Rush to the Middle: Horsies!

A few weeks ago, we went to the finals of the Longines Global Champions Tour for show jumping at the Al Shaqab Equestrian Centre.

I had heard through the grapevine that this was happening, and I thought it might be fun for the boys to see show jumping live. I mean, when were they going to see something like this again? I've lived my whole life and only seen show jumping on TV at the Olympics! And Al Shaqab is part of the Qatar Foundation so all QF employees got in free. It sounded like a good opportunity.

I checked the schedule and saw that there was an event that was happening at 2:15pm, right after school on Thursday, the first day of the three day tour. I packed up some snacks, changes of clothes, and some new Legos (courtesy of a care package from Grandma!) and went to surprise the boys and pick them up from school. They were both shocked to see me, since they normally ride the bus now, and they were very happy to see the Legos and to hear we were going to see horses.

Of course, we got a teensy bit lost on our way to the event, because of new construction, but we still got to the venue at 2:30pm, which meant there were plenty of horses left to see. The equestrian center must be relatively new because it is in pristine condition, and there were probably 40 spectators, not counting the horse owners and jockeys down on the floor. So we really felt like we had the place all to ourselves, and we sat right on the front row, which meant we were about 30 feet away from the field and the first jump of the run. I found it all fascinating; I had never realized, having seen this only on the Olympics before, that often horses simply don't want to jump. Many of these horses were absolutely not interested in jumping, and several baulked so suddenly they threw their riders to the ground or into the jump itself. J thought it was exciting but was into watching for about 5 minutes before he got down on the ground and started to build his Lego car, while E sat beside me mesmerized for almost the entire event, telling me the horses were so powerful when they jumped and gasping whenever one clipped a jump or threw a rider. He was very interested in the scoring and even though I only vaguely remembered how it worked from the last time I watched, after a few riders I was able to figure it all out again, much to E's delight.

Everyone got to do what they wanted, we saw something new, we learned something along the way, and we spent zero money! Success!