PrintBuck Davidson’s perfect show jumping ride seals the CIC*** win.
Buck Davidson said he didn’t feel any pressure as he walked into the ring on My Boy Bobby to contest Marc Donovan’s show jumping course, although the testing track had only allowed six of the previous 47 riders a coveted double clean in the CIC*** at The Fork Horse Trials, April 2-5 in Norwood, N.C.
“I’m lucky enough to ride a lot of horses and be in this position a lot,” said Davidson. “I was more nervous to ride my horses that weren’t qualified than to ride the horses that were!”
Davidson and Bobby proved they belonged at the top by putting in a textbook round, sealing the win over Leslie Law on Fleeceworks Mystere du Val and Jennie Brannigan on Cooper.
The standings flip-flopped dramatically between Friday and Sunday afternoon, and most of the spectators would have predicted Clark Montgomery and Up Spirit as the winners after their dominating dressage performance. Their score of 38.9 left them 7.5 penalties ahead of the pack, but an unlucky tumble at the trakehner fence early on in the course eliminated them from the competition. Davidson and Bobby only added 3.2 time faults to their dressage score, moving them into first with a 52.2.
“The plan was to come and go really fast on him,” said Davidson, who believes that the four-star distance at Rolex Kentucky will be a stretch for Carl Segal’s Irish Sport Horse gelding. “It was a really good fitness work for him. He was very good and very honest, and he jumped beautifully.”
Law and Mystere du Val also had a clean trip across the country, leaving them in second place going into the show jumping on Sunday morning. A rail at the second fence proved to be inconsequential, as the riders sitting in third through ninth place all had rails that dropped them down the standings.
“It was a very good show jumping track, and it sorted us out a bit, didn’t it?” said Law with a laugh. “The rails don’t take a lot of touching. You only have to breathe on them, and I think [Mystere du Val] just got an unlucky rail. He jumped very well. The [cross-country] course rode really well and was beautifully presented. It asked a lot of accuracy questions and [required] some boldness.”
Capt. Mark Phillips, who designed the cross-country course, was pleased with the way his track rode. While 60 pairs started the three-star event, problems on cross-country narrowed the field to 48. Two riders fell—Montgomery and India McEvoy on Jumbo’s Jake—but both horses and riders walked away from their incidents. Another five riders retired for various reasons, two riders had technical eliminations and one rider was eliminated outright.
“We lucked out with the weather and the footing,” Phillips said. “People who rode forward made it look very easy, and some of the others got into some trouble.”
Mystere du Val had no trouble with the questions and is heading to the Jersey Fresh CCI*** (N.J.) at the beginning of May. Law believes Beatrice Rey-Herme’s Selle Français-Arabian gelding needs another year at the three-star level before tackling Kentucky.
“I was absolutey delighted with him,” Law said. “He held his lines [during cross-country] and took me along nicely. We jumped into the last water [a bounce in, followed three strides later by a turtle jump and a corner on the way out] a little slow and lost our momentum a bit, but we quickly jumped the option at the corner. Compared to 12 months ago there was quite a lot of improvement.”
