finally, the cones

I apologize for the late arrival of today’s blog post. I had to drive our van back to the airport this morning, and I’m now in a different hotel, where I’ve spent the afternoon sorting through photos. The internet connection here (or, at least, the free version that I’m *attempting* to use) is remarkably slow.

I’m starting a few days of vacation (yaaay!) tomorrow, so I was hoping to breeze through a few blog posts to have them all ready to go for the next several days. But we’ll see whether this internet connection will let me do that. Fingers crossed, everyone!

Here are some views of the cones competition … first, two of the U.S. drivers and then each of the Top Nine (I meant to get photos of all the Top Ten drivers, but missed Belgium’s Gert Schrijvers, who was standing in tenth place after the dressage and marathon phases). They’re all shown in the order in which they drove.

Joe Yoder (USA), in his first world championship, won a team bronze medal

with just 1.29 time and no course penalties, James Fairclough helped the U.S. team win the bronze medal, and he finished the cones phase in tenth place after the drive-off

Hungary’s Zoltan Lazar

Koos de Ronde (NED) helped the Dutch team successfully defend their team gold medal

Sweden’s Tomas Eriksson

Christoph Sandmann, a member of the German silver-medal-winning team

Theo Timmerman, also a member of the Dutch team

Ysbrand Chardon (NED) finished with individual bronze and team gold medals

Georg von Stein, also a member of the German team

With a near-perfect drive on the cones course (just one ball down and no time penalties), Chester Weber secured his own individual silver medal and the U.S. team’s bronze medal.

Boyd Exell went into the cones phase with enough of a lead that his 5.50 penalty points on the cones course couldn’t prevent him from successfully defending his individual gold medal.