DeRosa Daily - The 2007 Rolex FEI Las Vegas World Cup

Let's Hear It For the Girls - Or At Least for Meredith Michaels-Beerbaum

While we were all hoping for McLain Ward to maintain his first place position in the second round of the Show Jumping World Cup, it just was not to be. When that single railed dropped the crowd softly sighed. Yet McLain wasn’t the only one to have a rail down. In fact the field of 37 went in reverse order and the top three riders (McLain, Markus Beerbaum and Marcus Ehning) each had rails.

Early on in the course it appeared that the women were going to take over the lead after the first clear was produced by Edwina Alexander, the second by Margie Engle and the third by Schuyler Riley.

Then the men started to earn some clear rounds (Marco Kutscher and Beat Mandli) but defending 2005 Las Vegas Champion Meredith Michaels wasn’t about to let the men take over and added her name to the list. When the evening was over it would be Meredith and Shutterfly that would claim the victory after a little bit of luck when her horse hit the back bar of one of the fences but it stayed up.

It was her amazing turns that kept the audience at the edge of their seats and her time of 29.38 seconds was the fastest time of all the clear and four fault rounds. In the Press Conference Meredith talked about the fact that she was 8th after the first round, a position she felt would be hard to overcome. However she added, “as you can see, we can never give up.”

I was taking pictures while in front of me Meredith’s husband Markus was watching her go. After she won he softly punched his body as his way of cheering her victory before running out to congratulate his wife.