EN’s beloved mascot, Chinch, has historically been a bit of a player — he’s gotten hugged, squeezed and snogged by a who’s-who of top event riders in the world. We never thought we’d see the day that he settled down, but he just may have met this match at this year’s Land Rover Kentucky Three-Day Event.
Many thanks to Zoetis for their wonderful support of our sport; they were a huge presence at LRK3DE, sponsoring a hospitality tent for the event’s hard-working veterinarians as well as a schooling ring and more. The company’s commitment to equine health shines through in everything they do — learn more at ZoetisEquine.com and be sure to follow them on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Twenty-eight middle and high school students competing in a new USEA-sanctioned Interscholastic Eventing League (IEL) were among 250 riders at the Holly Hill Horse Trials April 17 and 18.
Holly Hill Farm, in Benton, Louisiana, is one of three Area V venues offering IEL teams a chance to compete this year. Farm owners Tracy and Bobby Hewlett started the horse trials in 1996 and have embraced opportunities to share their love of eventing with riders of all ages. Holly Hill runs the horse trials twice a year, in April and October. The farm’s signature red clover was in full bloom for the 2021 spring trials, providing a colorful backdrop for horses galloping around the cross country course.
“It was a wet weekend with rain all day Friday and cloudy and cool on Saturday, but everyone chose to be a good sport,” Tracy said. “The footing held up well for the horses all day Saturday. Luckily the sun came out Sunday morning and it was a beautiful day for upper level cross country and lower level show jumping!”
Seven teams composed of seventh- through 12th-grade students competed in the inaugural IEL challenge at Holly Hill in April. For now, teams compete for bragging rights, but ultimately USEA plans to have IEL eventing championships similar to collegiate eventing championships. The IEL program also is structured to prepare students for college eventing team participation.
Nicole Hackett gives the Holly Hill Horse Trials and the IEL challenge two thumbs up. Nicole is the chaperone for an IEL team based at Texas Rose Horse Park near Tyler, Texas. Her daughter, Luci, competed as an individual event rider at Holly Hill before joining the IEL team this year. Nicole competes in dressage.
“When we saw Holly Hill was on the IEL schedule, we picked a day to come school. It was a really nice introductory point for those that had never been there,” Nicole said. “The horse trial was fantastic. Eventing is my daughter’s social life, and to be able to go to an event and have her team support her was great. They were checking on each other, helping each braid, cheering each other on. It was so much fun to have that extra motivation and encouragement.”
The IEL team challenge wasn’t the only new feature at the horse trials this spring. Tracy and Bobby made other changes designed to improve the experience for horses and riders.
“We decided to move the cross country warm up area this year to make it bigger and get farther away from an entry gate and the dressage arenas. That worked out well,” Tracy said.
Tracy, Bobby and competitors also marked a bittersweet moment on April 18: USEA Eventing Hall of Fame member Mike Huber’s final horse trials in Area V. Mike is moving to Ocala, Florida, permanently after dividing his time between his Gold Chip Stables operations in Bartonville, Texas, and Ocala. A former member of the United States Equestrian Team, Mike has coached the Area V Young Riders Team and numerous individual riders.
“We recognized all his service to Area V and the USEA over the past 30 years,” Tracy said.
With an event this nice, we’re going to do a Who Jumped It Best? twice! This time we take a look at the inaugural CCI4*-S class through the Rolex Grand Slam water complex. This comes after the halfway mark at fence 13 abc. Here, riders drop in before a tricky right bend to a duck in the water. After this, riders had to keep fighting to get to an angled brush.
You be the judge. Take a look through the competitors below and cast your vote for the pair who presents the best overall picture.
Bobby Meyerhoff’s unique tack approach. Photo by Shelby Allen.
Bobby Meyerhoff has found a new training tool that takes his riding to the next level, and it comes straight from the racetrack.
“It’s a racing training saddle,” Bobby says after dressage in the CCI4*-S at the Kentucky Three-Day Event. When he’s riding, something seems a bit… different, but you can’t quite put a finger on it. Then, he dismounts, leaving onlookers wondering, where’s the rest of his saddle?
It’s a tactic he began to employ last fall with his petite, upper level mare Fortuna. “An owner of mine had this really old saddle in her tack room and I thought I wanna try that, so I took it home and then two years later, finally, I took it out for my mare. She had been really sore in the back, and I put it on her and she got way, way better,” he said.
This was right before the Tryon CCI4*-L, where he did use the saddle for the first time in competition. “I used it for dressage and show jumping, but I didn’t do cross country with it because [my team] thought I would fall off.”
Bobby Meyerhoff and Lumumba. Photo by Shelby Allen.
Once he sat on Fortuna with the teeny slip of leather, he realized it gave him an entirely different feel. “It helps me feel a lot more what’s going on before it happens. It actually makes me ride a lot better because there is only one place you can be. I can feel every vertebrae down there back because there’s no tree there. It’s almost like riding bareback with stirrups,” he described.
A saddle with such close contact give him a major advantage of close contact, but at the price of little stability. He can’t rely on knee blocks, or even a solid seat to hold him steady. “It’s tough. There’s nothing really there to keep you on,” he said. “Your balance has to be in one little place and it’s very specific. It’s tricky to ride in it because of that, but I like the feeling that I get.”
Bobby Meyerhoff and Lumumba. Photo by Shelby Allen.
It’s one thing to use a racing saddle on the flat, but it’s another to use it over fences. Bobby is straightforward in saying it can be challenging, especially on the cross country.
It’s much trickier in the air,” he said. “You have to be right there in the air and on landing and away from the jump.”
In many ways, this tack choice is a testament of Bobby’s commitment to really tuning in to what each horse needs from a rider. And no, he hasn’t quite ditched his traditional saddles all together (yet).
Boyd keeping busy between cross country rides. Photo courtesy of Boyd Martin.
With three horses entered in the Kentucky CCI5*-L, Boyd Martin had a busy weekend ahead of himself. With a few unexpected and unfortunate bobbles on cross country added on, he was left working harder than ever to keep his mind and body sharp. But this is why he’s one of the top competitors in the world. When the going gets tough, but you’ve got a ride time coming up, you dip yourself into an ice bath and find your zen.
The Head of the Lake is one of the most iconic jumps in our sport. When you see a rider go through here, then it’s almost like at that point they’ve really been to Kentucky.
This year’s edition had riders facing the massive log drop in, then three — maybe four — strides to a mound in the water. Check out these competitors giving it a go. Then vote in the poll at the bottom of this post for the pair that you think presents the best overall picture.
It’s so easy to get caught up in following the Land Rover Kentucky Three-Day Event that it’s easy to forget that there are other horse trials around the country — at Loudoun Hunt Pony Club and StableView, this year –– happening at the same time, the results of which may mean just as much to the competitors there as the 5* results do to the pairs contesting Kentucky.
I’ve been there — out at competing at a local event the day of Kentucky cross country, and it’s an interesting experience in it’s own right. Time between phases was mainly spent searching for a wifi signal to sneak peeks at the livestream, but even when I wasn’t watching or checking the EN live updates I could stay relatively informed as invariably someone would randomly call out and generally announce the status of a favorite pair to whoever was in earshot. It was yet another fun aspect of the collective eventing experience.
Let’s look beyond Kentucky right now and congratulate the other big winners this weekend. This weekend’s Unofficial Low Score Award was earned at Stable View and goes to Susan Ballek and Jitter Bug who finished on their dressage score of 24.5 to win the Novice Rider B division. Way to go!
Open Intermediate: Tim Bourke and Lennard (33.8)
Open Preliminary A: Tim Bourke and Quality Control (35.0)
Open Preliminary B: Martin Douzant and Frame Shamrock (30.2)
Junior Young Rider Open Training: Audrey Ogan and Second Amendment (29.5)
Open Training A: Carin Brown and Storm In Alke (41.6)
Open Training B: Stephen Bradley and Erika Louvo (31.2)
Preliminary/Training: Anthony Forrest and Maya (34.6)
Training Horse: Ashley Trier and LNJ Encyclopedia (33.3)
Training Rider A: May Keffer and Bumbleberry (32.1)
Training Ride B: Carroll Courtenay an Mr. Puff Higgens Jr. (31.0)
Junior Young Open Novice: Hope Hinshaw and Sir Louis (33.3)
Novice Horse: Linden Wiesman and Fifth Ace (31.2)
Novice Rider A: Katherine Holzrichter and Idlehour Center Stage (33.1)
Novice Rider B: Isabel Giordano and Davinci (34.1)
Open Novice A: Erin Murphy and Kayan (30.5)
Open Novice B: Skyeler Voss and Black Sea Baron (29.5)
Junior Young Open Beginner Novice: Kendall Adams and Princess Leia (39.4)
Open Beginner Novice A: Judith Lafleur-Lovegrove and Ciao Bella (37.5)
Open Beginner Novice B: Morgan McGrath and Windchase Hydra (25.8)
Open Beginner Novice C: Alexa Johnson and Vital Hancock (29.4)
Modified A: Heidi White and FE Lobo (37.7)
Modified B: Mikki Kuchta and Special Reserve (33.7)
Open Preliminary: Booli Selmayr and Quality Touchdown (29.6)
Preliminary Rider: Sophie Miller and Quarlotta C (39.3)
Open Training: Erin Flynn Mobley and Devine Legacy (28.6)
Training Rider A: Ann Stroemsten and Cadence (41.7)
Training Rider B: Audrey Boardman and Major Tom (41.7)
Novice Rider A: Olivia Moore and Kubota (27.1)
Novice Rider B: Susan Ballek and Jitter Bug (24.5)
Open Novice: Imanol Echeverria and Hazel Rock Sun (28.1)
Beginner Novice Rider A: Jill Condrey and Wilbur (32.3)
Beginner Novice Rider B: Carolyn Rice and Aaron (35.1)
Open Beginner Novice: Holly Breaux and Wapz Hot Dan (25.3)
Happy Monday-after-Kentucky, friends – if anyone has any clever cures for that post-5* slump, I’m all ears. The sun has come out in full force here in England (actually, I mustn’t brag, but it’s been out for several weeks straight; surely a new record for us) and the best thing I can think of is pottering over to the nearest pub garden and making my way through a cider the size of my head. Acceptable Monday behaviour for normal people? Probably not. Okay after the intensity of working through a five-star? Abso-frickin-lutely.
I feel like we’re all probably in the same boat here in terms of having so many feelings to get off our chests after the conclusion of that tough, influential competition – and never fear, Team EN will be bringing you plenty of content over the next few days looking back at the event from a multitude of angles. Expect analysis, behind-the-scenes stories, and, of course, every helmet cam video we can dredge up for you. Real life is returning, folks, and it rides a winged horse through the Head of the Lake to get to us.
National Holiday: It’s National Help a Horse Day. I’m going to help my horse find the carrot stash in the feed room.
It’s been a busy weekend for international eventing, with a CCI2*-S on the go at Luhmühlen and classes from CCI1* through CCI3*-L at Italy’s Vairano. But the highlight of the FEI fixtures list over the weekend — beyond some little show in Kentucky — was Ireland’s Ballindenisk, which hosted hotly-contested classes from CCI2*-S through CCI4*-L.
The CCI4*-S went the way of WEG team silver medallists Sarah Ennis and Horseware Stellor Rebound, who added just 1.6 cross-country time penalties to their exceptional 22.6 dressage to take the win. Elsewhere in the section, other notable riders made great gains on their previous dressage averages, including Sam Watson, who posted a 27 with Tullabeg Flamenco, finishing on it to take second place, and Padraig McCarthy, who earned a 25.6 with Leonidas II, adding 4 time penalties for eventual third.
Mike McNally and Eclipto were victorious in the CCI4*-L, adding just 1.2 showjumping time penalties to their first-phase score of 33.1 to take top honours ahead of UK-based Irish rider Fred Scala and his top horse, Everon Vivendi.
Your Monday Reading List:
In rather bizarrely uplifting news, a horse who was shot in the head 18 months ago has finally lost the bullet and returned to work. The now one-eyed gelding, Fred, was apparently helped along by spiritual healing and determined optimism. [Horse shot in the eye loses bullet 18 months later and returns to work]
Sara Kozumplik Murphy is the woman of the moment for her extraordinary efforts to ensure Kentucky could run this year. But the 5* rider has an incredibly interesting story that transcends this one event. [Sara Kozumplik Murphy: Sharp, Strong and Ready]
Speaking of giving back to the sport, David Vos is doing just that with his important work as part of the FEI Eventing Risk Management Committee. Read all about it in this great HorseSport piece. [Drone Technology, Frangible Fences and Saving the Planet]
William Fox-Pitt’s weekend may not have gone to plan, with an unfortunate tumble late on course, but he found time to sit down for a chat with COTH to discuss life as an event rider during a pandemic and in the wake of a nearly career-ending injury. [Ringside Chat: All Things Land Rover Kentucky with William Fox-Pitt]
I know you’re all following photographer Erin Gilmore, I just know it. But if you’re not — get on it! She’s always catching insane shots like this viral image of Sharon White and Cooley On Show.
Morning Viewing:
Jump around the inaugural CCI4*-S at Kentucky with Elisa Wallace and Let It Be Lee:
It was a whirlwind weekend, was it not? If your brain, like ours, is pretty fried after the Kentucky craziness, then this quick graphical primer on how things played out yesterday in the show jumping might be helpful. Thanks for following along with EN!
There are few days that match the final day of a CCI5* for high-octane adrenaline, tension, excitement, and every emotional response on the spectrum (except, perhaps, the Saturday of a CCI5*). Today was no less intense even despite the conspicuously absent thousands of fans, who amplify every feeling a hundredfold when they fill the Rolex stadium. We’ve seen it all: from trot-up drama, with the spin of reigning champion Cooley Master Class, who had suffered a small stud wound on yesterday’s course, to showjumping drama, with rails falling left, right, and centre, plus slick saves and unfortunate tumbles. We’ve cried and bellowed and cheered and wailed and here we are, at the end of all things. Let’s take a look back.
The day began with a grey and grizzly final horse inspection:
And so, too, shall we. We can’t wait to relive Kentucky with you over the next hours and days with plenty more content to come — but from me, at least, it’s goodbye to the virtual patch of Bluegrass we’ve all shared this week. Go Eventing.
