Grand Prix

Family fun and Border Collie demos aside, the real reason for attending the New Albany Classic Grand Prix is for the horse jumping. These are international equestrian stars, and Olympic caliber riders came from all over the USA, plus Canada and Ireland, to compete this year.

The grounds are gorgeous. I suspect that nobody walks on this grass for 364 days of the year, except for a few carefully selected groundskeepers who lovingly trim each blade by hand.
Every jump is sponsored by a business or organization, and is beautifully decorated with fabulous floral arrangements. The VIP tent is to the right in the photo below.The house in the background, by the way, is NOT the Wexner's home, as I originally thought. This is their guest house. Who visits here I'm not sure. Maybe the Pope?
A rider walks the course before the competition. The horses never see the jumps until they enter the field, but the riders pace carefully about, measuring the angles and distances between the jumps and calculating the best plan of attack.

New this year was the Official New Albany Classic mascot, Bucky. He got our section of the crowd involved in a rousing round of "O-H!" ; "I-O!" I suspect there is a former Brutus Buckeye inside that costume.
And now, I'll let a few of the horses and riders speak for themselves. I don't know how I'll distill my many pictures into a chosen few. Maybe I'll upload photos until Blogger chokes.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh. Breathtaking. Beautiful. I wish I had been there.

One of my 'moans' is that the Olympics don't give as much coverage as they used to in the dressage and steeplechase events. Or maybe it's on when I can't watch. I used to live for the Summer Olympics and the equestrienne events. (Ok..equestrienne doesn't look right no matter how I spell it and I'm too tired to look it up. My brain is fried tonight.)

Julie Zickefoose said...

Equestrian, I think... I like your spelling, Holly; it's feminine!
KD, I know it took hours to upload these, so rest assured that it's deeply appreciated. Horse porn!
Glorious!

Kathi said...

More jumping photos coming up in a future post, for the equestrienne, equestriann, eqestryan - oh, hell - Horse Lovers out there.

~K

Mary C said...

Great job on posting the photos, Kat Doc. Those have got to be the most beautiful, most eloquent, and most graceful horses around. Thanks for posting and sharing.