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Richard Jeffery, above, who travels the globe to design show-jumping courses for both eventers and pure jumpers, is back at the Kentucky Horse Park this week for the Alltech National Horse Show. Already familiar to countless Rolex fans, he and several of those famous fences were in the Alltech Indoor Arena Thursday night for the International Open Jumper Class with a purse of $75,000 and an SSG Gloves bonus of $6,000 which Lauren Hough eventually took home on Quick Study. Ireland’s Richie Moloney smoothly guided the gorgeous Slievenorra to a deceptively fast second place in the jump off, and Kent Farrington rode Raylyn Farms’ Venus into third place. The disappointingly sparse crowd was treated to top class jumping with fourteen jumping clear in the first round including Jessica Springsteen on her new mount, Peter Charles’ Team GB Olympic gold-medal winning Vindicat W who had two down in the jump off. Katie Dinan, who trains with McLain Ward (competing but sadly did not get through to the second round) was particularly impressive, and will be a name to look out for in the future. Kaitlin Campbell’s Rocky W was amazing and the fastest horse in the jump off, but had a rail down, and Margie Engle has taken over the ride on the previously Russian-ridden Royce who everyone wanted last year, and it looks like they’ll be phenomenal when they get to know each other better.
Eventual winners Lauren Hough and the super but quirky Quick Study
What a treat to sit in the heat controlled (ie. cosy!) and sumptuous indoor arena at the Kentucky Horse Park and watch round after round of top class international jumping. Alltech are doing everything right, and I suspect that within a few years the National Horse Show at the Kentucky Horse Park will rival the biggest and best horse shows in the US, and hopefully given a bit longer it can hold it’s head up alongside the big shows globally. I wonder if it’s been given short shrift on the calendar though, competing against Canada’s well-established Royal, and also locally Halloween which is an enormous deal here in Lexington; Huge props for bringing in the Lexington March Madness Marching Band, one of the very best things about this town, full stop.
Here they are, above, playing at the Fourth of July Parade, but I wonder why they were relegated to the Front Steps last night and not parading around the arena either before the start of the class, or in the interval?
The presentation is gorgeous throughout the show, check out the beautiful backdrop, below, and I was thrilled to see the big blue horse from WEG make a re-appearance with all the signatures from the 2010 Games winnners adorning him proudly; again, I’ll try and do better with the pictures tonight, and there are plenty of tradestands which I was trying to stay away from but which I intend to check out tonight. I did see several people wandering around in costume, “for ambience”, and there was some carriage driving but I admit I didn’t stay for the gaited horses which I have zero interest in, but I would love to see this show on a par with something like Olympia eventually – if anyone has the vision, the means and the balls to make it happen it’s Dr Lyons and Alltech! Lexington is supposed to be the Horse Capital of the World, and yet most of my non-horsey friends are blissfully unaware of this great, very kid-friendly spectacle on their doorstep, despite Alltech’s best efforts – show-jumping demonstrations literally in the heart of downtown the weekend before the show. Of course, I’m not at all biased, but I can’t help but think that some friendly, brave eventers might get the party started – perhaps a class for them, how about a Kentucky version of scurry racing, or indoor driving, some pony club games? Is there any way we could move the show back one week and the Southern Lights up one week so that they both coincided? Right now they’re just a fortnight apart although there was a token mare and foal lit up last night as we drove out, and obviously a lot of the lights are very close to being ready. Come on, Lexington, and Come on Horse People, please put on your thinking caps, and also if you’re in the area, come on out to the Horse Park and enjoy the show!
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Go the Alltech National Horse Show at the Kentucky Horse Park and Go Eventing!
