What the WEF?! Week 3: "There's balls in them britches!”

Another week of cold.

We’ve all been reduced to one thought, if you can call it that: “It’s cold.” Our conversations, if you can call it that, consist of “I’m cold.” As if our brains themselves have frozen, the neurons sparking ineffectually.

I speak to my brother on the phone. “I’m cold,” I say. “It’s horrible,” I say.

*Silence on the line.*

“Well, I suppose I shouldn’t say that to you,” I say, remembering he’s in Minnesota, a much more northerly and much more frozen place.

“No,” he says, “You shouldn’t.”

Angry, I am, forced to find empathy for someone else when I feel my own suffering so acutely. Irritated, I am, to think my problems aren’t the worst of it.

But by the weekend it’s warmed up. The talk moves from the weather to the news, delicious and welcome to all: King Edward is here! The best horse in the world, and he’s entered in this week’s 4-star Grand Prix. And not only that, we have the individual Olympic gold medalist, Checker 47.

And for riders we have the World Number 1, the World Number 3, the World Number 4, the World Number 7, the World Number 9! I could go further in naming glamorous practitioners of the sport, but with these riches there’s no reason to consider double digits.

Oh, King Edward! He’s been put 45th in the order in a field of 45, to build up the frenzied anticipation of the crowd. The entire VIP empties to watch his warmup.

Bright yellow tape has been placed a foot outside the fence that circles the warmup ring to keep us from leaning in, to help us resist the temptation to reach out and stroke a muscled flank.

Oh, King Edward! He’s wearing half a bridle. He hasn’t a bonnet, his forelock in a tight little braid. His look is fetching and rebellious.

His fans form an impenetrable gaggle along the yellow tape and photographers clog the artery that leads from the ingate to the VIP, so I don’t see the round, only hear two enormous, unified sighs of disappointment: 8 faults.

“You jinxed it!” I shout later at the 12-year-old show jumping superfan and future 5-star rider I run into after the class.

“I didn’t jinx it!” she shouts back. She’s with her girlsquad, that roving band of fanatics that loop the arena on Grand Prix nights.

“Why are you watching a warmup?” I keep yelling. “You’re jinxing it!”

To her protestations I put the question: “And what about Checker? What was his warmup like?”

“I don’t know!” she yells in my face. “I didn’t watch it!”

“So you admit it!”

I’ve caught her, she knows it, as Checker 47, Olympic Champion, is the winner.

And what a win. I’m back in the VIP for the jump off, King Edward is back in the stable, the yellow tape is empty. Christian Kukuk and Checker 47, the first clear of the night, the first to go in the jump off.

And it’s pretty. That rollback to the Netjets oxer? Tight. Dangerous. That notorious oxer that a riderless horse jumped on its own earlier in the evening after ejecting his pilot (then spending ten minutes circling the ring at a full gallop, to the consternation of the crowd). That oxer that took out another horse-and-rider trying to catch the time later in the jump off (a not-so-pretty tumble, where are the medics anyway?).

That extreme-angled slice over the vertical penultimate fence, that gallop to the last? The whole thing smooth-as-silk and flowing like a river. Three whiskies in, and I’m warm and adrenalized, hooting despite myself ’cause the whole thing’s so pleasing to the eye.

And in the end, none could catch them. Rails clattering to the ground in the various attempts. Gold medalists? Ok, yeah, I can see it.

“Is that a stallion?” asks a member of our party.

“Damn straight that’s a stallion!” I shout. “There’s balls in them britches!”

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