Sam McIntosh and Check In looked just the goods at this morning’s World Equestrian Games in the first round of the second competition for the team and individual jumping championship.
Check In just rubbed the troublesome first of the last double, and so incurred four faults, but the rest of the round looked amazeballs.
Sam called that double the “joker” of the round. “It is very delicate, very short, it is at the end of the course where you have to attack a little bit all the way. He tried his best and just nicked it behind.”
Going in the morning was a good change for Sam who went in the hottest part of the day yesterday. “Yesterday was really hot and sticky.”
However yesterday’s exertions didn’t seem to worry Check In at all. “He was really fresh after yesterday, backed up the round really well and was quite sparky in the warm-up. He went into the ring and did his job as best he could today.”
As to the course, Sam agreed that it was very tough. “I would have thought it would have been a little bit easier in the first round before they start making the cut in numbers, but you can see on the results there are not too many clears yet. There will be a few more to come at the end when the stronger riders come through and hopefully one more for us!”
As to picking who to look out for coming up this afternoon, Sam thought Marcus Ehning’s horse Prep A Tout had a “walk in the park” yesterday. “There is a bunch of those last horses really who could do it today.”
As for the rest of the day, Sam is off to support Bruce and Sharn and hopes they can have good rounds too.
There were two more clear jumping rounds in the second session this morning, but both riders incurred one time fault. Germany’s Laura Klaphake and Catch Me If You Can OLD was one of these, putting the German team in a clear lead at the moment in the team’s competition as their other competitor, Simone Blum, is the only one sitting on a clear jumping and time from this morning. The other one time-faulted was American Adrienne Sternlicht on Cristalline, to the delight of the locals.
