Kat Netzler

Steffen Peters excels at many things. He’s a natural athlete with a balanced seat and an inherent understanding of the horse. He’s calm under pressure and has a reputation for having ice water in his veins. But his most impressive, and perhaps most valuable, trait is his ability to see a forest through the trees.

Akiko Yamazaki has only ridden her horse Ravel once in her life, but she remembers the experience clearly, even though Steffen Peters told her not to even bother trying.

“It was for my birthday, after the Olympics in 2008,” Yamazaki said. “And before I got on, Steffen said, ‘OK Akiko, don’t even try to remember the feeling, because you’re never going to be able to create it with another horse.’ ”

After working for the Chronicle’s 2009 Overall Horseman of the Year Steffen Peters for more than five years, and for his wife Shannon for more than a decade, farm manager Kate Gillespie has learned plenty of skills to bolster her résumé.

In light of the accidents at the Red Hills CIC***-W in Florida, the issue of cross-country safety was on the forefront of everyone’s minds at The Fork, particularly after periods of downpours throughout the weekend added an extra element of risk to the footing.

The U.S. Eventing Association’s Annual Membership Meeting is typically one of the driest sessions at the organization’s yearly convention, with only an hour allotted for the presentation of fiscal reports, staff appreciation awards and other procedures of a parliamentary and prosaic nature. The acceptance of the proposed amendments to the USEA by-laws generally are usually a unanimous foregone conclusion.

But that wasn’t the case today, Dec. 5, in Reston, Va.

When Malcolm Hook looks down sternly over his dark-rimmed reading glasses and prompts everyone to “make a concerted effort” to do something, it’s not taken lightly.

Hook, the U.S. Equestrian Federation Eventing Technical Committee Chairman, opened the first full day of action at the U.S. Eventing Association Annual Meeting and Convention in Reston, Va., today, Dec. 3, with an open session of his committee.

•    Canadian Rebecca Howard was the top-placed foreign rider in the CCI***, finishing ninth with Riddle Master (67.6), and the CCI**, placing third aboard Roquefort (61.8). And despite her position as the very last two-star rider to enter the arena, she also earned the award for the best dressage score—42.2.

Kelly Sult wasn’t discouraged to find herself in 33rd place after dressage with her off-the-track Thoroughbred, Hollywood.

After all, she and the 17-year-old gelding had never finished lower than 13th in their last two appearances at the Fair Hill CCI***, and they’d done so with much higher scores. The 23-year-old rider from Erie, Pa., burst on the international scene there in 2007, posting just 3.6 time faults on cross-country and a double-clear show jumping round to finish eighth out of a field of 66.

He and the scrappy Neville Bardos score their first CCI*** victory, and they do it for the red, white and blue.

Boyd Martin was feeling a little bit left out. Having won a one-, two- and four-star CCI before the age of 30, he had little to lament in terms of his career, but the elusive three-star victory was beginning to bother the Australian-turned-American prodigy.

Ashlee Bond’s wild-card bid to the Nations Cup in Buenos Aires, Argentina, last fall was an “incredible, amazing, totally surreal” experience for the young Californian. Capturing the gold on her first U.S. team was thrilling, but Bond said the educational experience was the most memorable part of her trip.