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Equestrian
Event Big Success
By Amy J. Daum:
U.S.
Eventing Association
September 21, 2004
Not even the threat of a Category 5
hurricane swirling in the Gulf kept almost
400 horses and riders from more than 30
states from converging on the Carolina Horse
Park in Hoke County last weekend for the
inaugural American Eventing Championships.
In a field of 76,
Sher Schwartz, a clinical psychologist from
Waverly Hall, Ga., went into the Novice
Champion-ship show jumping in the lead with
one horse, her gelding Nothing Spared, and
tied for third with her mare, Jamocean.
Her double clear-show jumping round with
“Jam,” a 7-year-old thoroughbred, earned
them a victory — as well as a $5,000 check
and brand new Amerigo saddle — on their
dressage score of 29.5. A single knocked
rail dropped her and Nothing Spared, also
known as Bobby, to a seventh-place finish
with 33.
“This has been a huge goal,” Schwartz
said. “I have my vocation as a clinical
psychologist, but this is my avocation. I
love it, and I try to do the best that I can
do. It was intimidating to compete against
that number and that caliber of people.
“I was going to enter a different
division, but the organizer talked me into
doing the championships. They joked that
maybe I would take home first and second
place. Now I’m taking first and seventh, and
that’s fine with me.”
An Olympic sport since 1912, eventing is
best described as an equestrian triathlon,
with three phases that test the competitors’
skills in the ring, over fences, and
galloping across the countryside.
Dressage, a sort of equestrian ballet,
was held Thursday. It tests the horse and
rider’s ability to perform a series of
prescribed classical movements in an
enclosed arena.
During cross-country, which was held on
Friday for the Training divisions, horse and
rider gallop over natural terrain, up and
down hills, across ditches, and into water,
leaping over a variety of other imposing
obstacles along the way.
In the show jumping phase, competitors
make their way over a course of colorfully
painted fences in an enclosed arena, making
every attempt to leave all the fence rails
in their cups when they cross the finish
line.
Lincoln and Kilburn went double clear in
both cross-country and show jumping, an
impressive feat. Because there was a tie
between the top two competitors in the
Training division, the rules dictate that
the tie be broken by the competitor who
finished cross-country closest to the
optimum time.
In a division of more than 90 riders, the
win in the Training Level Championship
division came down to a couple of seconds.
Rachel Lincoln of Southern Pines, riding
Kilburn, tied with Jennifer Simmons, riding
Lysa Hlavinka’s Everybody Loves Brumby, on a
score of 33.75.
Lincoln’s time of 5:07 on Friday’s
cross-country course was exactly on the
optimum time, which gave her the win over
Simmons’ 5:03 ride, giving the Championship
— along with its $5,000 in prize money and a
new Amerigo saddle—to Lincoln.
Lincoln’s accurate ride was made all the
more impressive by the fact that torrential
rain blew in as she was approaching Fence 13
on the cross-country course, and she was
sent back to her horse trailer mid-ride to
wait out the storm, then was allowed to
resume from the same point on course about
an hour later.
“The officials gave me every opportunity
to make it around successfully,” she said.
“They let me warm up and then jump a Novice
jump to get my speed up.”
D.C. McBroom and her eye-catching
14-year-old Paint/Thoroughbred gelding
Woodbine kept their cross-country lead to
win the Novice Amateur division on their
dressage score of 30.5. McBroom found Woody
on the internet in 1999, and he lives on
D.C. and husband Steve’s Owl Hollow Farm in
Floyd, Va.
Though only two of the 14 horses in this
division had stops on cross-country, and two
others were eliminated, the time was a
serious factor. McBroom and Woody were one
of only two pairs who finished without time
penalties. McBroom also finished in ninth
place aboard Due South in the Novice
Championship division.
Paints were the breed du jour in the
Novice divisions, it seemed, with Claire
Williams and Top American Paint, aka Merlin,
winning the Novice Junior/Young Rider
division. The high school sophomore and her
9-year-old, 14.3-hand gelding made the trip
from West Newbury, Mass., for the inaugural
AEC, and finished impressively on their
dressage score of 31.5.
As the weekend wrapped up, hundreds of
tired but accomplished horses and riders
made their way back home, from distances as
far as Tujunga, Calif.; East Derry, N.J.;
Kuna, Idaho; and Dallas, Texas. Almost
everyone had a kind word for the staff and
volunteers at the event, and left with a vow
to come back next year.
|
Area
Riders Rise to Top at Eventing
BY SUE SMITHSON: Equestrian Correspondent
As published in
The
Pilot Newspaper on September 27, 2004
The American Eventing Championships competition
results were summarized in Wednesday’s The
Pilot, and by now everyone knows that Rachel
Lincoln and her Kilburn won the national
training championship after galloping cross
country in the worst of Ivan’s wrath.
“We could not even see,
it was raining so hard,” Lincoln said. “He
(Kilburn) was amazing: conditions couldn’t have
been worse. They stopped me at fence 13, and I
went back to the trailer wringing wet. He was
trying to shake the water out of his ears.”
Lincoln was re-started after the storm
abated. She jumped a clean stadium round the
next day, and claimed the national title for
training level.
Another local rider, Mark Weissbecker, won
the intermediate championship with De Cordova,
owned by Birch Hill Farm and Kay Sadighi.
Weissbecker bought the 8-year-old pinto gelding
out of a field at horse dealer David Hopper’s
place in 2003 and moved him right up the
eventing ladder.
“He was just fabulous yesterday (on cross
country),” Weissbecker said with pride. He
qualified and rode five other horses in various
divisions, making the victory gallop with all
but one just missing the prize money placings
(through fifth).
Both Lincoln and Weissbecker were rewarded
for their wins with $5,000 and a custom saddle
from Amerigo.
But one of the best stories of the
competition was the intermediate runner-up, Will
Faudree of Southern Pines. At 22, Faudree has
had what he calls a “character building” year, a
year of near misses and total disasters.
After winning the individual gold medal at
the 2002 Pan Am Games, he and his Antigua were
short-listed for the Athens Olympics. But on the
morning of the final selection trial, he learned
that the barn here in Southern Pines which he
was leasing burned to the ground. Nothing left
but ashes.
Fortunately no animals were there, but he had
just moved into the loft and lost all his
possessions, including his Pan Am gold medal.
“I still have no winter clothes, no horse
blankets, and no tack,” Faudree said. “I just
had a minimum of stuff with me on the road.”
He made the team as a traveling reserve, and
spent the next two months with the U.S. team in
England and Greece.
“It was an honor, and a wonderful
experience,” Faudree said. “But I really wanted
to compete.”
So he made plans for the Burghley four-star
event in England on the way home, but a high
nail (the farrier drove a nail just a bit too
close to the quick) kept him from presenting the
horse at the initial jog-up.
Since he was out of the country for two
months, he had sent Landlord to John Zopatti in
Florida for some dressage training.
“I was really looking forward to this
competition,” Faudree said. “After he’d been
with John all summer, I was confident that we
were going to have a good test. But the storm
came through just before I went in the ring and,
needless to say, I didn’t have the test I’d
hoped for.”
He and Landlord were ranked 28th in dressage.
But with a new bit, a simple loose ring gag
snaffle, Faudree found the brakes he had been
looking for on cross country.
“He’s known to be a runaway,” Faudree said.
“This past spring he was wild, we had to have
these discussions about the pace, and I’d spend
too much time sawing on his mouth. But with this
new bit, I decided to go quick and see what I
had. I found I could keep my foot down and keep
motoring. I looked at my watch after the second
water complex and saw that we could make the
time. He’s a very fast horse.”
Faudree’s clean round (one of only two of 32
starters in the intermediate championships)
moved him up 21 placings.
If Faudree had left the rail up in the triple
combination, he would have won. As it was,
moving up from 28th to second was huge.
But right now, Faudree is most concerned with
just making a living. He is living in his horse
trailer, and his horses have stalls … this
month.
“I’d really like to stay in Southern Pines,”
Faudree said. “But I need to find a barn. I’m
seriously looking for a place where I can take
horses in training, teach and take working
students. This year has been such a roller
coaster, I bought a T-shirt that said,
’Character building sucks!’”
|
American Eventing Championships 2004
by
competitor Francesca Ling
As published on
http://www.juniorequestrian.com
 From
September 16 to 19, 2004, competitors from
all over the country flocked to Raeford,
North Carolina for the Inaugural American
Eventing Championships (AEC). Everyone from
Olympic veterans to young riders competing
at the novice level showed up to get their
piece of the AEC. In order to qualify for
the championships one must place in the top
three at an United States Eventing
Association recognized horse trial.
I was lucky
enough to qualify at the Novice level with
my fifteen year old Irish Sport Horse
gelding, Jamison. After talking with a few
of my friends, I found out that they, too,
had qualified and had plans to make the long
trip from Northern Virginia down to North
Carolina.
I ended
driving down with my instructor, Jen. She
trailered down four of her horses. Her
employees and the two girls that worked for
her, Charlotte and Ali, trailered two more.
The trip ended up taking about six hours and
we were excited to find that we were all
stabled in our own row, with my friend
Krissy and her mom's horse, April Sonnet,
stabled next to my horse.
After the
horses were settled in, we decided to go and
try and find our way around the grounds and
see the cross country courses. Every single
course for every level was beautifully made,
and an excellent opportunity for both horse
and rider to test their skills. I was
competing in the Novice JR-YR division and
after seeing all the advanced level jumps,
novice didn't seem quite as threatening!
Towards the end of the course, the jumps
were basically mini sized advanced jumps!
As it turns
out, my horse got bored and decided that he
would go for his own walk, and ended up on
the other side of the road, right next to
some of the cross country jumps!
On Thursday
morning we had dressage. Warming up in the
same arena as people that you usually only
see on TV was incredible! It was different
from a normal horse trial in that there were
no green horses. All the horses and riders
were calm and obviously knew what the job at
hand was, and what they had to do to get it
done. In the actual test, there were two
different "R" judges. They both judged, and
then the two different scores were averaged
out. Considering how many horses were
competing, the scores were put up very
quickly and efficiently. After finding out
that I got a 32.75 on dressage (my lowest
score to this day!) I went off with
Charlotte to walk the cross country course
again.
By the time
we were out walking, the ground was starting
to get muddy and I was starting to get
worried! One of the jumps was more
complicated than anything I had ever done in
competition. It was a bank to a one stride
with small drop followed by a bending line
to a small coop. I can remember thinking as
I climbed up the bank (I'm only 5'3), "If
this is novice, what's advanced going to be
like?!"
We walked
back to the barn, realized my horse had
pulled his right front shoe off, and had
forty minutes until cross country. So I
changed, they took him to the farrier and
threw a shoe on him, and we were off to the
cross country warm up! After that slightly
frazzling moment, it was very nice to be
warming up for something that I love to do.
As we were warming up and talking to people
we kept hearing about refusals and run outs,
which did nothing to calm the nerves of
anyone who was warming up.
The cross
country course ended up being loads of fun,
but I did have to use my whip a few times to
get around! For some strange reason, one of
the jumps had a huge crowd and a motor home
next to it, so I can remember yelling and
kicking to get over it! The time ended up
being a lot harder to make at novice than I
had remembered, so we ended up galloping
everywhere we could, when I was used to
having to slow down! We made it around with
no stops and no time penalties.
Two days
later we had stadium jumping. From what I
had heard from earlier rounds, not many
rails had been coming down, so that helped
calm everyone down a little bit. Jamison and
I jumped a clean, fast round and ended up
finishing third in the Junior Novice
division! My trainer, Jen, ended up tying
for first in the Open Training Championship
division! It was a very close competition
and the winner was decided by who was
closest to optimum time on cross country. |
American Eventing Championships
At Area Park Go Full Steam Ahead
BY SUE SMITHSON: Equestrian
Correspondent
As published in
The
Pilot Newspaper on May 23, 2004
Over 4000 horse and rider combinations have
qualified for the $50,000 American Eventing
Championships to be held here at Carolina Horse Park
Sept. 15-19. Organizers are bracing for a huge
event, as they can’t refuse a complete, qualified
entry.
“We have
reworked the schedule over and over,” said event
secretary Gwen Parkins. “The latest scenario is to
run novice Wednesday through Friday, start the
training divisions Thursday, and overlap the five
levels through Sunday.”
The $10,000 in prize money for
each of the five levels, novice through advanced, is
being sponsored by Bit ‘O Britain Saddlery, Amerigo
Saddles, Stackhouse Saddlery, Smartpac and Coverall
Arenas. Judges for the competition, two per dressage
ring, are Jack Legoff, Jack Burton, Loris Henry,
Linda Zang, Gretchen Verbonic, Kathy Rowse, Kay
Whitlock, Susan Wiedman, Barbara Marks, Sue Smithson
and Barbara Stender.
Lefreda Williams is soliciting
jump sponsors for the 40 new fences going in at the
park. The package includes signage at the fence,
acknowledgement in the program, four sponsor badges
with VIP parking, seating and lunches.
“England has had a national
championship for many years at Princess Anne and
Captain Mark Phillips’ Gatcombe Park. Their event
has been a huge success, and we anticipate that our
event will be equally successful,” Williams said.
“The American Eventing Championships is truly a
landmark for equestrian sports in the U.S.”
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