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“Awesome,” she declared.
    Dorothy leaned over a rail and looked down at Stevie. “The horses jump both sides together,” she reminded her. “On the outside, the fence is only about four feet tall.”
    “Oh, only four feet,” Lisa muttered with a touch of sarcasm. “That’s not much.” Four feet! When would she ever jump four feet high—let alone six feet wide!
    “What’s the purpose of the ditch, then?” Carole asked. Her eyes were gleaming; she loved learning everything about riding. She’d always thought of becoming a show jumper, but eventing thrilled her, too. Maybe she’d do both.
    Dorothy laughed. “To scare the rider. The horses won’t look at it, probably, unless the rider seems nervous.”
    “Are you nervous, Nigel?” Lisa asked.
    “Right now, no.” Nigel grinned. “At three in the morning on the day I have to jump these things, I’ll be very nervous. And when it comes time to actually ride, I won’t be nervous at all.” Dorothy rolled her eyes disbelievingly. “Well,” Nigel amended, “maybe a little nervous.”
    Farther into the course they came to a fence shaped like a giant V laid parallel to the ground. A big tree grew in the middle of the V.
    “Dorothy,” Carole asked while Nigel walked away fromthe fence to study the approach, “you taught us about the flags on the jump—you said the riders had to keep the red flag on their right and the white one on their left. That way they’d always know from which direction to jump the fence.”
    Dorothy nodded. “That’s right.”
    Lisa saw the problem right away. “On this fence there are two white flags—on the outsides of the V—and only one red flag—on the point in the middle. How do you jump it?”
    Dorothy explained. “This is an option fence. You have to jump between all the flags, but in this case you have a choice of two ways. You can go over both arms near the very corner of the V, right against the red flag, in a single jump, or you can jump both arms of the V as separate jumps.”
    “But there’s a tree growing in the middle,” Stevie protested. “You’d have to go around it.”
    “That’s right,” Dorothy said. “Lots of horses don’t like jumping corners, and if you aim too close to the corner of the V you risk having your horse duck around the fence. That costs a lot of penalty points. On the other hand, if you jump the arms separately and go around the tree, it will take much longer. This course has to be ridden at a gallop, and if you go over the time limit you get penalized for that, too.”
    Nigel came up and was looking at the backside of the V. “Option fences make difficult courses like this suitable for a variety of horses,” he said. “The short, direct routes are harder, but the easier routes take longer. If your horse isn’t ready for the harder routes, you can still get through the course safely, but you won’t be fast enough to win.”
    “They do that at the Olympics, too,” Dorothy said. “They build all the really hard courses with some easier options. They always want the horses to be safe.”
    “Oh.” Carole looked at the fence thoughtfully. “How will you jump this one, Nigel?” Nigel flushed and exchanged glances with Dorothy. Carole realized, to her dismay, that her question made him uncomfortable.
    “Southwood could do the fast route, couldn’t he?” Stevie asked. Like Carole, she was aware of the faint tension between Dorothy and Nigel. On the other hand, it was a Saddle Club project to get Southwood to the Olympics. “I bet he could, a great horse like him.”
    “Probably.” Nigel gave a small laugh. “Corners are one of the worst types of obstacles,” he said. “You have to ride them accurately and absolutely know that your horse will listen to you. I’ll—mmm—well, I’ll probably go the long route here.”
    “But it’s so long,” Carole said before she could stop herself. Nigel looked unhappy, and Carole wished she’d kept quiet.
    “All the riders