Virginia Horse Trials Part One

The Virginia Horse Center has something happening almost every weekend.
It's not limited to horse events
but it's paradise for people who compete in horse shows!

It has a 4,000 seat coliseum as well as 2 other indoor arenas,

19 show rings, 8 barns and much more.

And although it's only about 1/2 mile down the road 

from hotels and Wal-Mart, 

it's surrounded by 600 acres of land 

for cross country courses, trail events and carriage driving.

Yes, go ahead and hate me.... 

that big building you see in the photo below is our Wal-Mart.

Even the Wal-Mart is scenic (sort of!)

View Into Town from the Oak Hill Cross Country Course

This weekend was the Virginia Horse Trials "Three Day Eventing" Competition.

 Each horse/rider team competes in all three events over the weekend:

Dressage, Cross Country and Stadium Jumping.

Looking Across the Afternoon Course

In a moment of insanity,
I volunteered to be a "jump judge" for the cross country.
I say insanity, because I knew zero, zip, na-da about
cross country jumping!

Don't you always wonder
when someone tells you that you don't need to know anything to help out,
whether they really mean it?!

Thankfully I was emailed a link to a four page summary of what to do,

because the VERY brief 10 minute "training" on Saturday AM

assumed that I knew much much more than I did!

My Final Set of Jumps to Judge

The courses were each about 2-3 miles long,

so volunteers are needed to be "eyes" of the event,
helping in case of trouble on the course and 

and scoring refusals, missed jumps and falls.

So armed with a clipboard, forms, pens, map, stopwatch and whistle,

I judged four different jumps on four courses throughout the day.

Continued tomorrow!......