Remington En Route to Pau

Remington started his marathon trip to Pau, a five day journey across two continents including a plane ride and truck ride to get to the final four-star of the year in Pau, France. The horse left yesterday morning at 6:30am beginning with a journey to the airport in New York City on a plane bound for Amsterdam. He gets straight on a truck from there to Chantilly where he’ll soak up a bit of French culture for a few days with his groom Caitlin Silliman. I think he’ll be eager to taste the French grass and I’ve instructed Caitlin to just hack him out walk him and stretch his legs.

Lainey’s horse didn’t look one hundred per cent on the day of departure so our intended traveling companion is going to stay home and fight for another day. I’m good friends with Lainey so this was a blow to me as well since I was looking forward to sharing the experience with a fellow countryman. I understand Anthony Patch only has a niggling little injury and will come back 100%, but the drug rules are so strict in France that treatment of his aches and pains would not be possible before the event.

This is the first time in history that I won’t be riding my horse for five days straight leading up to a four-star. Usually this would terrify me, with a horse like Neville, but in a way it suits Remington perfectly as he’s a horse that doesn’t need a whole lot of work to get a good dressage test out of him and I think a little back-off in exercise will suit him just right. We gave Remi 20 liters of IV fluids before he left New York and Caitlin is going to find a vet in France to give him another 20 liters before he makes the trip from Chantilly to Pau.

I’m flying over from Philadelphia on Sunday, planning to arrive in Pau by lunchtime Monday. I’m a little nervous flying through Paris as there has been a bit of rioting over there so I plan to take my baseball bat and a few flairs to get amongst some of the culture on my arrival. As far as I understand our complete American crew, including the owners Ron and Densey, Silva my wife and Caitlin my groom have a total of two words in our French vocabulary: Bonjour and Merci. We’re going to see how far that gets us!

-Boyd