Bruno - Final Preparations for Pau - Oct ‘23

This is a video for the Annie Goodwin Syndicate. Well, guys, we're in our final stages of our preparation towards POE 5 star 3 day event, which is. It's coming up quick. It's the, the last weekend in October and have to say Bruno's in sizzling form. I did his final cross country school today and thought I'd put together a bit of a video of our. A final training session over the cross country jumps. And he was very, very good. Bruno's been training really, really well as we build up towards P.O. he obviously had a good run around New Jersey two weeks ago and it was a pretty easy course. So I wanted to cross country school him a bit today and work on a few of the fences that I'm expecting to see at PO Been lucky enough to compete at PO a couple of times now and it's a tough course. It's very similar to what we went through at Le Moulin in June, but probably a little bit more intense and a little bit of a bigger course. So it's at the PO Hippodrome, which I think is a translation for a racetrack or a training center. A huge, huge thoroughbred training center and a race course. And the three day event sort of has their course and their competition that goes in and out of the training center. And, you know, started out Bruno today just a little bit slow and easy and just jump the fences, not at top speed, but sort of working a little bit of jumping and turning and making sure that Bruno could jump a jump and make a nice smooth turn to the next fence. Bruno's been really, really healthy in the build up. Obviously with an event of this magnitude, we really don't leave any stone uncovered. And my vet, Kevin Keane's been, you know, looking at him once a week and touchwood, he's been very, very healthy. Now, I will say, guys, he's, he's carrying a bit of weight now. He's a, he's a lot trimmer than he was a month ago, but he's still, still a bit heavy. And I can't figure it out. He's been galloping every five days and we've been working the pants off him and he's slowly trimming up. I think he's sneaking food somehow or the girls at the Barna somehow feeding him too much because he's. For the amount of work that we've been putting into him, as you can see there, he's carrying a bit of weight. We've actually resorted to putting a muzzle on him in the field, which Bruno hates and I've promised him that after Poe, where the muzzle comes off and you see here, it's a big wide table and down, but that's a very, very skinny, skinny jump there. And then after that sort of long fast forward course, I did a bit of a short tight turn to this skinny fence here. And I have to say Bruno's really on his game. I sort of set my cross country course on a number of exercises that I thought would replicate. There's a lot of these little mounds you see here at Po and I don't know, Bruno loves this sort of cross country riding. We're jumping and turning lots of angled fences and I know he's just awesome. It's really well schooled and experienced at this level now and he's super accurate and really full of confidence. So anyway guys, we're got a huge sort of trip for Bruno. He flies to, he flies to Liege, Belgium I think on, on the 18th of October. So he'll get picked up from the farm here in Pennsylvania and then he'll, he'll go up to JFK airport where he'll sort of spend a day. Then they'll fly him to Liege in Belgium. And then after that then we're going to, along with a couple of the other American horses, we're going to ship him to Maxime Livio, who's an Olympic French riders farm that's not far out of Paris. And he's going to hang out there for a couple of days and just sort of recover from the trip. And then I will fly from Maryland five star on Sunday evening, arrive in Paris Monday morning, feeling fresh on the 23rd and then I'll hire a car and meet Bruno at Maxime's farm outside of Paris and give Bruno a jump school and then he'll ship to P.O. on the Tuesday. See, Bruno's really on his game here, all these. He got a little bit sort of fast and frantic down to that second corner. So I decided to repeat the corners here and just make sure with the schooling we do is, well, with the cross country schooling in preparation for the competition is sometimes just making it a little bit slow and a little bit definite is the way to go. And you can see his ears pricked and really make sure that he has a clear understanding of exactly what part of the corner he needs to jump. So Steph and myself will fly from, from Philadelphia to Paris, meet Bruno on Monday, jump him and then we'll travel down to the event. It's a hell of a long way to To Po. It's a, it's a mission. It's, it's right down the south, south of France, down near the Pyrenees. It's a amazing competition under sort of the mountaintop and it's a star studded field. I think there's like 60 horses in it. And you know, I was expecting the best of the best but it was sort of amazing to see the caliber of horses that we're up against where definitely taking on Europe's best. I think there's a couple of Americans going. Ali Knowles from Kentucky, Philip Dutton who lives around the corner from me and, and Will Coleman from Virginia. And as you guys could imagine, it's a huge expense getting Bruno all the way to the south of France from Pennsylvania. We're very, very lucky that we received a twenty thousand dollar grant thanks to the usef. So many thanks to Team usa. And it's such a huge event for Bruno. It's so important that I really don't want to cut any corners. I'm flying grooms over coaches. Bettina Hoy's coming over from Germany and Peter Wilde's coming to help us with the show jumping. I want to get a box stall for Bruno for the two to two days traveling from the, the airport to the event. And yeah, it just costs a bundle of money. By saying that we're very lucky that thanks to one generous owner, we had about 9,000 bucks spare or left over from the Moulin trip, which I kept hold of. So long story short, we're about $14,000 short of expend expected expense expenses in this massive journey. And I know the syndicate agreement requires no one to pay a cent more, but if anyone's feeling generous, I'd greatly appreciate a bit of funding just to help me and Bruno achieve this massive dream. I've sort of divided it up into the 10 shares and worked it out to be approximately about 1500 dollars per per shareholder. Like I said, no one is obligated to send in this money. It'd be greatly appreciated. I can't wait to get over there to France and, and I think Bruno can't wait to get that muzzle off. So anyway guys, thank you all for the support. I really think we're in with a great shot and po, here we come.