Sinead Halpin and Manoir de Carneville at Burghley. Photo by Samantha Clark.
Rolex Kentucky has announced the bloggers from this year’s entrants. Look forward to each installment as the riders give updates and insight to their preparations for the big event. This year features a super line up, with Jennie Brannigan, Will Coleman, Sinead Halpin, and owner Stephen Blauner (Neville Bardos and Trading Aces).
Here are excerpts from their first installments as posted on the Rolex website (rk3de.org):
Jennie Brannigan (Cambalda)
I’m sure most people can recount their first Rolex visit… For me it was in 2003, when the torrential rain flooded the course. I was 14, I believe, and I was quite fortunate to be Allison Springer’s first working student at the time.
I’ll tell you that the one real thing I remember now, 11 years later, about that weekend was watching eventing legend Bruce Davidson gallop around in the pouring rain making it look like a novice track. I’m not quite sure who won that year, but that ride will always be in the forefront of my mind, probably along with every other person who saw it. And that’s what I love about our sport—it’s not always just about results.
Will Coleman (Twizzel)
When I was asked to write one of the featured riders’ pieces for this year’s Rolex Kentucky, I was a bit surprised to be honest, for I feel like my story is a bit recycled. Once again, my lone chance for a ride around the cross-country in Lexington will be a 17 year-old, half-bred gelding named Twizzel, the same horse I have brought there for the past three years. While we have enjoyed some success there and elsewhere, Twizzel’s career has been riddled with some tough episodes. He has had a multitude of soundness issues. His shoulder injury is well documented because of the Burghley incident, when the horse went horribly lame literally a minute before entering the dressage arena, prompting withdrawal. There have been other more run-of-the-mill leg issues common in our event horses, but those have been minor for the most part and he has always come back strong, even though the timing of them was often, for lack of a better word, poor. There was also me breaking my collarbone on a young horse in the run-up to the WEG 2010, effectively knocking Twizzel out of contention for that championship. Then, there are the competitive disappointments. A hung leg put Twizzel and I on the ground at Rolex two years ago in a round that was making the course look quite easy. And then, the Olympics….inches away from dropping off the Leaf Pit bank before it all went wrong. It is easy to look back on it and think about it all as lost
opportunities, as aching holes in a career resume that can never be filled.
Sinead Halpin (Manoir de Carneville)
On the side of a long stretch of highway there is a sign that makes children and riders of all levels press their face hard against the window glass looking for the slight swish of a horses tail or a massive oak table jumped by the legends of the sport of Eventing, that sign says four words… “The Kentucky Horse Park”.
I was one of those little girls with my head pressed against the window not being able to wait for the car to stop before leaping onto the old Kentucky turf to watch the Rolex Kentucky Three Day Event.
After a 12 hour long trek from New Jersey and years of “skin in the game” I stepped foot on that Kentucky Blue Grass to attempt my first four star at the place where I had watched Magic happen. That was in 2011 and it was a year Rolex lived up to the Magic. My Horse, Manoir de Carneville, known as Tate in the barn, and I finished as the top placing American in an astounding third place.
Stephen Blauner (Neville Bardos and Trading Aces)
This is Neville’s year to get back to Rolex. And maybe Trading Aces first 4*. We’re (all ten of their owners) keeping fingers crossed. Neville apparently did not enjoy his trip to England for the Olympics (he was a reserve horse). We originally thought he would go on to Burghley (where he came 7th in 2011), but he wasn’t feeling up to snuff and came back to the States with the other US team horses. Neville spent a couple of months hanging out in Pennsylvania and enjoying his favorite pastime – wind-sucking. He went down to Aiken at the beginning of January and started back into work. Boyd (Martin) says he is feeling great, and he jumped really well when he went to Ocala a few weeks back to train with Scott Keach. Watching a video of the two-day show jumping session, it looks like Scott put Neville in a pelham and a martingale – haven’t talked to Boyd about this, but maybe they are trying to teach an old horse some new tricks.
Trading Aces was purchased in the fall of 2011 just after winning the Fair Hill CCI**. He was the third horse that Boyd successfully syndicated, and has many of the same owners as Neville and Otis Barbotiere. Trading Aces (known as Oscar) did a bunch of 3* events in 2012, and Boyd seems to think he is ready to tackle the big stuff. What a thrill if we have two horses at Rolex!!
