So I woke up and got ready for the full day ahead of me. I got to the show grounds about 10mins before the first person was going to start their test. Let me back up a second, if your not a horsey person and wondering what a test is or why they would be doing one at a horse show, this is why. A "test" is the name in what you do in Dressage at a horse show, a synanum would probably be round (ex; the first round). Anyways back to the present, there are many more other types of horsey events going on here, but I only came for the Eventing part of it. I got 4 days of tickets, 1st & 2nd Dressage, 3rd X-C, and 4th Show Jumping. If your wondering why there is two days of dressage that's because there was to many riders to fit into one day. It also helped that we took three breaks throught the day, dressage from 9am till 5:30pm with a hour lunch break and two 10-15min breaks on either side. Nothing really happened, well of course something happened I am at the WEG, but nothing more than the usual at these types of events. Though while on my lunch break I was walking around and looking at the building, when I heard a big chear from Stadium 3 (the vaulting arena) but of course I couldn't go inside since I didn't have a ticket. I then thought to myself that that would be kind of fun going to see the vaulting. I looked at the times table for the Games and saw that i could go after the dressage tomorrow. I would miss the first 1/2 hour, but then it didn't really matter because 1.i wasn't following the score and 2. I would still get to see another 4 hours of it. So after the Dressage ending today I went over to the ticket booth and bought a ticket for tomorrmow vaulting. Afterwards I cought the bus back to the hotel, which I would just like to point out was free. This was because the Games organization (the same governing body as the Olympics) made a deal with the city of Aachen, that we could use that day's ticket as sort of bus pass to anywere the busses ran.
at the entrance to the show grounds
the vendors "tent city"
the photographers
click on the FEI World Equestrian Games 2006 to see the pictures
