hi all,

well as most of you will by now know Vivant and Chris have run 7th in the 2010 world cup final!!!

But was the road smooth and trouble free - — oh no — so here goes with the story.

1.      the decision was to stay overnight on the way to make it an easy two day trip, sounds like a good plan!

2.      drive into the place to stay overnight, are offered a very nice box in the mare barn! have to decline it — get offered a box in the stallion barn, 8 stallions, mesh between the boxes, all with a view of the 30 odd young horses running in the paddocks, starting to panic now

3.       find a nice corner box, no view, very big, one window, but we electify it and vivant is completely settled, eating and smelling poo.

4.      check him till midnight, no dramas, a knock on the truck door at 2am, ‘oh, your stallion has jumped out’ — ‘impossible we say’ but no vivant has indeed jumped out and gone to visit the stallion barn

5.      check him over with a torch, skin off the stifle area, sh****t sh****t sh****t.

6.      tie him up and sit outside his box until daylight — cannot tell you how cold that was!

7.      the morning shows a horse stiff and sore— do we turn back now or continue on — there are 10 people flying in from home to watch — so on we continue

8.      tell ourselves - it is only a horse show and there will be others and the outcome could have been sooooo much worse.

9.      get the vets to give us their opinion, get him scanned and he is given the all clear and he works out of the stiffness and skin soreness within a lap of trot.

10.  now we have a horse that has had three days of only walking, no warm up event and the biggest start of his career — oh well, nothing ventured nothing gained!

11.  jumps a fabulous clear round, travelled super and was totally happy to be there and looked very much like he belonged. finishes 14th — on track for top 20 finish

12.  day two — one down in the first round, misread the oxer in the double of liverpools, watching the video, vivant looked like he thought it was a verticle and chris said he actually held him off the base a bit so he didn’t run deep — if you got to ride it the second time chris would probably ride it harder, cause the horse will back off the water — lesson learned and good experience. finished up one place in 13th - still on track

13.  round one on the sunday, one down, a lot had it- a tall verticle off a very short corner and vivant jumped a bit low behind - 4 faults but stays in 13th place going to the final round

14.  clear!!! and fabulous — some of the others have rails and we watch vivant climb up the rankings from 13th to 7th —

15.  very surreal watching the presentation — our boy 7th in the world !!!

16.  what an adventure — what a week!! what a roller coaster ride

17.  what wonderful animals horses are to take us all around the world and let us have soooo much fun

back to lastrup tomorrow morning for a few very well deserved few days off