When the 2006 Kuala Lumpur World Cup finished on Sunday evening the top placed American was Margie Engle (11th) on Quervo Gold. Their performance in their final round was brilliant, not one rail fell. Had that been the case for the entire class who knows what could have happened. In fact the winner, Germany’s Marcus Ehning, explained about the troubles he had with Sandro Boy when they were a new combination. “He used to stop sometimes,” he explained. Yet there he was sitting in the winner’s seat. That was yesterday, this was today.

Second place finisher Jessica Kurten recalled the difficulties she had with Castle Forbes Libertina. “It’s really amazing to sit on a horse like this. She is a fighter. As a young horse she was sometimes difficult to get to the fences. She would run past them.” But tonight Libertina “fought like a lion but I call her a tiger.”

At any competition it’s important to do right by the horses and for the U.S. the welfare of the horse is of the utmost importance. When you go to a country as far away as Kuala Lumpur Malaysia (especially when you’ve never been there before and don’t quite know what to expect) you have to put a plan in place that you hope will work not only for the competition but for the health of the horse.

Care was taken to have the horses not make the whole journey in one trip instead most of them stopped for a few days in Amsterdam but even with those precautions you never know how the horses will adapt. There were a few problems here and there but it’s anyone’s guess if it was the long travel, the hot temperature, the indoor arena setting or some other reason that horses weren’t always at the top of their game.

The hope was that the break in the travel would not cause as much stress to the horses. Those on the West Coast had a quicker turnaround time and although Rich Fellers horse McGuinness by the end of the trip was “good and onery,” explained US vet Geoff Vernon, DVM, he wasn’t that way in the beginning and had to be scratched.