Classic Eventing Nation

Thursday News & Notes Presented by Stable View

By on Oct 27, 2022 12:03 am -

Perfect Patty goes from Five-Star to Foxhunting! Photo by Susan Clarke.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my relationships of trust between my horses, and how my view on consciously cultivating this has changed over the years. Even as a teenager, I always loved working with the horses that didn’t really trust other people, but looking back now, I made soooo many mistakes out of ignorance and/or emotional dis-regulation. Mistakes are part of the learning curve, but I look at the horses I have now and wish I could have done better. That’s what our horse journey is all about right? Improving all the time and chasing that high of the “aha” moment!

U.S. Weekend Preview

FEH & YEH Last Chance Qualifier & West Coast Championships (Paso Robles, CA): [Website] [Entries/Times/Scoring] [Volunteer]

Chattahoochee Hills H.T. (Fairburn, GA): [Website] [Entries] [Ride Times] [Scoring]

Full Moon Farms H.T. (Finksburg, MD): [Website] [Entries] [Volunteer]

Major International Events

Les 5 Étoiles de Pau:[Website] [Entries] [Schedule] [Save 15% on H&C+ Annual] [H&C+ Live Stream] [EN’s Coverage] [EN’s Ultimate Guide to Pau] [EN’s Instagram] [Visit Kentucky Performance Products]

News From Around the Globe:

If you read nothing else this week, make this your one article. There have been serious discussions about the safety of Eventing for decades now, and we’ve made great leaps with rules, regulations, course design, and jump building, but the final key is rider responsibility. The question is, how can you possibly regulate that? At the end of the day, it comes down to personal responsibility to know that just because your horse is qualified to move up, it’s not ready. Just because your horse didn’t have five rails, maybe it’s still struggling with the height. [Five Questions Between Safe and Sorry]

When a former five-star horse and a life-long septuagenarian combine forces, great things can be accomplished. Roisin O’Rahilly has ridden her whole life, but her most recent accomplishment is being named the third-ever USEA Century Ride Award recipient. This award celebrates horse and rider pairs who complete an event with a combined age of 100 or more. After placing first in their Beginner Novice division aboard, Rachel Jurgen’s, 26-year-old former five-star Thoroughbred, Ziggy, at the Five Points Horse Trials in September, O’Rahilly, age 79, checked another goal in the saddle off of her list – and she doesn’t aim to slow down any time soon. [Five Star to Century Ride]

We’ve seen the East Coast YEH championships, but now we have the West Coast finale! With stacked fields in the five-year-old, four-year-old, and FEH classes, it’s going to be an exciting weekend to catch some future stars. [Fast Facts: YEH West Coast]

It is finally “Spooky Season” and Halloween is right around the corner! Costumes for horses and their humans can be fun, cute, or clever. The creativity, enthusiasm, and sometimes downright brilliant horsemanship that equestrians put into creating their costumes is a joy to see every year. However, costumes can sometimes make people feel uncomfortable, unsafe, and unwelcome. Costume decisions can be harmful or offensive to others if they appropriate or mock a culture or faith, promote a stereotype, or are racist. With the help of The Inclusion Playbook, the USEF put together a brief guide of common costume pitfalls to avoid when dressing up. [Costume or Cultural Appropriation]

 

Pau At A Glance: Meet the Horses of 2022’s Final Five-Star

By on Oct 26, 2022 5:10 pm -

This week’s coverage of Pau on EN is brought to you with the support of Kentucky Performance Products. We couldn’t do much of what we’ve done these last few years without the support of sponsors such as KPP — which, by the way, is a horses-first, women owned and operated company based in, you guessed it, Kentucky — and without you, our readers! So as we head into this final hurrah of our season, too, we thank each and every one of you.

And just like that, the 2022 season was over — or nearly, anyway. We’ve got one last big one to sink our teeth into before the battening down of hatches and digging out of training manuals and DVDs, and it’s one of our favourites here at EN. Welcome to the sultry south of France and weird, wonderful Les 5 Etoiles de Pau, where we’ve got a sizzling field of horses and riders from 11 different nations coming forward to fight for the prize — including five-star victors, some of the best debutants in Europe, Olympians and young riders alike.

It all kicks off tomorrow at 10.00 a.m. local time (9.00 a.m. British time/4.00 a.m. EST) with the first horse inspection, which will be followed by a short afternoon session of dressage — so to get you into the spirit of the thing, let’s take a glimpse at the stats of the 50 horses who will come forward this week.

Les 5 Etoiles de Pau: [Website] [Entries] [Schedule] [Timing & Scoring *Will be added when available*] [H&C+ Live Stream *Use code PAU2022 for 15% of H&C+ Annual!*] [EN’s Coverage] [EN’s Ultimate Guide to Pau] [EN’s Instagram]

Wednesday Video from Kentucky Performance Products: Doug Payne Talks Us Through a Grand Prix

By on Oct 26, 2022 4:30 pm -

We’re accustomed to getting the full Doug Payne narration experience for his cross country rides, and now we’ve got a chance to look between the ears of one of his show jumpers.

This ride, aboard Jane Dudinsky’s 11-year-old Holsteiner gelding, Quintessence, comes during the FEI $139,000 Grand Prix 1.50m CSI3* at Tryon International.

Here is another view of the round:

Supplements you can count on from Kentucky Performance Products

When it comes to keeping your horse happy and healthy, you can depend on your friends at Kentucky Performance Products (KPP). Our company is owned and operated by horse people just like you. That means we’re out in the barn every day dealing with the same challenges you are. We’re committed to producing the best nutrition supplements possible because our horses use them too!

The horse that matters to you matters to us®. KPPusa.com
There is still time to grab your 2022 fall sticker KPPusa.com/fall22.

The Beauty of Big, Huge, Awkward Mistakes

By on Oct 26, 2022 1:46 pm -

Advanced Level eventer and psychotherapist Andrea Waldo tells us why we need to screw up (a lot!) if we want to be better riders.

Everyone has heard the old adage, “Practice makes perfect.” Then, somewhere along the way, someone upped the ante on us and said, “Practice doesn’t make perfect; perfect practice makes perfect.” The theory goes that if you keep making mistakes in your practice, your performance never gets any better. This seems to make perfect sense—except for the minor detail that according to the latest research in neuroscience, it turns out to be completely wrong.

Let me clarify: it’s true that sloppy, careless practice produces sloppy results. It’s a waste of time to ride endless 20-meter circles if you ignore the quality of those circles, and repeating the same mistake over and over makes you really good at that mistake. However, endless “perfect” 20-meter circles don’t necessarily make you a better rider, either. There is a time and place for perfection, but there is also a time and place for big, huge, awkward mistakes.

“Perfect practice makes perfect” is true when you are working to maintain or fine-tune a skill you have already mastered. If your goal for the day is to polish your horse’s shoulder-in, and it’s already solid to begin with, then your aim should be perfect practice. Perfect practice is also an appropriate goal right before a show: you aren’t trying to learn or teach your horse something new, you just want to review the skills you’ll need on the weekend to make them as strong and sparkling as possible.

When it comes to learning new skills or taking your current ones to a higher level, however, perfect practice is both unattainable and undesirable. If you’ve never done a flying change before, when you first start to learn how, you’re going to miss—a lot. You might hit a streak of beginner’s luck, and that’s great, but it’s not the same thing as mastery. In order to truly master a skill, you have to make lots and lots of mistakes, and then correct those mistakes, getting closer and closer to performing the skill correctly.

This process can be maddeningly slow and incredibly frustrating. The good news is that the more you make mistakes and correct them, the more your brain is learning and integrating the parts of the skill into its neurological memory. (What we usually call “muscle memory” is actually neurological memory: we develop neural pathways that command our muscles to perform the tasks that we want.)

If you normally post at the trot, think back to when you first learned this skill. At first, you probably bounced all over the place. You might have come up out of the saddle on every third or fourth stride, then banged roughly down on the saddle, where you bounced around some more. Your leg slipped forward, it slipped back, you fell forward, you got left behind.

Eventually, you found the right rhythm, let the horse’s movement toss you out of the saddle, sat back down without thumping, and voila! Up, down, up, down—you could post! This process might have taken hours or months, but you eventually mastered the skill.

During that process, the neurons in your brain were busily developing the network that would eventually become your “posting trot neural network.” With each repetition, the neurons fired to make your seat go up and down. The more those neurons fired, the thicker they became. As you exerted effort to correct your mistakes and refine your movements, those neural pathways got stronger, and they developed more connections to other related neural pathways.

For example, your “stand-up” neurons developed connections to your “hands-still” neurons. Eventually, you acquired a strong, integrated “posting trot” neural network that now functions more or less automatically.

For reasons we don’t yet fully understand, it appears that effort, error, and correction of error are all essential in the process of this neural pathway development. In other words, you can’t get better without screwing up a lot and working hard to fix it. Yes, some things come more easily than others, but in general, the acquisition of new and better skills is achieved in six steps:

  1. Try.
  2. Fail.
  3. Figure out what went wrong.
  4. Try again.
  5. Fail better.
  6. Repeat until mastery is achieved.

It’s vital in this process to operate on the very top edge of your current ability. If the task isn’t hard enough, the brain won’t have to work to strengthen the neural network for that skill. On the other hand, if it’s too far beyond your current capabilities, you won’t be able to improve either, because you are over-faced and don’t have a good foundation to build on.

If I ask you to try flying changes before you have even learned to canter, you’re guaranteed to fail. It’s like lifting weights: if you don’t have to expend any effort to lift the weight, your muscles won’t develop, but if you try to lift way too much, you’ll fail completely. You need to lift an amount that’s hard, but not impossible, in order to get stronger.

This excerpt from Brain Training for Riders by Andrea Monsarrat Waldo is reprinted with permission from Trafalgar Square Books (www.horseandriderbooks.com).

Much to Love: Preview the Elmar Lesch Eventer Auction Catalog

By on Oct 26, 2022 11:30 am -

Nineteen horses feature in this year’s Elmar Lesch Eventer Auction, which annually features a small collection of horses selected for their potential in eventing and will take place this year on November 5. The horses in this year’s catalog range from age 3 to 6 and include both potential podium finishers as well as solid citizens (or, if you’re lucky, maybe the unicorn that is both!) suitable for pros and amateurs alike.

The Elmar Lesch auction has seen several success stories on the world stage; in fact, two horses at this year’s FEI WBFSH Eventing World Breeding Championships — Ris de Talm, who finished in the 7-year-old top 10 with Germany’s Antonia Baumgart, as well as Dinathia, who was 11th in the 6-year-old division with Sweden’s Sara Olgottson Ostholt — were sourced via this sale.

Ahead of the auction, the horses can be tried out in Bavendorf — if you are wanting to attend and try a horse you’re eyeing, you find information on how to do so here. You can also request recommendations from the catalog by submitting your search criteria here.

Bidding will be supported in person or online/via telephone — check out your options and register here.

And now — for the fun part: time to dive into the catalog! As a reminder, the full catalog can be found here.

Potentially the most popular, at least for breeding aficionados/fans of Cornelia Dorr’s Daytona Beach 8, in this year’s catalog are two lots: first up is lot #1 “Burghley” (aptly-named, I think). Burghley is a 2019 Trakehner gelding by Duke of Hearts xx — “a full Thoroughbred stallion by Halling xx out of a Keonigsstuhl xx mare, who was not very heavily used early on in his stud career,” Amanda Chance wrote for EN’s Burghley Breeding recap. “but despite having a fairly modest number of offspring over the age of 10 has so far managed to produce four 4* horses in addition to the newly-minted 5* horse Daytona Beach 8.” — out of the Trakehner mare Berlin 7.

The second Duke of Hearts offspring in the catalog comes at lot #8, “Dragonheart”, a 4-year-old out of Roesnblüte. A big, rangy type, this is one who will do well with someone who knows how to get the most out of the bigger horses!

If the small, sporty version is more your type, you’ll definitely want to check out lot #10, “Catharina F”, who’s one of those big mares in a smaller package. This 5-year-old Hanoverian mare is by show jumping stallion Cachassini out of the Hanoverian jumper mare Tiola. She’s nimble and quick on her feet and looks like she’s just itching to get out and make the time around a big cross country track.

In the market for a solid-citizen type? Lot #11 seems to look the part here, and bonus points for all you crazy gray horse lovers out there, he’s got dapples for days. “Crocket” is a 5-year-old Holsteiner that wins the award for the name-most-likely-to-be-attached-to-a-very-pink-nose and just has a look about him that tells me he’d be happy to do just about anything, at least once.

You can view the full collection by clicking the banner below, and tune in for the auction live on November 5 on Clip My Horse TV!

Previewing the Biggest YEH and FEH West Coast Championships

By on Oct 26, 2022 9:00 am -

Michlynn Sterling and Carrigfadda at the 2022 Twin Rivers Fall International. Ride On Photo.

Twin Rivers Ranch is preparing to host the largest field for the Dutta Corp. USEA Young Event Horse (YEH) and Future Event Horse (FEH) West Coast Championships since they were first run as a standalone event in Paso Robles, Calif., in 2020. A total of 65 horses were entered as of the start of the week of the competition that will culminate the year of YEH events for 4-year-olds and 5-year-olds and FEH events for yearlings, 2-year-olds, 3-year-olds, and 4-year-olds.

The entrants include former YEH and FEH West Coast champions. Some will begin their weekend by competing in the Last Chance Qualifier on Thursday, Oct. 27, before the championships take place with dressage and conformation evaluations on Friday, Oct. 28, and jumping tests on Saturday, Oct. 29.
“We feel like we’re starting to develop a tradition,” said Connie Baxter, organizer for events at Twin Rivers. “We’re thrilled with how this event has grown and how excited riders on the West Coast are to showcase their young talent.”

The Baxter family’s commitment to growing the YEH and FEH series on the West Coast is also reflected in Andrea Baxter being a member of both the USEA’s YEH and FEH committees.

“I’ve worked very hard to keep the West Coast relative and growing,” Andrea Baxter said. “It’s my vision to make it look and feel like an FEI event for these young horses. They’re only young once, so it’s a unique opportunity for these special young horses to show themselves off.”

There were 41 horses that competed in each of the 2020 and 2021 Dutta Corp. USEA YEH and FEH West Coast Championships.

Among the 20 horses entered in the 5-year-old championships in 2022 are the top three 4-year-olds from 2021—Anita Nardine’s Oldenburg gelding Quinn HSR (Quarterback x Bonne Chance) ridden by Kaylawna Smith-Cook, Michlynn Sterling’s Dutch Warmblood gelding Musquito (Fly x Silona), and Sterling’s Irish Sport Horse gelding Gaelic Gamble (Island Commander x Marlton Dusk).

Sterling’s third 5-year-old entry is Irish Sport Horse gelding Carrigfadda (Luidam x The Big Lady), who is coming off posting the best YEH 5-year-old qualifying score in the country in 2022 with 87.3 and winning the Novice Amateur division on their dressage score of 23.9 at the Twin Rivers Fall International in September.

Michlynn Sterling and Carrigfadda at the 2022 Twin Rivers Fall International. Ride On Photo.

“He is the best jumper I’ve ever sat on,” Sterling said about Carrigfadda. “He loves to jump. He just eats it up. I’ve never felt something like that.”
Also in the 5-year-old field is the 2021 USEA FEH 4-Year-Old West Coast champion, Oldenburg mare Graceland’s Ladera (Libero Star x Rittersporn) ridden by Charlotte Freeman. They won a YEH 5-year old qualifying event at Shepherd Ranch in California in June.

For the 12 YEH 4-year-olds, with 10 currently entered in the championships and an additional two in the Last Chance Qualifier, Layla Self’s Oldenburg gelding Indelible (Sandro’s Star x Ava) had the third highest 4-year-old qualifying score in the country in 2022 with 85.3 ridden by Maxance McManamy at Shepherd Ranch in August. McManamy was the 2009 USEF Junior Equestrian of the Year across all breeds and disciplines.

Four of the nine riders with horses entered for the 4-year-old championships will be traveling from outside of California—Ashley Horowitz from Colorado on Irish Sport Horse gelding Monbeg Salt Fever (Womanizer x Eden Breeze), Catie Cejka from Washington on Irish Sport Horse mare MRF Nonchalant (Metropole x Cavalier Carnival Rose), Erin Storey from Idaho on Canadian Warmblood gelding Grayscape (Farscape DSF x Lotta), and Michele Pestl from Washington on German Sport horse gelding Tristan (Titulus x Elaisa).

The field of 10 for the USEA FEH 4-Year-Old West Coast Championships includes Hanoverian gelding RSH Goliath (Gringo-Gallipoli x Sam’s Girl), an FEH West Coast champion as a 2-year-old in 2020 and as a 3-year-old in 2021 when presented by Chloe Smyth.

Two FEH 4-year-olds, The Big Easy (Mr Lincoln B x PLS Hippo Q) and MBF Kingsriver Romeo (Womanizer x Soraja), both Irish Sport Horse geldings, are also entered in the YEH 4-year-old Last Chance Qualifier.

Michlynn Sterling and Carrigfadda at the 2022 Twin Rivers Fall International. Ride On Photo.

Among the eight FEH 3-year-olds, Belgian Warmblood mare Trilogy (Claire de Lune x Honor Jean) was the FEH West Coast champion as a yearling in 2020 when presented by owner Janine Jaro and as a 2-year-old in 2021 with Ghislaine Homan-Taylor. Megan Bittle’s 3-year-old American Warmblood gelding Nevadas Ember BDF, fourth as a 2-year-old in 2021, enters the 2022 championships off of the highest FEH qualifying score across all ages this year with 88.3 at the Twin Rivers Summer Horse Trials in June.

Martin Plewa from Germany and Marilyn Payne from New Jersey will be the YEH judges at Twin Rivers. Earlier this month, Plewa and Payne judged at the Dutta Corp. USEA YEH East Coast Championships at the Maryland 5 Star at Fair Hill. Plewa was the national coach of German eventing team from 1985 to 2001 and is well-regarded for his work with young horses. Payne, an eventing judge at the 2008 and 2016 Olympics and recently President of the Ground Jury at the 2022 American Eventing Championships, is the chair of the USEA Young Event Horse Committee.

Payne and Katie Rocco from Massachusetts will be the FEH judges at Twin Rivers. Rocco judged the USEA FEH East Coast Championships at Loch Moy Farm in Maryland last month.

Ride On Video will again produce a livestream of the Dutta Corp. USEA YEH and FEH West Coast Championships. Last year’s livestream attracted approximately 1,000 viewers.

“You ride your upper-level horses, and you know them really well, and then the young horses, it’s like, ‘I wonder what they’re going to do,’” Rebecca Braitling, who rode three YEH championship horses in 2021, said about the camaraderie among riders after last year’s event. “Coming out, you feel like you’re ready to go to the Olympics.”

FEH & YEH Last Chance Qualifier & West Coast Championships (Paso Robles, CA): [Website] [Entries/Times/Scoring] [Volunteer]

Number of Horses (as of Oct. 24)
YEH-5: 20
YEH-4: 10 (with potentially 2 more in Last Chance Qualifier)
FEH-4: 10
FEH-3: 8
FEH-2: 7
FEH-YR: 10
TOTAL: 65 (includes 2 with entries in both YEH-4 and FEH-4)

Sponsors and Volunteers

Twin Rivers is proud to host the 2022 Dutta Corp. USEA Young Event Horse (YEH) and Future Event Horse (FEH) West Coast Championships with generous support from sponsors.

Presenting sponsors for the season include: LEGIS Equine, horsemen insuring horsemen, Auburn Labs, manufacturers of the adaptogenic APF Formula for horses, people and dogs; Best Western PLUS Black Oak, which offers exclusive discounts for exhibitors; and Professional’s Choice, manufacturers of sports medicine boots for equine athletes.

Supporting sponsors include: Chubby Cov, makers of beautiful custom stock ties; Riding Warehouse, the horse gear and apparel supplier; RevitaVet, a leader in preventative maintenance and rehabilitative infrared therapy devices; and Devoucoux, saddle makers dedicated to the partnership between horse and rider.

For sponsorship opportunities, please contact Christina Gray of Gray Area Events at [email protected].

Volunteers play a major part of events at Twin Rivers. Twin Rivers’ generous volunteer incentive program includes vouchers for show stabling and credits for schooling between events at the beautiful 500-acre venue. That is in addition to the genuine appreciation of the Baxter family and the entire Twin Rivers team. To sign up, please visit www.twinrivershorsepark/volunteer.

Wednesday News & Notes from Haygain

By on Oct 26, 2022 12:01 am -

Have you heard? There are quite a few things up for grabs in this month’s fundraising auction benefitting Strides for Equality Equestrians! The auction is running online (you can view items and place bids here) through the end of October. Included in the auction are things like lessons with top riders such as Holly Jacks, Ashley Johnson, and Reese Koffler-Stanfield, a membership to Ride iQ, a full-scale golf outing for the golf fan in your family, and even a month of advertising right here on EN! All proceeds go to further Strides for Equality Equestrians’ mission of increasing visibility and opportunity for riders from diverse and disadvantaged backgrounds.

U.S. Weekend Preview

FEH & YEH Last Chance Qualifier & West Coast Championships (Paso Robles, CA): [Website] [Entries/Times/Scoring] [Volunteer]

Chattahoochee Hills H.T. (Fairburn, GA): [Website] [Entries] [Ride Times] [Scoring]

Full Moon Farms H.T. (Finksburg, MD): [Website] [Entries] [Volunteer]

Major International Events

Les 5 Étoiles de Pau:[Website] [Entries] [Schedule] [Save 15% on H&C+ Annual] [H&C+ Live Stream] [EN’s Coverage] [EN’s Ultimate Guide to Pau] [EN’s Instagram] [Visit Kentucky Performance Products]

Wednesday News & Reading

*Equine Media Job Alert!* The USEA is currently hiring a Media and Communications Assistant, with availability to work remotely or out of the USEA’s Leesburg, VA headquarters. The salary for the position is around $50,000 and is a full-time, benefits eligible opportunity. If you’re located in the western part of the U.S., even better! Applications close on Friday, October 28. [Learn more and apply]

You’ll want to translate this one from French (thanks, Google), unless you’re one of the lucky multi-linguals reading this, but inside you’ll learn more about current Olympic individual champion Julia Krajewski and her philosophy. “I think what makes the difference between a good rider and a great rider is that little extra effort. I have great admiration for riders who manage to keep several horses at an excellent level over time. But this is no coincidence, it is the fruit of hard work,” she says. “You have to be resilient because one thing is certain, it’s not always easy. One day we win and the next week we lose. But the most important thing is to listen to your horses.” [Read the full interview]

Could a device used in soccer be instrumental in learning about footing and how it affects our horses comfort and performance? Possibly so. According to TheHorse.com, “the Hi-Pitch Screener (HiPSter) machine runs over grassy soccer turfs to assess five aspects of the terrain: hardness, shock absorption, energy resistance, vertical displacement, and rotational resistance”. Researchers believe this machine could be useful for evaluating footing for competition horses. [Ok, fine, I’ll watch the World Cup this year]

#TackFacts from Sterling Essentials: There’s more than one way to clean your tack well, but not every way is equally simple and effective. Use this primer from Sterling Essentials to pick up a new trick or two:

Sponsor Corner

Wednesday Video Break

Get pumped for Pau!

#TerraNovaTuesday Video: Watch Jacob Fletcher’s Winning 4*-S Cross Country

By on Oct 25, 2022 4:30 pm -

Jacob Fletcher and Fabian fly around Capt. Mark Phillips’ TerraNova cross country track. Photo by Al Green Photo.

Jacob Fletcher swooped to the 4*-S victory this weekend at The Event at TerraNova, located further south in Myakka City, FL, with the 12-year-old KWPN gelding Fabian (Up To Date – Ineke). It’s the pair’s second 4*-S win in as many attempts since beginning their partnership in February of 2020. The gelding had previously been campaigned in Ireland by Millie Dumas before joining Jacob in the states under the ownership of Fletcher Farms.

Thanks to the H&C+ live stream from TerraNova, you can watch Jacob’s winning cross country ride below (or, if you can’t see the embedded video, click here to watch on Facebook). If you want to watch more from The Event at TerraNova, click here. You can also revisit Amanda Chance’s notebooks from her first trip to TerraNova here.

Jacob Fletcher and Fabian at The Event at TerraNova on H&C

Catch up on the action from The Event at TerraNova CCI4*-S on H&C! Check out winner Jacob Fletcher and Fabian galloping over the cross-country course set by Captain Mark Phillips, and then head to H&C to watch and rewatch all three phases of competition. Your front row seat to world-class sport is here 👉 https://bit.ly/3SxuxDK

TerraNova Equestrian Center 5o1 Sport Horses Jacob Fletcher Eventing Nation United States Eventing Association, Inc. (USEA)

Posted by Horse & Country TV on Tuesday, October 25, 2022

The Event at TerraNova (Myakka City, FL): [Website] [Final Scores] [Order Al Green Photos]

Coming Soon: The Goresbridge ‘Go For Gold’ Select Event Horse Looms Large

By on Oct 25, 2022 3:56 pm -

We’re eagerly awaiting this year’s Goresbridge ‘Go For Gold’ Select Event Horse Sale, held annually in Cork Co., Ireland and featuring a quality group of young event horses ready to take the next steps in their careers. Riders of all backgrounds shop sales like this each fall, aware that the next World Champion or Novice packer may await, at a better-than-market price in some cases.

This year, we’re excited to finally be attending the sale in person, as Tilly Berendt will be hopping over to have the full Goresbridge experience (minus, of course, the actual horse buying part — we aren’t made of money, folks. Anyone up for an EN syndicate? It could DEFINITELY be a thing..). In anticipation, I’ve collected all the need-to-know as the catalog is already available for perusal, featuring videos and x-rays (coming soon) for each horse listed.

The Go For Gold sale will take place November 14-16, 2022 at the Barnadown & Ambersprings Hotel in Wexford.

From the Go For Gold website:

The Goresbridge Go For Gold Sale of pre-selected event horses has been the success story of recent years. Now heading into its thirteenth renewal, the sale has truly achieved its aim of bringing together Ireland’s best young event horses to one venue for one sale.

Staged in November at Barnadown and the Amber Springs Hotel in Co. Wexford, the sale offers around 60 -70 proven and potential event horses from the age of three, all of whom have been carefully selected by a highly experienced panel of producers and international riders.

Many of the sport’s most recognisable names regularly attend the sale and among them is the current world number one Oliver Townend, and fellow Olympian rider Michel Jung (GER). Others include Kim Severson (USA), Astier Nicolas (FR) Joe Meyer (NZ), Kitty King (GB), Nicola Wilson (GB), Gemma Tattersall (GB), Tom McEwen (GB), Buck Davison (USA), Boyd Martin (USA), Robin Walker (USA), Sam Ecroyd (GB), Emily King (GB), Mary King (GB), Cathal Daniels (IRE), Caroline Powell (NZ), Sam Watson (IRE), Joseph Murphy (IRE), Camilla Speirs (IRE), Patricia Ryan (IRE), Austin O’Connor (IRE) and Nicholas Aldinger (GER).

This year, a total of 63 3-year-olds, 18 4-year-olds, and 9 5-year-olds will be available for sale. Even if you aren’t planning to attend the sale in person, virtual bidding and a full live stream of each horse ahead of the sale (as well as the sale itself) will be provided on the Go For Gold website.

[Click here to view the full sale catalog]

Curious about the performance of last year’s Go For Gold sale? Click here to view the results — and stay tuned for some stories (including our wishlist(s) of horses we’d most like to bring home) coming soon here on EN all about some Go For Gold graduates. In the meantime, here’s one in particular we love to share.

Christina Henriksen and Cisco’s Calor Z Win the 2022 USEF CCI2*-L Eventing National Championship

By on Oct 25, 2022 11:30 am -

Christina Henriksen and Cisco’s Calor Z, 2022 USEF CCI2*-L Eventing National Champions. ©Xpress Foto

Competitors enjoyed a mild and sunny weekend at the Hagyard Midsouth Three-Day Event at the Kentucky Horse Park, which hosted the 2022 USEF CCI2*-L Eventing National Championship. This year’s National Champion title and Richard Collins Trophy went to Christina Henriksen and Cisco’s Calor Z.

Henriksen (Keswick, Va.) and her own 2015 bay Zangersheide gelding started their event strong, with a 28.5 and second-place standing in the dressage phase. They followed it up with double-clear rounds in both cross-country and show jumping, ultimately taking the win by less than a single point.

Henriksen has been working with “Cisco” since last summer and has been focused on developing a strong partnership with him.

“Kate Walls found him last summer and I went over and tried him and loved him but felt like it was going to be a while to mold the partnership,” said Henriksen. “He is an amazing jumper, and he’s very forward-thinking. My biggest struggle with him has been containing his exuberance and his excitement for life. I didn’t compete him last fall; I focused on the training process and us building a partnership together and just getting to know each other.

“He’s an incredible athlete and I think he has all the makings to be a top horse,” Henriksen continued. “That being said, I think it’s very important to build that partnership with him now and take my time with him. The biggest thing has been getting the rideability and that’s taken 14 months, and it’s a work in progress. But he has the biggest heart and is one of the coolest horses I’ve ever had.”

Henriksen said she had the CCI2*-L championship in mind as a goal event when mapping out her competition schedule for 2022. She’d previously competed at Hagyard Midsouth in 2014 and enjoyed the atmosphere and experience there, and this year’s event didn’t disappoint. One of the highlights was competing in the Kentucky Horse Park’s iconic Rolex Stadium.

“We didn’t get to jump in the Rolex Stadium when I was there in 2014, and so to be able to walk down that ramp and compete in the stadium for a national championship class is incredible,” she said. “And the cross-country, I remember it being strong for a CCI2*-L. I did many two-stars and three-stars when I was in England, and I would say this two-star was comparable in quality and the technicality. There were some good questions that are great to ride in preparation for next year and the stuff you’ll see at the Intermediate and the three-star level.”

Cisco will get a vacation after his National Championship win, and Henriksen looks forward to big things with him in the season ahead.

“He’s very ready to move up to Intermediate,” she said. “I’ll pick and choose where we go and what we do pretty carefully under the guidance of Bobby Costello, who has been my coach for the last year and a half. Bobby’s been helping me make Cisco’s schedule this year, so we’ll sit down at some point and figure out what the plan is. But I feel this horse has all the makings to go as far as I can take him.”

Julie Wolfert and HSH Bitcoin, 2022 USEF CCI2*-L Eventing Reserve National Champions. ©Xpress Foto

Julie Wolfert (Bucyrus, Kan.) finished second riding HSH Bitcoin, a distinctive 2016 palomino Irish Sport Horse owned by Meaghan Marinovich-Burdick and Michele McCarty Woods. Marley Stone Bourke (Berryville, Va.) finished in third place with Kung Fu Quality, a 2016 Thoroughbred cross gelding she co-owns with Sharon Church and Tim Bourke.

As the top-finishing young rider in the CCI2*-L, Annabelle Friend (Nicholasville, Ky.) and her 2003 Thoroughbred gelding, Fine With Me, took home the Harry T. Peters Trophy and the title of USEF CCI2*-L Junior/Young Rider Eventing National Champion. The pair finished on their dressage score of 35.9 and placed ninth overall in the class.