The Ocala eventing community has built an awesome eventing mecca built upon top coaching, good facilities, good support staff, and of course great events. Rider, event organizer, and EN guest writer Jon Holling is kind enough to write to us today about the progress of the winter series and a shout-out to Ocala Horse Properties, an EN sponsor, on the winter eventing series in Ocala. Thanks for writing this Jon and thank you for reading.
—-
Photo from An Eventing Affair blog
From Jon:
Believe it or not, now is the time that many of us start planning our winter season. I wanted to take this opportunity to tell you all about our great series of shows here in Ocala. One of the main goals all of us here in Ocala have had over the past few years has been to offer competitors a great selection of courses and venues to produce their horses. Because of this effort I am happy to say that we now have eleven recognized shows and at least an additional ten schooling shows at four different venues throughout the winter season. That does not even begin to include all of the jumper and dressage shows that are going on here all of the time.
Obviously the series of shows that are nearest and dearest to my heart are the Ocala Horse Properties Horse Trials held at the Florida Horse Park. This series begins in November and progressively educates both horses and riders throughout the series of four shows, culminating with the April CCI**. The Ocala Horse Properties Horse Trials series is now entering its fourth year of existence. We are continually upgrading and changing the courses at the Park, and we are very proud of the work that our amazing course designer, Mr. Jay Hambly has accomplished. There will be some very exciting new fences for this year’s courses, as there have been every year since the series began. The big goal last year was to implement our footing management program. Happily, we were able to produce the best footing the horse park has seen to date. That program continues this year, and we are beginning work towards an irrigation system for the cross country tracks.
The reality is that none of the improvements we have been able to make would have been possible without the help of Ocala Horse Properties. Chris and Rob Desino have stepped up every year and supported the efforts of the organizing committee. For this reason alone we should all be thanking Ocala Horse Properties by making them the first place to go when looking for real estate in Florida. The really cool part though is that Chris and Rob are more than just a couple of realtors looking to help you find your dream farm or simply just a place to rent for the season. They are also fellow eventers. I have known Chris and Rob for over fifteen years and I am proud to call them my friends and of course my advisors in anything related to property in Florida. So as a way of saying thank you for all their support please be sure to let Ocala Horse Properties be your go to realtors. Without them much of the success we have seen here in Ocala would not have been possible.
