Is there anything Phillip Dutton can’t do? Mighty Nice has a loose shoe? No problem! Winning the Adequan Gold Cup Series Pro Tour CIC*** and driving away in a Benz for the second year in a row? Check! Thanks to Peter Atkins for sending in the picture.
After a lovely dressage test in the Advanced that was good enough for third place, Lisa Barry and F.I.S Prince Charming, her New Zealand-bred OTTB, skipped around the cross country making good time to find themselves in the lead going into show jumping the next day. Coming into the weekend, she knew she needed to give her horse a good ride around this tough track but, has been struggling with personal issues.
“I feel like I was riding with an angel on my shoulder this weekend,” Lisa said. “I lost my working student/groom Collin Rahal in a horrific car accident last Sunday. She was a wonderful girl with great spirit and passion for horses and learning. I’ve never met someone so thankful for the small things or with such a positive outlook on life. I had a really hard time with it mentally and emotionally, and was still really struggling when we first got here. I took some sports psychology advice from my brother. He said that I should allow myself to put the emotion away for the weekend so I could focus and do my job, and so by taking his advice and accepting that’s what I needed to do, I feel that I could channel that spirit and ride to my best. I am so lucky to have had her in my life, even if it was for just a short time. This is only Peanut’s fourth Advanced and I’ve been at the back of the pack the whole time. I’d hoped to do well because the cross country is easy for him, and in the show jumping he’s such a good jumper and he’s learning to be careful. He’s still young; he’s only nine. His dressage has improved so much though since I’ve been working with Linda Zang, which has been going really well, and I’m still working with Karen and David O’Connor on a regular basis, so I was hoping that we’d start to creep up there and get a little higher in the rankings. He really stepped up for me this weekend; he’s a good boy.”
Lisa has had F.I.S. Prince Charming, aka Peanut, since about Christmas time 2008 and spent the first year just schooling at home without going to any competitions. From Red Hills, they will aim to do the CICs at The Fork, Jersey and then go to Bromont so that she can give Peanut plenty of downtime in between competitions.
“He still gets quite stressed; he was racing about six months before I got him from New Zealand, and that’s quite a lot of his issues on the flat,” Lisa said. “It’s just tension. He’s capapble of doing all the movements very well, but with the way he’s built, when he gets tense and tight he just loses all his movement, so we’ve been working a lot on figuring out how to keep him quiet and relaxed. We school the movements at home so he’s not worried about them — partly growing up, partly some training. This was by far the hardest track he’s ever seen, and he was just on it the whole time. From the first combination we did at the coffin at fence 4, as soon as he jumped through there I knew he was all over it and I thought we could go for it, so I opened my rein and let him gallop and he made easy work of the rest of it. It’s pretty cool to be able to trust a young horse. I haven’t run a track like this on him and I think he’s definitely going to be there for me; it’s exciting.”
At the opposite end of the spectrum, Emily Beshear is campaigning Here’s To You for his second tilt at the Rolex Kentucky CCI**** this Spring. A Kentucky bred OTTB by Will’s Way who raced “very little,” Emily told me she’s made a few changes this year and has a very fit and happy horse on her hands. “I definitely started earlier this year; last year he actually didn’t run an Advanced until Southern Pines so this year, with the mileage he got last year, I felt more confident coming here this year, feeling like I could be ready and that would help me get a bit sharper leading up to it. Last year it was more, ‘let’s just get to Kentucky!’, whereas this year I want to go there and be competitive. There’s a few things I want to work on myself that I can only work on in competitions, so I’ve definitely added more to the calendar this year. He was bouncing the whole way back to the stables from the cross-country finish, and he’s been standing in his stall pawing to go out and usually he’s sleeping! He’s bright-eyed and ready to run again. I had plenty of horse left at the end and I’m pretty excited about that.”
Emily will go to Southern Pines next, and the The Fork will hopefully be her final run before Rolex. The recent training sessions with U.S. Team Coach David O’Connor have been very helpful, Emily added, as she doesn’t work with any one person in particular consistently, but had worked with David last year leading up to Kentucky and then slightly more again in the build up to and at Blenheim. “He’s the one I tend to go to if I have some issue I want to work through or a question about something. Here’s to You is really coming into his own now. He used to be a bit silly and spooky and now he just thinks he owns the place! He’s so lazy in his day-to-day work, but we were laughing because in the training sessions he was the best behaved he’s been all spring, and it’s because there were crowds and people there to see him; he wants to put on a show!” Look out for Here’s to You and Emily Beshear at Rolex this spring.
Kyle Carter and Madison Park will start the show jumping in the OI division on Sunday morning in 5th place after a solid clear cross country. Kyle’s wife Jen told me there is no real plan for Parker at the moment — that they’re enjoying every day and every competition as it comes. The decision to come to Red Hills was a last minute one, as one of their clients was boarding at a barn and couldn’t come due to EHV-1 restrictions, so they decided to take their entry for them. Luckily for all the spectators — as we were nervously waiting for someone to complete the OI xc course — Kyle and Parker duly delivered. Kyle also had a good weekend on FR’s Trust Fund, a homebred, finishing 2nd in the CIC*.
Jessie Phoenix was busy all day and if she wasn’t zooming around cross country, she was zooming around on her scooter with son Jake riding in front of her! A Little Romance, above, 8th in the CIC**, continues to improve.
Kristin Schmolze and Ballylaffin Brackin, 23rd in the CIC***
Bonner Carpenter and Basco, 4th in the CIC**
Mara Depuy and Chequers Macon, another quality performance leaves them in 5th place in the CIC**
Alexandra Green and Fernhill Cubalawn, 21st in the CIC***
Sara Kozumplik’s good cross-country rounds saw her move up the order in the Advanced on Flagmount’s Sterling Prince, above, from 10 to 5th going into the show jumping and into the lead on Tatton Winter in the Intermediate.
Hannah Sue Burnett and Harbour Pilot — class all the way, enough said (well, except to add that they were 7th in the CIC***!)
H.J. Hampton, aka Henny, gave Peter Atkins his customary Rolls Royce ride around the Red Hills cross country, and we could hear Peter around the course: “Good boy, Henny. Come on, Henny!” However, I talked to him afterwards and he told me he’d lost valuable time at the start due to a misunderstanding. Henny, like so many eventers, gets very nervous at the start and Peter explained he needs to time his start-box strategy with absolute precision. So, when they called him over and told him he had 30 seconds to go and in actual fact he had more than 45 seconds to go, he said it made waiting, getting into and then leaving the box very fractious and he wasted, by his reckoning, at least 40 seconds. Peter will continue to work at home on his dressage with Henny, building on the vast improvement he made last year in Europe with Bettina Hoy, Rick Klaassen and Eckart Meyners. While in Ocala, he’s been working with Chrissa Hoffman, a dressage guru from Kentucky most famous for getting two saddlebreds up to Grand Prix. “Henny was happy and relaxed and rideable in the dressage on Friday; it was fun! I was almost enjoying the dressage!” From here, Henny and Peter will go straight to Rolex. Run Henny Run!
Caitlin Calder and Jolliyat had a stop in the Advanced but looked good where I saw them.
Kilkenny, above with Phillip Dutton, and Lough Rynn with Joe Meyer both got all the way round to the very final fence on the OI course, the now infamous Owl Hole, before deciding not to go any further. Kilkenny, who was flying round in wonderful form until then, had previously taken a dislike to the Saloon at Pine Top — hence the renaming of it after he demolished it a few weeks ago — and Phillip is now in the market to buy a jump with a roof over the top to school over at home every day. It seems we may have found his kryptonite!
Lough Rynn and Joe Meyer — two stops and then a rider fall at the final fence. Will someone be building an owl hole next to the pool house? #eventingsunnyfl?!
Classy Canadian Peter Barry and the lovely Kilrodan Abbot looked fabulous around the CIC*** course at Red Hills, finishing in 20th place.
Lexus took a dislike to the pergola corners in the Advanced divison, but had a great round everywhere else, according to her rider, Nicole Parkin; she certainly looked super at the steps up to the hanging branch.
Heather Gillette and Our Questionnaire were having a super round but for a momentary lapse at the penultimate — a fairly simple angled double. Heather had told me that she’s tentatively aiming for Rolex this spring with Questie, but that at 17 years old she’ll let him tell her how he feels. However, she added, laughing, seeing as he keeps bucking her off, she feels fairly certain he’s on target for the big one!
Clayton Fredericks didn’t have a great day — fall off the lovely Sorrento while leading the CIC** didn’t get things off to a great start and a stop at the same jump on Pigrela Des Cabanes, above.
RF Black Pearl finished in 3rd place in the CIC** with Marilyn Little, just behind her stablemate, RF Azarah. Marilyn has barley ridden the horse until this weekend. “She came in from quarantine last weekend and I was in Wellington, so I asked Hannah Sue Burnett if she would ride her last week, and she found out a lot of stuff about her which was really helpful. I showed her in Wellington in the jumpers in three classes Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, but I’d literally never jumped a cross country jump. She’s everything I hoped she’d be. She has the movement, she has a lot of character and the jumping is great. She’s very careful, super fast and very smooth, and I really look forward to building a partnership with her. I think she’s going to be a player.”
Marilyn told us she found both mares, both rising 8, in Europe. Azarah is Dutch bred, and Black Pearl is from Germany and was previously competed at the two-star level by Beeke Kaack. For both jumping and eventing, she likes mares: “I think there are a lot of difficulties that come with mares and a stigmatism attached to them. I’m not saying it’s unfounded, but I think if you get a good mare ,you’ve got a real partner. They will fight for you on the day. With Demeter last year at Rolex, I didn’t know her so well and we hadn’t had the best partnership, but I can say that at minute number nine when I felt like she had nothing left, I called on her and she gave 120 percent, and I haven’t felt that from a gelding, and I get that in the jumpers and the eventing. It makes life harder on most days, but on Saturdays you come through the timers and you remember why you love them, because they’ll give everything for you. I probably do look for the good mares.” RF Azarah was also having her first run of the year this weekend and finished in 2nd place in the CIC**. “She’s a fantastic jumper and we’re building a partnership. She’s a great cross-country horse. She’s looking for the jumps and she’s scopey. To me she has four-star horse written all over her. I look forward to jumping bigger and bigger courses with her. I think that’s a non-issue. The partnership and the discipline and the getting the flatwork down — that’s coming.”
Ellinor MacPhail and RF Eloquence, 7th in the CIC**
Jan Byyny and Syd Kent, 11th in the CIC***. Consistent good form this season continued at Red Hills. Jan also finished 8th in the 3* on Inmidair.
Sara Kozumplik and Tatton Winter moved up from 11th to lead the Intermediate division going into the show jumping.
Jacob Fletcher’s progess around the CIC*** xc course on The Prof could be tracked by the throngs of screaming young girls following him! I’ve been to a One Direction concert, so I have experience with these things! Jacob put in a lovely clear round at his first CIC*** to finish 15th.
Leslie Law and Zenith ISF put in a good round to finish 16th in the CIC***.
Thanks again to all the grooms, helpers, volunteers, organisers, and of course, horses and riders. Show jumping is under way, so thank you as always for visiting Eventing Nation, and please check back later for more from the final day at Red Hills. Go eventing!
