Thursday 25th - Day of the opening ceremony

Mum kindly offered to feed Czarko for me so she went off to the venue along with other selected crew to feed the horses by 08:00 while the rest of us had breakfast. When they had returned and had their food, we all went down to the venue to get the horses out of the stables by 09:00 to be walked around and checked by the team management. By 10:00, we had all tacked up and were ready to go out for a ride to exercise the horses. We went out for a hour and explored the start of the yellow (first) loop. We learnt a lot about the ground and what the ride was likely to be like. It was quite rutty and the first tracks were narrow and quite slippy but worse than that was that THE FLIES WERE AWFUL and driving the horses mad! Nevertheless the horses were all very well and happy to be out stretching their legs properly – some of their behaviour did make us wonder what kind of ride we were in for on Saturday, I for one did wonder whether I was likely to have any breaks at all... 

The horses were washed down and back in their stables for 12 noon for the stable lock down from 12-2. This gave us time to go back to the hotel, have a quick dip in the pool and get ready for the opening ceremony which was to be held in town at 4pm. We got back to the stables by 2pm to give the horses a chance to get out of their stables and check them over but by 3pm, they were back in again in order for us to get to the opening ceremony by 15:30. We planned to drive there altogether but there was a miscommunication which meant Penny and I along with our crew were left behind and had to follow a Swedish car there. Luckily the Swedish lead us right to where we needed to be despite the fact that the town was unbelievably complicated to navigate our way around. We found the rest of the team and made our way to the arena where we were parading. The temperatures were soaring and we were dressed in our team GB polos along with white jods and chaps. We paraded around the arena for what felt like forever and we all very uncomfortable with the heat. We had finished around 5pm but went back to the hotel for another dip in the pool to cool off due to there being another stable lock down between 5 and 6.

We ensured we were back by 6pm to get the horses out but what I saw when I arrived to get Czarko out was very shocking. He had been in the stable from 3-6 which was the hottest part of the day and the way the sun shone through the stable made it a sun trap with nowhere for him to cool down or get in the shade. What I saw was Czarko dripping with sweat from head to toe and he was not the only one – Lottie was like it too but luckily was not so sweaty. Fortunately, the other two horses were opposite Czarko and Lottie and therefore had plenty of shade to keep cool in. It panicked me quite a lot and I rushed him to the hosing area to cool him down. In the three hours he was in the stable, he was sweating that much and it just goes to show how hot it was out there.  

We kept the horses out as late as we possibly could to keep them out of the heat but due to the stabling rules, we had to have them back in the stables by 8pm and we had to be out by 9pm. Everyone individually went back to the hotel to get some food and I personally went out for dinner with my grandparents and my boyfriend along with his parents. My grandparents had arrived about lunchtime and we just about ready to have dinner when I was after changing hotel to be closer to the one I was staying in, and also because the hotel they were originally booked in to was not as they were expecting. We ended up going to get dinner at the new hotel they had checked in to which was walking distance away from mine which all went down very well.