The event’s first vet inspection was this afternoon. With all the construction going on here at the park, the lane was bordered by a row of empty stalls on one side, and a wide swath of mud on the other. At the far end was the earth-moving machinery that had no doubt just recently finished digging up all the mud … needless to say, several of the horses gave the earth mover a good careful look as they trotted toward it, while some others didn’t seem to care a bit.

Only the FEI-level horses were required to participate in the inspection, so the preliminary and intermediate competitors were able to watch or do other things. They had set up two lanes at a bit of distance from each other — all the FEI-level single and pair horses and ponies went down one lane, and all the four-in-hand teams went down the other. Since I (unfortunately) couldn’t be in two places at the same time, I was only able to see the four-in-hand horses. Of these, one horse of Gary Stover’s was not accepted, and one of the Canadian teams was instructed to re-present nearly all of their horses tomorrow.

Chester Weber and his horse Jamaica, the 2008 USEF Horse of the Year

Josh Rector brought his team all the way from Arizona

one of Jimmy Fairclough’s very fit-looking horses … several of his looked like they would much rather run and buck than trot quietly

Sterling Graburn presented Wendy Ying’s team of horses

one of Mike McLennan’s Friesian/QH crosses … Mike is one of the drivers we’re following in the “Road to the WEG” series in The Carriage Journal

one of Tucker Johnson’s horses

 And, finally, one very grainy (cell-phone) photo of Michael Freund presenting a driving demonstration using James Miller’s team of coach horses …

Michael Freund gave a crowd-pleasing demonstration of combined driving (with a team of coaching horses) at this evening’s Lexington Combined Driving Classic Kick-Off Party