I feel I owe a post on the World Equestrian Games- after all, it happened basically in my backyard, and I was lucky enough to attend at least 2/3 of the eventing competition.

But a post on WEG is not complete without mentioning Flo.

The size of this thing cannot be understated.

Before leaving, Hurricane Florence was looking to be the first category 4 hurricane to hit the NC coast in over 60 years. And once it made landfall, it looked like it was making a beeline straight to Raleigh. Now, Raleigh is a couple hours from the coast at best, so we’ve been affected by hurricanes before, but the sheer terror that comes with a Cat 4 storm was on another level. Gas stations were dried up. People were getting into fist fights over packs of water. Schools, universities, and the campus where I work were all shut down in anticipation.

Actual footage of Raleigh last week

And so, we contemplated not even going to WEG. But our husbands assured us that we were essentially useless in a hurricane situation (in their words, what were we going to do? Try to hold up the walls?), and so we packed our trail mix and our guilt and off we went.

When we arrived at TIEC, things looked remarkably different than they had on my last visit over a year before. There was a new stadium, the giant indoor was complete, the vendor village was up, and in general the place was bustling.

The eventing dressage was well executed, and bar a few glitches with the live scores on movements went off without a hitch. To add to the excitement (some sarcasm there), both the eventing and regular dressage has music filling the stadium that matched the tempo of the walk/trot/canter, and often related to the rider’s country of origin. Watching the Swedish rider ride to Abba, and Laura Graves ride to Motown absolutely added to the overall pleasure of watching.

Laura and Diddy, who in my opinion should have won!

Monday I’ll cover the highlight of eventing- Cross Country Day. We had opted not to walk the course on day 2, given the unusually high temps (PS- in Tryon at this point it was all sunshine, and lots of it, and HOT! Florence Schmorence. In Raleigh it was wet and windy and miserable).

Be prepared for embarrassing stories, woodland creatures, and loose horses. Until next time!