Jump-Off

I attended my first and only 2008 Olympics event this evening - Equestrian Jumping Qualifications (3rd round) and Team Jumping Competitions (Final Round & Medal Ceremony). Unfortunately, Chris is traveling all week. Not very much fun for him but very fun for my friend, Sara, who got to come with me instead. I'd like to give a big Thank-You to my friend, Katie, who had the extra tickets and let me buy them from her. And another big Thank-You to Richie who very kindly left his pocket radio and dual headphones for me to listen to the commentary at tonight's event.

You can watch tonight's performance on the Oxygen channel from 5-7 p.m. on Monday night. If you haven't checked the internet and don't want to find out what happened...STOP READING HERE :)

Let me just start by saying a few things. I love the Olympics. I love America and I love our hearing our national anthem.

The great things about the Olympics is that you get to watch sporting events that you only watch every four years. Even better, you don't have to know anything about the sporting event you are watching the enjoy it. My sisters and I found that to be true back in 2002 when we were at our first bobsledding event. The same happened tonight with the show jumping.

Granted, I have a basic understanding of the sport. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that the horse should go over the jump, not stop in front of it; the horse shouldn't knock any of the poles off the jumps; and the rider should say on top of the horse. These are all basic.

The cool thing about the Olympics is that now I know words like "cups" - the things that are holding the poles up and phrases like "he chose a 5 instead of a 6" - meaning the rider had the horse take 5 strides in between the jump instead of 6 strides. I also learned things like, there are colleges in the U.S. that have collegiate level riding programs (this one really blew us away). Or things like, the Americans and Canadians generally take the shorter number of strides and the Europeans generally take the larger number of strides.

Why do the Americans and Canadians do this? Maybe it's because we're better! The American rider was the last to go and her ride (only one jumping fault but no times faults for a total of 4 points) brought the Americans in to a 2-way tie with the Canadians for the gold medal. Time for a jump-off! I think that we were the only people in the stadium who really had no idea what was going on, but it was worth the text to our friend, Lorraine, sitting on the other side of the stadium to figure out the rules. Fewer jumps but the fewest penalties and total time dictates the winner. Three Americans and two Canadians later, the Americans had it locked and we were cheering for the gold. It was awesome. Really so cool. So, so cool.

I will try to post pictures tomorrow, especially of the very interesting medal ceremony. Let's just say that the horses really would prefer to be in the stable and not out with the very noisy crowds. Right now it's after 1 a.m. here and I'm off to bed.