Aachen

This past weekend I went to the German Youth Championships in Aachen. The showgrounds is absolutely gorgeous....and of course the big stadiums. I walked into the big jumping stadium to watch the warm up, and I could only imagine what it must feel like to ride in a place like that. Talk about atmosphere! Saturday, we watched the pony dressage, the young rider dressage, and the junior and young rider jumping classes. For the dressage, everyone was extremely accurate in their test riding. It was amazing! The rider positions were ok. We saw a lot of riders with either slouched upper bodies or really loose and wobbly backs. However, every single rider had excellent leg positions. The jumping was great too. I watched the jumper warm up for a while and saw one rider do the most perfect walk and canter pirouettes before beginning with jumping to get his horse on the hind leg. It was really cool to see.

We went back on Sunday to watch the junior and young rider kurs, and the final jumping competition for the jumpers. There were some that were really nice. My overall impression was that the choreography was very well put together and flowed for all the riders, but the choice of music and ability to interpret it in the ring was not good for all the riders. Most of the riders were off of their music by a lot, and their choice of music was a little boring....kind of like background music. The points were won because of the great technical accuracy in the movements, definitely not artistically. It was really awesome to see rides with perfectly executed movements and no mistakes, even if the music was a little off. It rained so hard on Sunday, but the footing on the dressage rings stayed really nice. However, it was very slippery for the jumpers who had to jump on the grass in the pouring rain! There were a lot of wipeouts due to loss of balance on the wet grass. Plus, the jumps were HUGE! It was really incredible how much skill and technique there was to see there. The riders in the top placings were really good to watch because they had to keep their horses balanced between the fast turns and jumps only with their core strength. If they used their hands too much, then the horse would lose the rhythm or get behind the leg, and would end up either wiping out, refusing, or getting a rail. I learned a lot from watching that.
Overall it was a great, inspiring weekend. I can't wait until I can show there myself one day!