First, I have to apologize to the people of Nebraska.
I was born in Chicago and lived in Northern Illinois, so I am abundantly aware of everything that’s said about the Midwest. It’s flat. It’s empty. It’s the Flyover States. Yeah, yeah. I got it.
But when the FEI announced that they’d be hosting the World Cup Final in Omaha in 2017, I said, “…for real? Omaha?! Why?!?” And in my defense, I wasn’t alone.
Now that I’m here, I get it. And I’m a believer.
Our trip was, admittedly, long and uninspiring. We did it in two days, and it monsooned much of Day 1, slowing our progress, so it took about 21 hours of driving to get from my home just west of Washington, D.C., to Omaha, which is in Nebraska, right on the border of Nebraska and Iowa, which is one state west of Illinois, which I had to look up on a map because I wasn’t totally sure which of the rectangular states Nebraska was. But as we got through Iowa, things got really pretty. There were rolling hills and big trees and lots and lots of green.
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Omaha itself is not flat, not at all. It’s also a metropolitan area, with beautiful, tall buildings and a fantastic downtown called Old Market with restaurants for days. As an Urban Planning major in college, I geeked out over the area’s beautiful use of parks and fantastic efforts towards preservation and outdoor activities—yesterday I went on a 25-mile bike ride without having to cross more than a handful of roads, and was almost never off the paved bike path, and didn’t even come CLOSE to going as far as the paths went.
And because the construction of the Midwest and West are, frankly, quite a bit younger than the buildings of the East, Omaha is clean and elegant, and beautifully arranged. It’s a very walkable city, with a big cluster of hotels in that Old Market area, which is maybe six by six blocks, and everything you could need is all right there.
Ella has been tucked in at Quail Run Horse Center, a big hunter/jumper facility just West of town, where she’s done very little, just rested and recuperated from the trip. We will move into the CenturyLink center today, the huge convention center and sports venue where the show is being held.
This is where things get cool for me. The CenturyLink is across the street from the hotel, with a covered skybridge connecting the two (which won’t matter so much for us this week, as it’s supposed to be gorgeous out, but for the World Cup in March of next year, all weather-related bets will be off). It’s two parts, the sports arena with the bleachers forever and ever, much like the Thomas and Mack Center in Las Vegas, which has hosted a few World Cups.
But it’s also this MASSIVE convention center, with these three HUGE connected ballrooms that working student Sarah and I broke into after our arrival on Monday to check out. It was this massive empty space, and they were just starting to deliver footing to place pretty much directly down onto the slick, slippery concrete floor. I was immediately nervous—you want my horse, and her little suspensories, to work on what?
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But then it transformed. Click through the photo album; words can’t do it justice.
We’ll move in later this morning, and have a two hour window in which to school before the jumpers take over; the International Omaha has been a jumper show for many years, and just like the World Cup, we’ll be sharing the space with them. We’ve then got a few hours in which, among other things, we’ll start meeting with some folks from the FEI to start learning about a new program they’re putting in place that will affect how Degree of Difficulty is judged in musical freestyles.
I don’t understand enough about it yet to blog about it, because I want to make sure I get it right, but the punchline is that we’ll submit a floorplan ahead of time, using a pretty darn easy computer system (it took me about 10 minutes to figure out) and that more difficult movements as well as more difficult combinations of movements equal an increased score. The goal, as I understand it, is to take out the political element of coming up with that number, something I’m a big fan of, as someone who got a lot of 7 for degree of difficulty this winter (with a pattern that, according to the new system, should be worth between 8.2 and 8.4. Neat.) More details to come, I promise.
Then it’s the jog, a little competitor gathering, and we’re off and running!
If you’re thinking of World Cup 2017, do it. Get a hotel close to the CenturyLink (which isn’t hard; there’s about a gajillion). There are lots of Hiltons, and as such, join Hilton Hhonors, their reward program, because it’s free and you get free wifi that way. Bring your walking shoes, and a hefty appetite—we haven’t had a bad meal yet. And prepare to be amazed. We are!
