Arielle Aharoni and Cooley Baltic Sea Sail to the Lead at Millbrook Horse Trials

Arielle Aharoni and Cooley Baltic Sea. Photo by Amber Heintzberger.

Arielle Aharoni and Cooley Baltic Sea, a 2014 gray Irish Sport Horse gelding (Baltic VDL x HHS Cheerio), owned by Filly’s Hope LLC, jumped clear around the Advanced cross country at Millbrook Horse Trials to take the lead, moving up from 8th place after dressage. With just two time faults they were closest to the optimum time and will enter show jumping on a score of 35.9.

Aharoni is using Millbrook as a final prep run before the American Eventing Championships presented by Nutrena Feeds in Lexington, Kentucky next month. “Dressage yesterday was super, it might be a personal best or close to it. He’s a horse that travels a little downhill, so getting him to pick up his front end is important. We didn’t get one single ‘low’ comment, so that was great.”

She continued, “On cross country, it was hard work out there but he made it easy. We come to Millbrook every year and I love a little terrain – the up and down, the big rolling hills. The course was beautiful, when I walked it I hoped it would ride a little easier but it was good, you want the challenge, you want those scores to shuffle a little bit, which worked in our favor.”

Aharoni is currently 8th in the Open Intermediate riding Notorious and fifth in Open Preliminary B riding Littlebitadominic. She and MBF Mirror Image, an Irish Sport Horse mare owned by Alice Tarjan, won the Open Training division.

Ema Klugman and Chiraz. Photo by Amber Heintzberger.

In a close second place in the Advanced division is Ema Klugman, riding for Australia, on Chiraz, a syndicated grey Holsteiner gelding (Cayado x Asquetta). Currently on a score of 39.7, they moved up from 5th after dressage with a clear round and 9.2 time faults. Ariel Grald and Diara, a 2014 grey Hanoverian mare (Diacontinus x Lady Revens) owned by Annie Eldridge, maintained their third place standing, but 12.4 time faults were added to their score (42.2).

Klugman said that Chiraz, who is long listed for the Australian team at the World Equestrian Games in Aachen next month, was foot perfect around the cross country course today. “We always like to come to this event if we can, it’s a really fantastic cross country course, probably with the most terrain of any event in the United States, and I think it’s really good to educate the horses and prepare them for the fall, whatever is coming next.”

She said, “I was mainly working on rideability today; there’s not much I would have done differently with Chiraz, I was just using it for training him more and to work on some ideas that we’ve been working on in training. He went really well, so I was able to just cruise along. Being on the long list, you can get called any time, so we just have to be prepared.”

Out of 15 entries, seven horses completed Morgan Rowsell’s course with zero jumping faults. Time was a major factor and saw overnight leader Lauren Nicholson drop to 7th place riding How Easy GG when they added 24.8 time faults to their dressage score. One horse was eliminated on course after three refusals and two riders fell off and were eliminated, so 12 horses will start in the show jumping phase tomorrow.

The event concludes tomorrow with show jumping for the Advanced, Intermediate, Preliminary and Modified divisions. Patrons and their guests will enjoy a Sunday luncheon and watch the show jumping from the comfort of private ringside tents. The Trade Fair, Millbrook Market shops, concessions and food truck will be open to all, and general admission is free to all.