Ringwood Magister Begins With A Win At Ram Tap

Tiana Coudray rides the talented gray to the top of his first advanced outing.

Tiana Coudray and Ringwood Magister have been winners multiple times on their way up the levels, so it was only fitting that they won his advanced-level debut at the Ram Tap Horse Trials in Fresno, Calif., on Feb. 13-15.

Coudray and the striking gray gelding won the Galway Downs CCI* (Calif.) in 2007, then placed second in the Twin Rivers CCI** (Calif.) last year. They finished up 2008 with 14th place at the Fair Hill CCI** (Md.).

“This was his first advanced and our first outing of the year, so I just wanted to get around,” said Coudray. “He’s been coming along really well this winter,” she said of her 8-year-old Irish Sport Horse gelding. “He had a pretty good dressage test and he jumped wonderfully in show jumping in the mud, which was really deep! And he was great on cross-country. So I’m thrilled.”

The schedule for the weekend had to be rearranged due to the weather. Heavy downpours on Friday during dressage flooded part of the cross-country course and made the lower show jumping arena unusable on Saturday.

Organizer Bill Burton moved the show jumping to Saturday and had all the divisions jumping in the upper stadium arena.

Cross-country was tentatively scheduled for Sunday, depending on Mother Nature. Luckily there were only a few rain showers on Saturday, and the footing on the cross-country course held up, though the first two fences of the intermediate course replaced the first two fences on the advanced course due to mud.

“The gods started smiling and the sun came out by the time I rode my advanced dressage test,” said Coudray. “By that point the footing was much worse than it had been earlier in the day because all that rain had soaked in. I thought I was going to get washed away it was raining so hard for my training level horse in the morning.”

Ringwood Magister coped with the mud, and Coudray believed he put in the best test that he could have considering the conditions. His dressage score (33.3) put them in third place and a clear stadium round moved them into first.

Only five of the eight entries in the advanced division ran cross-country—they all jumped clean but with time penalties. Coudray had 2.8 time faults on the course.

“The fact that he actually ran fairly close to the time was not my choice,” said Coudray, laughing. “He was fairly strong. I was planning to have a lot more [time penalties]. He had his way and we went a little faster than I wanted.

“He was fantastic, though. I think he jumped the toughest combination the best. It was a combination of big tables. You jumped a skinny table, three strides to a big table, and then three strides to a skinny table. They were all very narrow and all higher than they were wide. He was super. He really stepped up.”

Coudray, 20, has only been eventing since 2003, though she had experience competing in dressage and show jumping at that time. She spent her first year or two working on her own and then met her trainers, Bea and Derek di Grazia, when she joined the young rider program and they were the coaches. Coudray is now an assistant trainer for the di Grazias in Carmel Valley, Calif.

“I couldn’t do this without them or my sponsors, Mountain Horse, Veredus, Advanced Protection Formula and Steinbeck Country Equine Clinic,” said Coudray.