The Slower Road

While Jill was out of town last week, I attended an interesting meeting. Its purpose: to give all of the (now 35) associations here at the KY Horse Park an idea of what to expect in the months, weeks, and days leading up to the World Equestrian Games.

A few highlights:

The park plans to continue to hold horse shows, keeping things as close to normal as possible, through nearly the end of August. But in June, the building of the WEG “city” will begin. This encompasses the tens of thousands of temporary seats around the new outdoor stadium, temporary stabling, the driving stadium, the many VIP and hospitality tents, the trade fair, the media venue, the Alltech “experience,” the main entrance and security checkpoint, etc. Apparently, there’s a lot still to build!

According to the current schedule, the driving stadium will start going up in July (I’ll try to get some photos of it as/after it goes up).

On or about September 10, horses will start arriving for the WEG, which begins on Sept. 25.

Starting May 29 (and running through October 15) will be yet another huge tourist attraction here at the park: the third major exhibit hosted by the KHP’s International Museum of the Horse. “A Gift from the Desert: the Art, History and Culture of the Arabian Horse”  will include nearly 350 artifacts and works of art from nearly 20 lenders throughout the world, including the British Museum; Ashmolean Museum, Oxford University; All Soul’s College, Oxford University; the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Furusiyya Art Foundation; the National Warsaw Museum; the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia; and the American Museum of Natural History, among others.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted any photos of the steady progress being made on the marathon obstacles for this year’s WEG.

Today, for the first time in weeks, the weather was warm (well … low 40s feels warm when we’ve been struggling with temps in the teens) and the sun was shining. So I took my camera and walked out onto the horse park grounds to get some photos. I did have to watch my step here and there (and several times I wished I had thought to bring my wellies) … the last remnants of our snow is melting, which means … MUD.

We’ve reached the point in this endeavor when the obstacles are beginning to look very much like championship marathon obstacles. And so, from here on out, I won’t be posting photos of entire obstacles; nor will I identify which obstacle(s) I’ve photographed. Rather, we’ll tempt you with details.

one of the beautiful locust-tree logs being used in the construction of a new marathon obstacle for this year’s WEG

a lovely set of posts and rails (and some snow)

a joint being nailed after it’s been strapped together

a rough-cut joint that still needs to be finished and sanded

a joint that has been finished and sanded

one of a row of sycamores along a road through the KHP; I had to include this just so you could see how blue the sky was this afternoon