Pratoni ground?

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xspiralx

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I'm not sure if this has been brought up before - was away over the weekend so I missed the threads about it.

I was watching the xc yesterday though, which my mum taped for me, and I thought the ground looked fairly hard. Not unacceptably bad, but it looked to me not much different from the ground conditions at Badminton, although I could be wrong about this - happy to be corrected.

However people who pulled out of Badders were happy to run the horses in Italy - why?
 
PRESENTERS MENTIONED THAT THE HARD GROUND OVER THERE WASNT THE SAME AS HARD GROUND (oops sorry) we have here, why escaped me....
it had been gone over with a spiky device to loosen it up though
 
I didn't see any XC but WRT badminton vs Pratoni, I would guess some of those who pulled from Badders did so specifically to save their horses for Pratoni.
 
[ QUOTE ]
Not unacceptably bad, but it looked to me not much different from the ground conditions at Badminton, although I could be wrong about this - happy to be corrected.

However people who pulled out of Badders were happy to run the horses in Italy - why?

[/ QUOTE ]
Must admit I thought exactly the same thing. Mary King made such a song and dance about it at Badmington (on behalf of Call Again Cavalier), no whisper about not running the horses in Italy.

The reasons I'm sure will be to do with the fact that they were running as part of a team at Pretoni, and therefore the risk was acceptable.

Still................
 
According to the commentary, the ground at Pratoni was volcanic dust (under the turf), whereas at Badminton the soil is clay based, and so when dry is VERY hard.

You could see a lot of dust being kicked up by the horses hooves as they galloped along, which is probably creating a natural "softening" of the ground and essentially what they tried to replicate at Badminton when they put all the top soil on?

They did allude to the fact that the ground was hard, but not bad enough to cause serious concern, which was proven by the number of horses passing the vet inspection on the Sunday morning I guess.

Also, as previously mentioned, a few of the Badminton withdrawals were with the Euro Champs in mind, they may have run at Badminton if they were not team horses.
 
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