Final Days at WEG Training Camp

Left to Right: Woodburn, Remington XXV and Neville Bardos

The second week of our training camp has been productive for both horses. Oded came in on Monday and Tuesday and we concentrated on specific movements out of the dressage test and both horses were fantastic and looked like they could do a super test any time soon. Katie Prudent flew down from VA on Wed and gave the whole group a jump school. They still had the course set up from the AEC so we basically warmed up and jumped specific lines from the course that had proved particularly troublesome at the competition. Both boys jumped extremely well; I was over the moon with them.

Neville doing what he loves most

Tomorrow at 7am is our final mandatory gallop and then apparently they’re going to trot the horses up at 11:00 for their final health inspection. If all looks good then Neville will leave for the horse park in Phillip’s trailer at midnight on Friday night and Remington will leave for a barn next door to the Horse Park where all alternate horses will stay in work and on standby until the Games are over. The US team has the option of replacing any horse on the team with an alternate up until Tuesday.

All the riders leave tomorrow afternoon in a car. We have to go through the rider/athlete processing on Friday evening and get our accreditation and be ready for the opening ceremony on Saturday night.

Andrea packing

We spent this afternoon strategically packing all our horses and gear; my young horses go back to PA tomorrow with Lillian and then Neville and Remington go their separate ways tomorrow. To be quite honest it still doesn’t seem anything is for sure, because in the business of training event horses all your plans can change after one gallop. I figure like I’ve done everything I can to get them both going their best and I just have to hold my breath.

I’ve been pretty focused here in the camp, and I’ve kept myself busy all day every day, doing a bit of teaching and getting plenty of exercise and helping Andrea in the barn.


The evenings have been good fun with a team dinner of some sort each evening. Last night we had a send-off cocktail party at Carl Bouckaert’s house which also happened to be Capt. Mark Phillips’ 52nd birthday.
My next blog update will come next week from the Kentucky Horse Park!

-Boyd