Winner of our section Nero - spanish champion twice, it is clearly much pressure for the judges to have a double spanish champion in front of them, how can anyone beat him, it is like saying all the other judges were wrong. I was thinking he did not need more titles and that he could leave space for others. Multichampion Nazareno Nr 2 followed by a line of other famous champions.
Such flying-trots one after the other, awesome to see! Clearly much pressure for us.. There was a excellent level of horses of all ages and people were saying even better level than SICAB as all the important studfarms was here that did not come to SICAB.
After judge nr 2 'did us in' we had no chance to go on by the selected for the ridden test. The difference between 59 and 72 is clearly very confusing and we all tried to understand. The scores of this judge was always between 10-20 points below the others. One participant even had a difference of 23 points! He has to be respected but he is a new judge whilst the other two are old and experienced and have their criterias very clear. So we all decided to focus on the two coherent judges instead as they gave more understandable scores and reference.
In the ridden test we saw one horse that put his head straight up in the ceiling, the rider was not able to stop him for 20 metres to do the salute! It was so terrible it was funny, poor rider, I would be so embarrassed.
Reflextion on the general atmosphere; Breeders take the competitions seriously and they are competitive. However you notice the friendliness and you definitely cannot sense any kind of jealousy. The one who wins get respect and appreciation and is congratulated warmly. There is a cooperation, a very famous breeder asked us for a stud, he also asked his competitor breeder next to him, he told us about the pros and cons of his own stallion and did not pretend he was the best in any way even though this horse is a multichampion.
The stallion neibours were busy fighting and screaming but D liked the idea of a siesta, he is a very calm horse!
Sunday is a day open for public so we could not leave until 17.00 as there need to be horses for the people to see. A flamenco-woman came up when walking with Donoso, she asked if she could take a photo of her and him, it was very sweet, like he was some kind of famous person, she looked so proud when she posed by his side!
But my most emotional moment was when we were having lunch, a very old couple came up to us, they had dressed up to go to the feria but you could clearly see they were very poor, the woman had no teeth and had arthritis and the man were a tie that was probably 40 years old. They were so moved by Betty, totally overwhelmed, the man sat down and took her up in his arms (B doesn't normally let strangers pick her up but she must have sensed he was a kind man) and kissed her on the head, he was so touched he had tears in his eyes and just kept stroking and kissing her so lovingly. Me being a melancolic sensitive one this was all too much emotional so there I was crying too. It was so very beautiful, this little dog made these old people so happy. And upstairs everyone were busy getting their champion-titles to make them happy - what different worlds.
Waiting for his price, as always it is a long and tiring procedure, horses very well behaved.
