It was a full day at the Spruce Meadows Masters - and it's not over yet!

The Telus Battle of the Breeds

For those of you who are not familiar with Spruce Meadows, a lot goes on here besides show jumping. One of the other big competitions is the Telus Battle of the Breeds. This competition has a twenty year history of hard fought classes which test the diverse breeds in barrel racing, trail riding, and driving among other skills. Last year the competition was won for the first time by Team Mule! And the Telus Battle of the Breeds is not just about bragging rights - there is $40,000 of prize money at stake. Team Connemara won the Compusory Skills class on Thursday, with Team Morgan and Team Canadian Horse in 2nd and 3rd respectively. In Jeopardy Jumping, Team Canadian Warmblood to the top prize with Team Quarter Horse and Team Appaloosa in the other top spots. I was able to catch some of the Precision Driving class today and was able to get a couple of pictures.

This diminutive member of Team Canadian Pinto, Spectacular Panda Larigo, an 11 year old Shetland Pony stallion had a very speedy round!

BP Festival of Nations

There are dancers, food booths and all kinds of wonderful gift items and fine crafts available to sample and purchase outside of the International Arena. Ireland, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Mexico, and many others have food booths and pavilions packed with all kinds of goodies.

I was able to spend some time checking out the vendors this afternoon so I'll put together a report to post tomorrow.

The $100,000 EnCana Cup was won by McLain Ward this afternoon and they are setting up the Atco Electric Six Bar Course right now. This is a class with six fences set at two strides between each fence. The thing is, each fence is higher than the next. In the first round, the last fence is 5'8". After each round, they raise the height of the fences. The record was set in 2004 by Jessica Kurten from Ireland at 6'11". It is always a very exciting class.