Horses Don't Neigh...

Today I covered the Syracuse Invitational Sporthorse Tournament at the Oncenter. The tournaments started Wednesday and will continue until Sunday. The day started off kind of rough. Luckily, I was able to borrow Matt's car to go downtown. When I got there, horses were everywhere. The streets around the Oncenter were being managed by police officers. If a horse needed to cross the street, the officer would stop traffic. Inside, I was directed to the press secretary, Mary Jo Madden. She gave me a tour of Oncenter. There were vendors, horse related and not, selling goods to the onlookers. In that room, there was a space where the competitors warmed up before an event. Madden also took me into the arena where the competition took place. It was really cool to see the competitors walking around. They come from all over the country and all over the world. I asked Madden if I could talk to one of the competitors. She advised me to go into the stable. The stable is actually a small section of the County Garage. When I got there, a lot of the competitors were either already competing or warming up. I was able to talk to one competitor in the stable. Then, I went to the warmup room. The competitors in there were not as eager to talk to me. Most of them were riding and the others did not want to be interviewed. I then went back into the stable and talked to the barn manager. She was told me something that really helped. I found out that it is very hard to find the sound of a neighing horse. Ranbir had called me while I was at the Oncenter and said I needed to come back with sound of a neighing horse. And, of course I did not have any. The barn managers said they only neigh if it is almost feeding time, if they are angry or if one of their horse friends are taken away. Luckily, I was able to get the sound into my story. The horse's name is Chanel.

I did not get back to the newsroom until 2:20pm. I had a little over an hour to put my piece together. By some form of magic I was able to do it. I finished exactly one time. I was definitely very anxious today. I did not think I had enough time. However, everything seemed to work out. For some reason, I think I was able to finish my story quickly and on time because I was on Team A. Last week, I was on Team B and I did my story before class. This week was more stressful but I did not procrastinate. Since I was stressed for time, I was able to get my story together quicker.

[The picture in the top right is an official picture from the Oncenter website of the competition]