PrintAugust 20, Lexington, Ky
Scott Stewart and Summer Place sailed to the top of Round 1 in the $100,000 The Chronicle of the Horse/USHJA International Hunter Derby Finals. Last to go, Jersey Boy took second with Jennifer Alfano up, while Liza Boyd and Brunello claimed third. Another Alfano mount, Extraordinary, finished fourth on an identical score as Brunello, with the scores from judging panel 1 (Ralph Caristo and Rob Bielefeld) breaking the tie.
Heading into this year’s Finals there was plenty of grumbling about the change of venue from the expansive Johnson Arena to the Kentucky Horse Park’s indoor, but today’s course silenced those concerns. Patrick Rodes and Bobby Murphy laid a track built around one theme: outdoors. The perimeter of the ring featured a greenhouse’s worth of trees and decorations, and the jumps themselves found a nice balance between simulated hunting fences and inviting obstacles.
“The horse park has great resources for that theme, with all the old Rolex jumps,” said Murphy, who incorporated the tail from one of the squirrels used last year in this year’s track. “We tried to make it feel like you were outside, and there weren’t these technical four-to-two stride lines that you’d see in your mainstream hunter ring.”
No one fence caused many problems for the 61 riders who contested the class. There was only one strictly related distance—a two stride in-and-out—and a few flowing lines, but the biggest distinction in the track was its length: 14 jumps with mostly single jumps or long broken lines.
“I thought you had to be really disciplined,” said Boyd. “It was really long, so you couldn’t start thinking too fast. I broke the course up into two parts, and after the seven [stride] line I tried to tell myself, start over, regroup, now finish.”
“The hardest part for me was actually remembering the course,” said Stewart. “It actually made everything else easier because I couldn’t worry about anything else.”
Summer Place, owned by Fashion Farm, is technically a first year mount, but you wouldn’t know it by watching. He earned the working hunter title at Devon (Pa.) and second at the $50,000 The Chronicle of the Horse/USHJA International Hunter Derby in Wellington, Fla., this spring. Stewart also qualified his working hunter veteran Declaration, also a Fashion Farm entry, for Round 2.
Great Scores And Great Rounds
The competition kicked off with opening ceremonies, with Iroquois Hunt (Ky.) parading hounds round the ring and the Lexington Mounted Police carrying the color guard for the national anthem. The festivities paused for a solumn note, with a moment of silence to honor horseman Jay Matter, who died following a battle with liver cancer.
The U.S. Hunter Jumper Association factored in the money-won standings, but there was also a random element in the start list. Seventy-five horses were accepted to compete at the finals. The 25 qualified horses with the lowest money earned returned first in random order, followed by the middle group, then the highest money earners.
