WEG - where are all the people??

And here it is - the first blog from WEG!! We arrived Tuesday afternoon, and after checking into the hotel, headed over to the International Horse Festival (or something) at the convention center downtown. The phrase I heard over and over was "where are all the people?" Everyone wanted to know when the people would come. The funny thing is - now, having been to WEG one day - the shopping was better at the convention center, and I might even have to go back! We didn't buy anything at WEG today, and other than a cooling vest - which is AMAZING and on show special - I don't have a whole lot I'm interested in buying. And $15 for a glass of wine from the equivalent of a hot dog street vendor cart - well, that just seems a bit ridiculous!!! But, I won't complain - because the competition is everthing we imagined it would be and MORE! We attended the eventing jog and both sessions of dressage today. Both were amazing - amazing - amazing! So, I promised I wouldn't type much, but would focus on pictures this week, so here we go...

At the eventing jog - not that I'm exactly a fashionista, but the Canadians won my fashion award of the morning. I totally LOVE their white jackets - wow, those girls looked sharp!

I also heard a lot of "where are all the people" at the jog this morning too. But, for what we lacked in numbers, we made up for in enthusiasm - and Canadians had the most fans too! And "the people's horse" - RUN HENNY RUN - got probably the second loudest cheers of the day after his approval (only second to Neville Bardos, who was very naughty and had to trot again - the entire crowd was holding their breath that he would pass after the second trot - and he did! see video below).

Photo of the first row of spectators -

It was very amusing to watch several of the horses slam on the brakes and practically have to be drug to the end of the trot-up lane - when the cameras started clicking away, right at their face - several of the horses said "REALLY? - I'd like to see you make me go over there!"

And then we were off to dressage. Upon walking into the main stadium, 2 things struck me: 1) the number of empty seats, and 2) the distribution of the seats sold to people. I have so many things to say about how this whole ticket thing has worked out, but I think this photo pretty much says it all. They pretty much sold out one section of tickets and that was all! The good thing is that the volunteer event staff was awesome - so nice and helpful, and they let us sit anywhere we wanted! Which definitely worked out in our benefit, because the seats they sold us 2 years ago were sorta shit!

But watching this level of dressage was worth every bit of shitty seats, extortionist prices, and general pain in the ass arrangements. I took a few video clips, but not much - I figure it's all out on tv/web someplace already, and I just wanted to sit and enjoy it all. Let me just sum up Edward Gal's ride on Morlands Totilas - his final passage received a 10 from 4 judges and a 9 from the 5th judge. And it was stunning - and then the crowd went bananas! Did you know that dressage fans can go bananas?! They did and it was very very cool!!

We got 2 free things today. 1) A very cool hat from the race track in Dubai. 2) a free photo from Ariat. They had this super cool set-up with a show jump and HUGE image of a horse jumping over it - they gave you FEI medals to wear and clicked a free photo for you. I just downloaded ours, and well, you get what you pay for, don't you. Sorta assumed it would have been a portrait aligned photo so the super cool jumping horse might be in the photo. Nope. But, we did get a nice picture of between his back legs - too bad it wasn't a stallion - at least that would be funny!