Update from the Nanjing Youth Olympic Games
Tuesday 19 August 2014
Following Jake’s unexpected flying start on Galaxy, or Leo as he is better known (click here for the first instalment), the combination had a good day yesterday during the first official training/warm up session.
Jake has been drawing on his showjumping experience as Leo was a little nervous going into the arena when he saw 1500 people sat watching him. Jake had ninety seconds in the arena to get Leo used to the audience and sensibly he let him have a good look before he started jumping. The pair jumped five fences and they jumped them very well. This was a major step forward and Leo seemed very relaxed with Jake. He is a very big powerful horse and he seems better day by day in himself.
Today sees the team competition get underway and Europe are the first to go of six teams. Each team is made up of five riders and the top three scores count from each round. The drawn for the team from Europe is as follows – 1st Matias Alvaro (Italy), 2nd Michael Duffy (Ireland), 3rd Jake, 4th Filip Agren (Sweden) and 5th Lisa Nooren (The Netherlands).
The team are of course hoping to be as close to the top as we can after day one. The other teams are also very confident, but tomorrow will be bigger, more technical and without doubt, time will play a factor.
The official training/warm up day followed on from a fantastic opening ceremony, which was based on the story of China from a youth perspective. They used light as the theme and it was spectacular. The number of people involved is reputed to be 26,000!!
The picture is from the opening ceremony. The acrobats were high above the ground on wires and gave a display that left everyone speechless.
Thank you to Corinne Bracken who is out in Nanjing as Chef d’Equipe for her daily blogs.