While we are still waiting for the race results to be published online, you would have made a lot of money had you bet with our 2nd Annual Foxfield Race Picks from CvilleGossipGirl. Besides cVillain being your real money-maker, we have some observations from 2009 FoxField that we think were unique for this year. We’ll also be looking for you to tell your drunken Foxfield stories, so feel free to add them below.
The Beastly Heat – With a high of 91 degrees yesterday, it was damn hot. It was so hot, that we agreed that it was nearly impossible to drink. We think there were probably more cases of dehydration than of alcohol-related sickness. Those who were drunk, we salute you and your exacerbated inebriation.
The Euthanized Horse - Seeing a horse fall never strikes well with the audience. It’s worse when you see a horse with a completely detached lower leg and its subsequent euthanization. Sad day.
THE MOTHERF*CKING TRAFFIC - With the idiotic rules regarding coolers, and the searching of nearly every vehicle/student that entered Foxfield, the event staff and the local authorities created the worst possible traffic situation. We heard many stories of people sitting in traffic for 2.5+ hours and not entering the gates until the 3rd (of 5) race. Whoever thought it was a good idea to not be prepared this year failed miserably.
Lawn Games – No, not croquet. We’re talking about horse balls, cornhole and our newest favorite, koob or kubb. Kubb is a Swedish combination of horseshoes and bowling where you try to knock down blocks on the other side. It has strategy, unlike horseballs or cornhole which makes it a more enjoyable game. Whatever you’re playing, lawn games were hot this year, hotter than we’ve ever seen before.
What’d you see?
Related posts:
- Share Your Foxfield Stories/Pics/Videos
- Foxfield, Big Brother and the Truth
- Official cVillain Foxfield 2008 Horse Betting Guide
Props to Foxfield/VDOT/whoever for opening up the other traffic lane so there were 2 lanes going the same way in. One was a bus lane, which enabled our group to fly down there.. we left Charlottesville around 9:45 and were in our plot by 10:45, after going through the giant cooler and ticket check.
Boos to the people who made traffic bad — not the event staff or authorities, but to the people who can’t obey simple rules — how hard is no glass? Our plot was right near a checkpoint, and the amount of glass bottles we saw being confiscated was enormous. These people slowed it down for everyone.
so it was preferential treatment for certain cars/buses that screwed it up for everyone else?
I prefer it as a benefit of taking mass transit and being green.
From what I recall, both lanes weren’t open last year, so that wasn’t the bottleneck. The bottleneck was mainly the cooler checks .. someone in our plot said they saw 11 cases of Natty Light being confiscated from 1 vehicle. The delays these people caused were epic.
I saw at least a half dozen golf carts full of confiscated booze being driven off to who knows where.. and that’s just one checkpoint, I can’t imagine how much was actually taken.
The person taking the car to our plot left around 9:20, and arrived around noon. Someone else told me they were in sight of the Foxfield gate by 10:05 and didn’t arrive at their parking spot until 2.5 hours later.
Yeah I couldn’t believe how much booze they were confiscating from people. I saw some very expensive alcohol being taken away from people, Patron, Bombay Sapphire, etc. What was so sad/tempting was that it was right in front of our plot. I totally wanted to go over and snag a bottle but figured it wasn’t worth the possibility of being perp walked out of Foxfield.
Where does the confiscated drinky end up?
I asked, and was told that when we all left, they were going to drink it.
has anyone tracked-down what the coppers did with the booze? that’s piracy to me, and flat-out criminal abuse-of-power. assume they divided it up for their own after-parties, or to make those afternoons at the shooting-range a little more fun and challenging? Anyone get any confiscated? Was there the option of picking up the materials on leaving, or fetching it at the cop-shop today?
{sortof like airport security guards doing their Christmas Shopping out of people’s luggae, and snagging all the high-end high-dollar over-an-ounce hair-care products and sterling/gold DuPont/Dunhill cigarette lighters from carry-ons…}
That just shows, that it wasn’t about the glass at all, but a thinly-veiled attempt to limit how drunky people could get.
Since when did ANY event have a coat check for banned items?
Only those dumb enough to bring something on the “don’t bring” list, would actually expect them to return the confiscated goods.
@the upstart
i left my camera (free when you sign up for a player’s club card at the rio) with a security guard before a concert in vegas & he actually gave it back to me afterwards. and then i laughed at my boyf who’d believed the signs & threw his away.
there are always exceptions.
there were 2 lanes for like half a mile. the rest of the way there was one lane watching people get pulled over in the empty left lane. they couldn’t have made it one way the whole way from barracks?
We sat between the old Airplane hanger and the East Gate for over an hour while they let all the Garth Rd. Traffic in. Then when we got in they didn’t even look at what we had in the back of the truck….wasted an entire day looking for stupid 14X14X14 coolers that don’t exist.
It was a great idea that they had two lanes of traffic coming in from Garth Rd. but since they also had ALL of the Pink and Purple traffic coming in that gate they really need to have half the lanes for the infield traffic and the other half of the lanes at that gate for the pink and purple so that those people don’t have to wait for the students to cross the track and have their alcohol taken away before getting parked.
P.S. Thor- Full race results are posted at http://www.nationalsteeplechase.com/post/results/Foxfield_Spring.pdf
They didn’t even check our car and we had bottles of booze. Haha.
Also, traffic was not that bad if you went early like moi et mes amis. Thanks to Kyle and Francseco, though, for coming up to my plot and telling me a horse died. Jerks.
The traffic was horrible and lack any definitive reason for being so. This is a failure by the police and race officials. It has NEVER taken this long ever to get in. It doesn’t take this long to get in any other event I can remember except for the great Pantops cluster before the Rolling Stones concert. They had to send the cops on motorcycles to bring in the horse trailers that were stuck in traffic. It took friends of mine 2 hours to get there once once they turn off Old Ballard. Sorry this was a massive cluster f*** of epic proportions.
Hey Foxfield and County cops, I solemnly vow that if you don’t admit and fix the epic fail of your traffic control I’m am done. It’s simply not worth it and your seeming contempt for the patron experience belies a sense of arrogance that I prefer not to endure. Just to be safe I left early, if you folks were going green it wasn’t not evidenced by the lack of trash cans or proper bins for recycling. Seriously would it have killed you to have the many do nothing on their gators make trash runs between the races. Further I plan to inform the several sponsor of my experience and my lack of willingness to return and encourage those involved to continue the lunacy.
The only thing that might save this race is the fact that every year a new crop of students will be ignorant to the disdain that you hold them in.
We were right next to a trashcan. It was fabulous.
Ditto, but I never saw anywhere to recycle. Also, our trashcan certainly got full early, and never got emptied. Fortunately someone brought some trash bags, but still.
If they apologized I must have missed it and so did the hundreds of people still in there cars. This is the fault of Foxfield and the cops. Their new plan for traffic failed. I have been to many event like this and it was horrible managed.
Negative rating to them, would not attend event again
They did apologize over the PA. Why so whiny? I thought FF was great. My only complaint is that it was so freaking hot.
You are ask me why so whiny? OK that did make me laugh. After reading your comments on the Artini, I would have thought you would understand what happens to a good event when parts of it are f-ed up.
I’m not writing about what happen while at the event. With an event in which one must drive their car it is of paramount importance that traffic control be proper done. There were many people who spent more time driving to and from Foxfield than at the event itself.
How’s that for a carbon footprint?
Everyone complains about long waits, it’s human nature and we as a society are pretty impatient. The thing is, you can deal with it or you can bitch about it. When we were dying to pee after drinking giant mimosas, we coped by getting out of the car and walking to the pedestrian gate and relieving ourselves at the Port- a Potties. Then we had a nice leisurely stroll back to the car where we recommenced the drinking. So the wai
t wasn’t so hard to endure.
Poor design (much like this threads reply stacking) is my problem. If an event use to take 40 minutes to 1 hour to get in and then because of “Better traffic flow control” it takes over 2 hours then that is a failure and worthy of my umbrage. They apologized because even they knew during the event that they had madfe horrible choices and diminished the experience for their patrons. Seriously you can’t see how screwed up this got.
You’ve never been to a music festival.
Maybe Foxfield needs to employ the Clean Vibes people.
True that Upstart.
It’s True DAT n00b
Sorry, I type in my natural speaking voice and don’t change my avatar every 15 minutes. I guess I’m not that cool but my picture speaks volumes, right
Somebody had Oversensitive-O’s for breakfast
Wasn’t me- I used the winking smiley face and everything.
BTW how do you change the avatars so often, do they have a rotate or something
You log into your gravatar account and change the picture. Don’t think I’m changing them that oftne though, , it may have something to do with the cache in your browser showing you old ones.
hey, _i_ took note of gossip girl’s race predictions and was able to make a cool $20 on the second and fifth races. neener neener.
also, why does the daily regress have a photo of the broken-legged horse with the broken leg clearly visible and clearly not in one piece in its gallery? not something i need to see, guys, thanks…
Are you talking about photo 26 in the gallery?
That’s effed up. I hope they get swine flu.
So an animal forced into extreme physical exertion breaks its leg and is put to death, in front of a crowd of people who were just there to get hammered anyway.
It’s possible I’m missing some integral part of The Experience here, but is it just possible that this is an indicator of a need for some serious reexamination of priorities?
Horses sometimes break a leg at races. Don’t wanna see it though. Yeah, maybe that means we should over-analyze and decide that this means we shouldn’t go to horse races becuase we’re contributing to horses dying, but that seems a bit hysterical.
Perhaps a bit hysterical, but pretty fucked up when you think about it, and I’m no PETA fanatic or anything. At least when you get drunk at a bar, concert, or someone’s house, you’re not inadvertently subjected to the unpleasant news of an animal being euthanized. It might go a bit far to say all the attendees are contributing to the horses dying, sure, but not a wildly unfounded claim.
I’ve been to Foxfield several times, probably won’t go again for a whole host of reasons, not the least of which is my increasing disgust at a sport that subjects a living thing to those conditions. Give me football any day.
not everyone who attends foxfield is there to get drunk. i know, it’s easier to make sweeping generalizations, but some folks go to actually watch (and, okay, maybe bet on) the races, as well as catch up with old friends. it’s perfectly feasible to enter and leave the track completely upright if you so choose.
how ironic are you being in naming football as a sport that doesn’t subject living things to less-than-optimal conditions?
it’s possible lostinacrowd believes football players have a choice at being subjected to injury.
Not everyone, that’s true. I actually never got drunk at Foxfield and caught up with plenty of old friends. But let’s not split hairs–safe to say 95% go to drink copious amounts?
Last I checked, all football players had a say in their participation. And, pro players get compensated millions and millions of dollars to subject their bodies to whichever less-than-optimal conditions they choose. Do I think the NFL is totally above board? No. But nobody is forcing the players to sign those contracts.
However, nobody can force a horse to race either…they make it pretty obvious if this is something they don’t want to do. The horse that broke it’s leg was in a race where the entire field was closely bunched, they were all up there and in with a chance. He was just as eager to win as all the rest. It’s in their blood. It is their nature, it is what they are breed to do.
He died while doing something he loved and probably didn’t feel much pain between the shock and the amount of adrenaline going through his body at the time. In fact, he kept trying to stand on the leg that was broken and was confused as to why he couldn’t because he couldn’t even feel that the leg was useless.
I commend the veterinary staff that was on hand at those races. They quickly assessed the situation, made a quick decision as to what was the best thing for the horse and quickly put the plan to action. The whole event took all of 5 minutes. Far better than the extremely few similar situations I’ve seen at the numerous other such races I have been to.
As a big follower of the thoroughbreds, I nonetheless have misgivings about that: you can’t sit around at Saratoga or Santa Anita without noticing the ambulance following the riders sometimes. And sooner or later, something will happen there as well. The only rationalization I can make is that I do expect it is in the nature of horses to run. Far more doubtful that they were intended to endure the repetitive and needless stress of jumping over tall barriers.
So I draw my line in the sand here. I think steeplechase takes it one step too far, just as I’m okay with cars and not with motorcycles.
Then there’s the business of being okay with Foxfield. Definitely not. I lived 3 driveways away for several years, and that was always close enough for me.
Anyway, if you insist on continuing this, at least be intelligent enough to go out there via Hydraulic, Woodlands, and Free Union Road. You may not save any horses, but at least you’ll save gas, time, and money, and all that.
Sorry to be the killjoy. (No, not really.)
The tent overhead was the key to not overheating. My friends and I had a spot on the rail and we had a good time – in by 10 AM, luckily.
And, yeah, the horse broke its leg right in front of our plot. That kinda sucked.
tent overhead insufficient, except maybe the magical circus darden tent.
At least no one can flog me now.
isn’t it embarrassing when you come to a thread and someone is already wearing your avatar?
One of you is a fuckwit. @41 is not moi.
iF you LOOked to haZard a guess, anY thoughts?
Where the hell is she today anyways?
I hope she didn’t break her leg or something
I went to Foxfield and they confiscated me.
Personally, I loved Foxfield this year. It was one of my favorites yet (7th year going)! We actually went up to our plot car before they pulled through the check point, pulled out our coolers, and pulled them to the plot.. so our champagne bottles were never spotted! Although our car lucked out anyway and wasn’t checked when it got up to the checkpoint for some reason. A friend of mine walked into Foxfield with a champagne bottle in a plastic bag, along with other items. I guess they didn’t see it, because his wasn’t confiscated either, and we happily enjoyed mimosas once we got to our plot. The heat was pretty awful, so my friends and I huddled under a large umbrella for a while. Being in the shade actually helped, so the heat didn’t really hinder our drinking too much.
I feel bad for the people who didn’t get there until late. Our caravan left before 10am and took the Woodlands Rd. route. We were at our plot before 11am.
Hey Dieter, hey Floozy… she’s kinda cute.
I saw a horse get killed
I dressed like a cop, stood .5 miles before the first official checkpoint, and searched naive looking people’s cars. I am sorry if it delayed your trip to the filming of horse snuff films, but I now have a fully stocked liquor cabinet the size of las vegas.
“Im sorry mam, Im going to have to take that cooler… rules are rules”
We’re talking about horse balls, cornhole and our newest favorite, koob or kubb.
Did someone say cornhole? (safe for work… no claim of safety for your appetite)
That website makes me feel all conflicted-like on the insides. There’s always, almost ALWAYS I tell you, a passing thought of “Hmm..That probably is kind of yummo”.
/but then I remember fresh vegetables picked from the garden, fresh moo meat from our beloved bovines stored in the freezer and aygs still warm from the nests in the chicken coop.
That website makes me simultaneously awestruck/nauseous
Foxfield is an enjoyable event that gets more miserable every year. We left our home on JPA at 10am and got there at 1pm. The majority of the time spent sitting on barracks road watching a bunch of police and rental cops do nothing. One might think someone associated with foxfield would have an interest in traffic planning. Here is my plan to fix foxfield:
All students are forced into the Student section. Give the student section its on entrance say the owensville side. Restrict coolers, booze, glass, whatever for that section. Search all the cars and concentrate all the security there.
Let the adults have their own section without the alcohol restrictions. Local adults aren’t going to fight with bottles and don’t need to be searched. Set the minimum age at 22 unless they are accompanied by an adult. Let these people enter without being searched off of barracks road.
Completely divide the two sections and don’t let anyone move between the two. Open the gates at 8am. Stop punishing everyone because a few students can’t behave. Stop being completely disorganized with traffic. It shouldn’t be this hard.
Gud idea. You could put up a Berlin wall between the two.
I agree with dividing the sections…or how about limiting the 1 cooler rule to people that are on foot? We had 40 people and 2 plot trucks…don’t you think the majority of alcohol would be in our truck??? And, for the life of me, I can’t figure out why they spent so much time inspecting every single cooler….BUT NEVER CHECKED A SINGLE ID!!!! So I guess as long as you aren’t carrying glass, you could be 17 and drunk! Sweet. We feel more and more like criminals every single year. If it wasn’t for the reunion aspect, I’d swear off Foxfield forever. I hope they get there shit together next year and stop punishing people by making them sit in a car for 3.5 hours.
I noticed the same. That’s an interesting point.
Horses break legs because of irresponsible breeders. “She ran with the heart of a locomotive, on champagne-glass ankles for the pleasure of the crowd, the sheiks, oilmen, entrepreneurs, old money from the thousand-acre farms…” etc. I didn’t know it had infected steeplechase.
Sally Jenkins, Is Horse Racing Breeding Itself to Death?
Most chasers are horses that weren’t fast enough for the flat track. Most of the steeplechase trainers also have horses that either are just flat horses, (Jonathan Sheppard is the most notable, was President of the National Steeplechase Association for many years, won the leading trainer award for about 30 of the 40 years he has been training chasers and just last year had a flat horse that won one of the Breeders Cup final races), or start as flat horses and when they don’t show a taste for the flat the trainers will introduce the jumps to them to see if they show a liking for that side of the sport.
So yes, bad breeding has infected steeplechasing.
So this is the equivalent of “If you can’t _______, teach”?
(And, “If you can’t teach, teach driver’s ed”)?
From which I draw the conclusion — Another compelling explanation/argument for this sport.
(Not “The Sport of Kings.” “The Sport of Advisers”?