We all awoke this morning to a greatly-reduced field in the 2024 Cosequin Lexington CCI4*-S at the Defender Kentucky Three-Day Event after six overnight withdrawals. We’ve all said that this would be a bloodthirsty bunch, confirmed after no less than eight on-course retirements and five rider falls during this morning’s trials. Liz Halliday and superstar Miks Master C (Mighty Magic – Qui Lumba CBF, by Quite Easy) emerged victorious from the pack — 8 seconds of time weren’t enough to knock this power team out of their overnight lead.
Though they have only one second in hand headed into tomorrow’s show jumping round, the Swedish Warmblood, owned by Ocala Horse Properties, gave us a flawless show once again across the Kentucky bluegrass. Liz remains in the top ten with all three of her mounts so far, with The Monster Partnership’s Cooley Quicksilver (Womanizer – Kylemore Crystal, by Greggan Diamond) in seventh place on a 32.8, and Ocala Horse Properties‘ other gelding Shanroe Cooley (Dallas – Shanroe Sapphire, by Condios) four points behind him in eighth.
Our current top three have less than one point separating them, with Will Coleman and Diabolo (Diarado – Roulett M, by Aljano 2) on Liz’s tail at 29.9, and Boyd Martin and Commando 3 (Connor 48 – R-Adelgunde, by Amigo xx) breathing down Will’s neck with a 30.1. Will’s longtime partner Off The Record (Arkansas VDL – Drumagoland Bay by Ard Ohio) follows in fourth on a score of 30.9, with Boyd Martin once again in fifth place aboard Fedarman B (Eurocommerce Washington – Paulien B, by Fedor), tied with Caroline Pamukcu and HSH Blake (Tolan R – Doughiska Lass, by Kannan) on scores of 32.5.
Our top seven will all be within one jump fault of each other heading into show jumping tomorrow — with Caroline Pamukcu the only other rider in that mix outside of the Liz, Will, & Boyd Show.
The word of the day is “coffin” — one we’ll likely wait to utter for a healthy period of time after today’s myriad of coffin-borne catastrophes. With a total of 24 refusals in the field, 20 of them were instigated by the 5*-worthy combination at 6ABCDE, with 75% of those refusals attributing to the final E element — a particularly tricky skinny brush. Three horses ended up retiring at the combination (Lucienne Bellissimo aboard Tremanton, Heather Gillette and Vincent Chase, and Leslie Law on Lady Chatterley) and we saw two rider falls as well: Molly Duda on Disco Traveler and Hannah Sue Hollberg with Carsonstown. Hannah Sue subsequently withdrew Capitol HIM from the 5*, though she isn’t seriously injured she did have trouble bearing weight on her right leg and decided not to run the 5* when she was not 100%.
The rest of the course was rightly competitive with a final clear rate of 44%, but saw nowhere near as many refusals as the dreaded combination. We did have three additional falls with Samantha Tinney, Autumn Schweiss, and Tamie Smith, and five others elected to retire on course. With the addition of Canada’s Lindsay Traisnel withdrawing her mount Bacyrouge after cross country, we now head into tomorrow’s second horse inspection with a field of 41 — the field 21 horses lighter than when we all emerged from the sandboxes.
Liz Halliday and Miks Master C (Mighty Magic – Qui Lumba CBF, by Quite Easy) maintained their flawless cross country jump record over Derek di Grazia’s minefield today, albeit keeping us all on the edges of our seats during some close calls (that had my heart in my throat on several occasions). Bred in the US by Laurie Cameron, “Mikki” and Liz have been partnered together for two years now, already with several high-profile completions under their belts. After acquiring the ride in 2022 from Maya Black, Liz had four consecutive wins with Mikki at the Bromont CCI2*L, Chattahoochee Hills Intermediate, Rebecca Farm’s CCI4*-S, and the FEI Eventing Nations Cup at Bromont CCIO-4*S.
Liz has seen a winner’s potential in Mikki from the start, which has held true as they were named to three US Teams in their short time together. The pair achieved a top-five finish at Boekelo in the 2022 FEI Eventing Nations Cup CCIO4*-L, another fifth place in Aachen’s CCIO4*-S last June, and contributed to Team USA’s Silver in the 2023 Pan American Games at Santiago, Chile, where they had the lowest dressage score in the field and finished seventh individually.
“Mikki gave me a run for my money,” Liz said of the current division leader. “He was a little keen today, but jumped all the jumps spectacularly.” One of four total rides today, Liz was understandably a bit beat after her completion on Cooley Nutcracker — who ended the day in eighth position in the Defender Kentucky CCI5* — and managed to maintain her lead on Miks Master C after already pushing herself to the max with two previous runs. Regardless, Liz says Mikki took great care of her on course and pulled off yet another spectacular performance. “He is just such an incredible athlete and he’s a very good jumper and he’s very careful, so although he was strong in between the fences, he was very thoughtful and very organized at all the combinations, which is what I sort of always look for for him.”
Liz also spoke with great pride of her runs on current seventh- and eighth-place rides, Cooley Quicksilver and Shanroe Cooley, respectfully. “The young horse [Shanroe Cooley] blew my mind away. He was so clever, he’s a real one in the making. Monster scrapped his way around like he always does for me. To finish up like this with four clear rounds — I think my slowest one was 6.4 time — that’s a pretty good day at the office, and we don’t always have good days at the office so I’ll take it! I’m just happy all my horses are fit and well and feeling good in themselves — that’s the most important thing.”
Liz and Miks Master C’s prep run for Kentucky at the Carolina International CCI4*-S last month ended with a victory gallop as they left with the blue ribbon, and the last time Mikki and Liz left Rolex Stadium together, it was with a third-place finish at the gelding’s CCI5* debut one year ago. With reigning champions Tamie Smith and Mai Baum withdrawn, and reigning reserve champions Tom McEwen and JL Dublin returned to the 5* for another (rather likely) shot at victory, will this partnership emerge victorious this year in the 4*-S? We’ll be eagerly waiting to see tomorrow afternoon!
Moving up from sixth place overnight thanks to being the fastest round of the day, Will Coleman and Diabolo were the only combination to go double-clear in the 4*-S this morning. Will was clearly on fire as he stormed across the country today, having also delivering the second-fastest round (tied for time with Boyd Martin’s Fedarman B) on his current fourth place holder Off The Record.
Like Mikki with Liz, the Diabolo Group LLC’s gelding known as “Dab” has also only been with Will for a short time, having acquired the ride on the stunning Holsteiner from Australia’s Gemma Tinney last year. This is the pair’s sixth 4*-S start, but will hopefully be their third completion — Will is affectionately known as a horseman who continues to be very considerate of his horses’ wellbeing and condition, opting to withdrawn Diabolo from three events to include the Stable View Aiken CCI4*-S three weeks ago. Clearly this policy works, as Will hasn’t yet been outside of the top ten with Dab, with two podium finishes with last fall at the Terranova CCI4*-L and Morven Park International CCI4*-S.
Will and Diabolo sat in sixth position heading into this morning, but sped to the forefront as Lucienne Bellissimo and Dyri (Diarado – La Calera, by King Milford xx), who’d held second place overnight, were knocked down to 31st place after a refusal at the dreaded 6ABCDE coffin. Will commented on the coffin complex, noting that it was, as many found out the hard way this morning, “pretty close to five-star” in terms of difficulty.
“It was a proper rail, and I actually think a lot of the horses just looked like they didn’t quite know where to look,” Will said of the tricky combination. “There is a lot going on there, it was early in the course, and your four-star horses, obviously most of them were a bit greener. [Diabolo] ran at it for so long, sort of looking at it. I think most people that had trouble, it looks like to me like they didn’t really have their horse back in what you would say is a proper coffin canter — and then if you jump in and get either too fast or too out of balance, then the horse falls away from you a bit harder, and I think it can be hard to then recover over the ditch and make the two stride, make the one stride.”
Nevertheless, Will stated that he thought this question was a smart one — one that could be expected to weed out the stars in a pack of upper-level potential gunning for the Olympic team. “It was a clever question because it didn’t walk intimidating at all, but in a strange way it just caught a lot of people out,” he said. “I think because at that part of the course, your horse is running on, and it can be hard work just getting them to get back and sit on their haunches and be organized for it.”
Heading into show jumping tomorrow, I’m sure we’ll all be anxious to see how the leaderboard may shake up. Diabolo has only taken two poles ever on his international record, but we can expect to see a few seconds of time — it will all come down to speed tomorrow, and how well our champion trio recovers from their gallops today.
Much like Will & Diabolo, Boyd Martin hasn’t yet been out of the top ten with Commando 3, rounding out our top-three’s pattern of new partnerships as the two have also only been together for the past year. Boyd and “Connor” added just 1.2 time faults to their very solid dressage test on Thursday, allowing the pair to move up to third place headed into show jumping tomorrow. The pair are looking to add on to their international winning streak they’ve held since September — stealing the blue at the Tryon 4*-S, Morven Park International 4*-L, and Stable View 4*-S in the last eight months.
Commando 3 certainly has his quirks that Boyd is still working to figure out, but was overall thrilled with his heart out on course today. “When he’s feeling fresh, he’ll find any excuse to jump around a bit” Boyd laughed. “The horse has got so much quality, we sort of put up with his antics.”
Heading into the final showdown tomorrow, Boyd says he has great trust in Connor and expects competitive performances from everyone currently vying for the win. “I think we’re all on very good showjumpers — the top four or five horses are very good show jumpers and good show jumping riders,” he admitted. “So I think the goal would be to get the horses a good night’s sleep and potentially school them a little bit on the flat in the morning and give it our best tomorrow.”
The German-bred gelding, owned by Yankee Creek Ranch LLC, has only been improving over time with Boyd in the saddle, to include his spotless record on cross country. Like Diabolo, dropping a pole is very rare for Connor, but he also has only a very small handful of time scattered throughout his entire competition history. The Holsteiner gelding’s trustworthy speed will be paramount to his success tomorrow with the time being so important in this tight top three.
Will’s 2021 Aachen champion Off The Record is still not to be discounted in this race, adding only 0.8 time faults to their dressage score this morning and moving up to fourth place. The 15-year-old “Timmy” has three 5*s under his belt, all of which have been here at Kentucky with their placement improving every year, so it’s safe to say that he’s become well-acquainted with the Rolex Stadium. This proven partnership is very reliable when it comes to time over the colored sticks, so a clear round for them tomorrow could still be very competitive against the higher ranks.
The Liz, Will, & Boyd Show features Pan-American Games gold medalists Caroline Pamukcu and HSH Blake, who sat in third overnight after a stellar dressage test. Caroline and Blake took 5.2 time penalties on course, falling down the ranks to tie for fifth with Boyd Martin’s other ride, Fedarman B. HSH Blake is one of the youngest horses in the field at just nine years old, with this being the horse’s third start at the 4* level, taking third place at their 4* debut at Terranova in 2023 and second at Tryon just last month.
The Annie Goodwin Syndicate’s Fedarman B is a two-time blue ribbon winner at the 4* level, winning at the 2022 Tryon International CCI4*-L and the 2023 Tryon 4*-S. The 14-year-old known as “Bruno” was blazing on course today, shooting up to fifth from 13th position after adding just two seconds to their time.
It all comes to a head tomorrow — with Olympic team selectors standing by with a watchful eye as some of the top riders in the world descend on Rolex Stadium starting at 10:30am. Team EN is flitting across the grounds at the #BestWeekendAllYear, but you can bet we’ll be locked in place to bring you updates on our leaders and eventual champions tomorrow morning. Best of luck to all the competitors and Go Eventing!
EN’s coverage of the Defender Kentucky Three-Day Event is presented by Kentucky Performance Products, your one-stop shop for science-backed nutritional support for all types of horses. Click here to learn more about Kentucky Performance Products.
Defender Kentucky Three-Day Event [Website] [Entries] [Schedule] [Tickets] [Scoring] [Live Stream] [EN’s Coverage]
