EN Today: Photo gallery – the Bromont CCI3* course

John’s already in Canada, gearing up  for a weekend full of Quebec-flavored eventing excitement. He kicks things off today with a virtual course walk.

Top photo: You won’t find a more beautiful look out of a start box anywhere in the world

From John:

Bromont course designer Derek Di Grazia and his team of Bromont course builders have done another spectacular job preparing the courses here at Bromont.  The jump craftsmanship rivals anything I have seen in all my years as an eventer.  Footing.  I didn’t notice the footing for the first four jumps, which is to say it is exactly what I would expect and want from Bromont.  If it rains any more this week the footing could potentially get a bit slick in lower parts of the course.

Notably, the CCI3* and CIC3* courses are quite a bit different.  The Olympic hopefuls that do decide to run cross-country will enjoy a much lighter track since they are in the CIC3* division.  With so many top horses in the CIC3* instead of the CCI3*, I expect that the CCI3* scoreboard will be significantly jumbled up on Saturday.  In stark contrast to Rolex, the first two major 3* combinations are tests of straightness, and I think that will let the horses settle into much more of a rhythm early.  And now for your CCI3* course photos, click on each photo for a larger view:

As a quick note, the 2012 horse trials is being held next weekend rather than during the three-day.  The good news is that we won’t have a repeat of last year when I was probably a bit too honest to two training level young riders.  They came back wide eyed from their first course walk and I told them that the training level corner was the biggest training corner I had ever seen and that I would be flat out terrified to ride it on a training level horse.  Go eventing.