PrintWellington, Fla., April 2
Jersey Boy and Jennifer Alfano came to the FTI Winter Equestrian Festival for one reason and one reason only: to win the $50,000 USHJA International Hunter Derby. And sure enough, Alfano and Jersey Boy will bring another blue rosette back to Buffalo, N.Y., for SBS Farms.
Alfano scored a victory in the feature class of Week 12 of WEF over Becky Gochman’s Empire and Scott Stewart, with Holly Orlando piloting her new ride, Sailor’s Valentine, owned by Westerly Farm, to third. Louise Serio rode Rock Star to fourth for Bright Star 158.
“All week here, he definitely felt like he was on,” said Alfano. “From the first jump, you can usually tell with him. Tonight, he felt amazing. You can feel his energy, which sometimes is a bad thing.”
Watch her handy round on the USEF Network.No one quite knew what to expect heading into the handy round of the $50,000 USHJA International Hunter Derby. Riders had nervously watched Bobby Murphy and Skip Bailey spend the afternoon building several ponds in the International Ring, and they knew the course made use of both the field’s bank complexes. The jumps were big; there were two separate hand gallops instead of the usual one; the course was long; the class ran at night; and the ponds were a little unnerving. In short, the course was very, very hard.
Murphy and Bailey brought back the Puissance wall and a reconfigured version of the s-hedge from yesterday’s classic course, as well as the straw Aiken. Riders hand galloped the Aiken, then had to get their horses back for the jump up the tabletop bank a few strides later. Competitors selected between two sets of hedge in-and-outs, and had plenty of options to show off over finding tighter turns between ponds, jumps and decorations.
“I think definitely the hand gallop to the bank, and then the jump off [were very difficult],” said Stewart. “That I think was the hardest part. Then the gallop to the last jump—for some reason, most of the horses wanted to go by it or jumped it awkwardly. I don't know why. It was sort of hard to focus.”
For such a serious course, the start list for the second round included an awful lot of derby newbies. A few series regulars like 2010 $100,000 USHJA International Hunter Derby Finals runner up Summer Place (Maggie Jayne), Declaration (Stewart) and Rock Star (Serio) found a spot, but most of the horses on the list were relative newcomers, or only occasional competitors in the derby arena. Even seasoned pairs ran into a disproportionate amount of trouble.
Regular derby winner Kelley Farmer came back fifth on her top-ranked mount, Praise, but he dislodged a brush box, then stopped at the in of the in-and-out of hedges a few fences later.
