Fair Hill

•    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.

Boyd Martin’s list of accomplishments is pretty impressive for any eventer, let alone one who just celebrated his 30th birthday. But a three-star win had alluded him until today, Oct. 18, in the Fair Hill CCI***, where he and Neville Bardos put a checkmark next to that accolade.

“I finally won one. I’ve won a one-star, a two-star and a four-star, but never a three-star. I’ve come second a number of times in Australia and America. It was eating away at me personally a little bit. I had a little bit of pressure on myself,” said Martin.

Hannah Burnett rode into the show jumping arena with a rail in hand, but she didn’t know that. Her focus was on attaining a clear, careful round with St. Barths. She was one fence away from achieving her goal when a missed distance to the last jump almost put her out of the ribbons completely.

“I was worried about getting too close to the last one, and so I went out a little bit too far,” explained an embarrassed Burnett.

After the final ground jury inspection this morning, Oct. 18, a group of 36 horses will show jump in the CCI** division, and 37 in the CCI***. The juries accepted every horse presented.

Three horses were voluntarily removed from the show jumping roster, however. In the CCI**, Scott Keach withdrew Vamor after being sent to the holding area, and in the three-star, Kelly List scratched Minstral after being held. Christian Eagles didn't present The Gingerbread Man in the three-star.

Boyd Martin made the best of bad conditions today in Elkton, Md., Oct. 17, and bounded up the standings from 16th to first place with the only double-clear round in the Dansko Fair Hill CCI*** aboard Neville Bardos (51.0).

Karen O’Connor prepared her horses for the Fair Hill CCI a bit differently than usual this year. She didn’t ride them.

But this tactic paid off surprisingly well with a big lead after dressage in the CCI*** aboard Mandiba. O’Connor scored 39.6 on a cold, wet Friday afternoon in Elkton, Md., Oct. 16, to go to the top of the leaderboard over Thursday’s leader, John Williams with Sweepea Dean (42.6), and Mara Dean aboard Nicki Henley (43.6).

Kim Keeton feels a bit more responsibility towards her mount Accolade than your average rider. She was literally there from the moment of his conception. “I was a vet student, and he was my first frozen semen experiment,” she said with a laugh.

Now that experiment has paid off with the Spalding Labs/USEA Young Event Horse 4-Year-Old East Coast Championship (84.65) over Buck Davidson on No More Rocks (80.43) and Leslie Law aboard Kalamata (80.38).