Sixty horse-and-rider pairs walked into Tryon Stadium to contest the Guilherme Jorge (BRA) course design, with 12 entries qualifying for the opportunity to ride the short track. Parot and the 2010 Belgian Warmblood gelding (Toulon x Leader ‘M’) owned by Aleksander Smolnik are a new pairing with only a few shows behind them, but already to great success, Parot revealed:
“He’s new, and it’s only his fifth or sixth show [with me]. He’s a really easy horse: very fast, careful, and with a lot of scope,” Parot emphasized. “I jumped him three weeks ago in the five star at Saugerties and he did very well. He’s nice and has a very good personality. He’s amazing!”
Despite piloting an easy mount, Parot continued, the course was anything but, in order to challenge a stacked field of competitors. “The course was not easy, and there were lots of riders! Normally for a CSI 2* you have [fewer], but the course design was very good.”
Parot was able to watch O’Shea take a shot at the course that helped him strategize, he recapped. “I saw Paul O’Shea go very fast [on Hellcat] and he turned close to the Liverpool and had the rail down. I preferred to go for the outside,” Parot explained, “but I went fast [throughout the course] and did two [fewer] strides on the last line.”