The Trial of the Treble

I’m sitting on my bed at home in Wellington, Florida. I have been tasked by my editor to indulge in what I’m terming “remote reportage,” the job of covering the CSIO Aachen 5* Nations Cup via livestream.

But I am a very simple writer, one who looks around her and writes down what she sees. A storm does not roll in on a sunny day nor do sand dunes of a desert appear where there is a grassy field. I reflect like a mirror.

So instead of the fan-shaped green expanse of the Aachen Haupstadion, we have the fluffy stretch of a white down comforter and a pile of pillows facing a TV.

And yet, despite myself, I give you the title of a potential murder mystery, and perhaps (leaving out the necessity of providing the story with a dead body), a tale of seduction and betrayal, jealousy and loss.

The Trial of the Treble.

I could have gotten on a plane, that’s true, and anchored my reportage in reality, but the assignment came too late.

But am I on a flight of fantasy? Or is it as it appears to the fanciful mind—the course designer holds a grudge against someone in the order-of-go, or is enacting revenge on the entirety of the field.

I am joined for the first round of this one-million-euro 1.60m Mercerdes-Benz Nations Cup by ClipMyHorse commentator Steven Wilde and international rider Daniel Bluman, who provides a flurry of commentary, much of it focused on that troublesome triple.

There is no sport that breaks the heart like the sport of show jumping, Bluman muses philosophically as the back bar of the B element goes down again.

“Wait until your kids start riding,” responds Wilde.

“It’s too late!” says Bluman, adding that they do not have the height for basketball and their golf swings have proven less-than-promising.

Not to mention, responds my hungry-for-horses heart, there’s no sport greater than show jumping!

And I am reminded of the words of poet Andrea Gibson: “Just to be clear, I don’t want to get out without a broken heart. I intend to leave this life so shattered there better be a thousand separate heavens for all my flying parts.”

Flying parts, flying poles, scattered rails, stopping horses, accumulating faults…a poet can dream here.

But back to that triple: it’s the fourth obstacle of the course, set alongside “the lake,” the large water feature that decorates the south side of the arena. The course designer has built it big, coming eight strides after a triple bar with a short distance from the vertical at A to the enormous oxer at B to the last element, where he’s stuck a liverpool. In fact, the whole thing is water-themed, with big splashes making up the standards. And he’s devilishly placed it facing the blinding setting sun.

We have teams from eight countries: Belgium, Brazil, France, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, the Netherlands, and the USA.

The Americans have been on a tear this time out at Aachen. On Wednesday, Laura Kraut and Emeraldo 4 got international ranking class competition going with a win in the 1.50 two-phase. Kent Farrington, resplendent in his red coat and newly-acquired white world-ranked-number-one armband, followed with a win on Myla in the very next class, the 1.60 Turkish Airlines-Prize of Europe. And McLain Ward, refusing to be left out, got up the next morning and nabbed the 1.45m speed with his mount High Star Hero.

There seems to be a certain sort of gluttony at work. A greed for results in this, the Mecca of Show Jumping.

The first round ended with Belgium in the top spot with a four-fault score, just edging out Team USA, also on four (McLain’s mount Imperial HBF, barely placed a foot in the water), with a slightly faster time. Germany was in third with four, but slower by more than five seconds.

Round 2, and I was eating Indian food in bed, the livestream camera providing marvelous coverage as it slid alongside the horses on a cable suspended across the arena. “Is this not infinitely better than waiting in line for currywurst with 40,000 fellow spectators?” I mused with my naan.

But that got me thinking about currywurst, that ubiquitous staple of German cuisine, a combination of sliced bratwurst and sloppy, curry-inflected tomato paste, invented post-WWII by a chef named Herta Heuwer after she got some ketchup from British soldiers. Why did she do this? No one is really able to give an adequate answer, and certainly the question has been asked many times—a mournful, keening, “Whyyyyy?” when first one tries the dish, which astonishingly is eaten 800 million times a year by Germans and a few hapless tourists, as reported by The Deutsches Currywurst Museum.

If you are desperate to visit such an august museum (the only one to have ever existed dedicated to currywurst), I’m afraid you’re out of luck: it permanently closed on December 21, 2018. It did not, unfortunately, take currywurst with it: the dish still exists.

Round 2, and Steven Wilde was joined by Lauren Hough, who immediately, in a tone of perpetual dismay, entered the conversation with her thoughts on the triple: “I hate to see all the faults in one place.”

The Germans suffered. Although two made it through the triple clear (Jana Wargers and Hans-Dieter Dreher), Christian Kukuk got a stop at the first element after a Round 1 clear, and Sophie Hinners took out the B and the C elements. This shunted Team Germany down into fourth place with a total 15 fault score.

Still in the fight for the win was Belgium, but they unfortunately added another four faults to their score, for a total of 8, leaving it to that King of the Pressure Cooker, McLain Ward, to come in and cinch the thing.

Would the treble get him? It hadn’t in the first round. Would Imperial HBF go for a dip in the water again? He had the first round. Lillie Keenan and Argan de Beliard gave the team a double clear (one of only five the entire night), Laura Kraut had improved her four-fault first round to a clear, while Kent and Toulayna kept things interesting with a four-fault second round.

I’m sure you’ve already seen the headlines: McLain and Imperial HBF got it done, posting a clear round and securing the win. Curry (not wurst) dribbled down my chin as I watched the jubilant American team celebrating their victory. A smiling Kent Farrington filled the screen, and I snapped the pic and posted it to my story.

“He’s so cute,” responded so many. I sent them Kent Dolls applications (the super-secret, crazily-exclusive Team KPF fan club of which I am Secretary-General). I also snapped a pic of McLain, but he was not smiling, the pressure of so many closing rounds having etched lines into his careworn face.