While top North American jumper riders have gotten used to loading horses on planes to head to Europe for competitions, hunter riders have stayed stateside to show. But now the co-founders of the Baran Global Hunter Classic, Kristen Baran and Andrew Lustig, have given hunter riders and fans a new opportunity to head to Valkenswaard, the Netherlands, to showcase the sport. And there’s plenty of incentive to go, as the Baran Global Hunter Classic, a team competition taking place July 11-13 at Jan Tops’ Longines Tops International Arena, will offer 300,000 euros—almost $350,000—in prize money.

Baran, an amateur hunter rider and passionate supporter of the sport, and hunter horseman Lustig were thrilled to partner with Tops, who founded the Longines Global Champion Tour and won jumping team Olympic gold for the Netherlands in 1992. Once they’d nailed down the dates and location—the competition is taking place in conjunction with Summer Classic CSI4*—Baran and Lustig recruited former Equestrian Canada president and Canadian team rider Chris Sorensen as operations manager for the competition, with the hope that the concept can expand beyond just one event.

Organizers are heralding the show as a huge leap forward for the hunter sport, and they’ve structured the event to keep things interesting. A professional hunter rider will serve as the captain of each team, and that person will recruit a junior or amateur rider and a top Fédération Equestre Internationale jumper rider to contest the three-day competition.

“We’ve had some [professional] hunter riders, that said, ‘I’m in. I’ll figure it out. I’m in.’ Then they will work out who their other teammates are,” said Sorensen, who lives in Hoogeloon, the Netherlands, and Wellington, Florida. “And we’ve got other teams where it’s the amateur who’s dying to go: ‘I’m going to make sure my professional comes with me.’ Every team needs to get qualified through the professional, through their team captain. So whether the driving force is the professional or the amateur wanting to go, you’ll see different make ups and how they work out, how they pick the team.”

This won’t be the first time European riders have had to worry about clean lead changes and finding flawless distances. Back in 2005 Lustig was part of a team that organized the American Hunter Jumper Foundation World Cup Hunter Challenge, which was held in conjunction with the FEI Show Jumping and Dressage World Cup Finals in Las Vegas. Four top hunter riders (Scott Stewart, Peter Pletcher, Louise Serio and John French) went head-to-head in a two-round hunter class against four top European-based jumper riders, Rodrigo Pessoa, Marcus Ehning, Michael Whitaker and Nick Skelton. The jumper riders won.

The Format

Riders must qualify to enter the Baran Global Hunter Classic. The top three riders from the 2024 USHJA International Hunter Derby Championship (Kentucky) are invited, with five additional riders eligible based on the U.S. Hunter Jumper Association/World Champion Hunter Rider year-end standings from 2023 and 2024. There are also two wildcard slots.

The junior or amateur rider on each team must have been champion or reserve at a WCHR show in a 3’6” division between January 1, 2024, and April 1, 2025, or have completed a USHJA international derby. As for the FEI rider? That person must be in the top 50 of the Longines World Rankings or have represented their country at an Olympic Games, World Championship, World Cup Final or FEI regional championship.

The FEI rider doesn’t have to be a European, though Lustig said many will be. While the full start list hasn’t been released, Lillie Keenan, who dominated the hunter ring as a junior and now focuses on international show jumping, is signed up as the FEI rider for a team captained by Geoffrey Hesslink.

“Geoffrey sent me a message out of the blue basically saying, ‘Shot in the dark, can you do it?’ ” Keenan wrote in an email to the Chronicle. “It was in my plan to jump the four-star there that week so I guess it was serendipity! 

“I don’t remember when I last rode a hunter, so hopefully I did not forget,” she continued. “I grew up at [Heritage Farm] and rode alongside Geoffrey for a while, so it just seemed like an obvious yes. I’m excited!”

Organizers said they’d help team captains partner with FEI riders as needed.

“There’s sense of camaraderie that it builds [with putting together a team], and obviously there’s a competitive side to make it good fun,” said Baran, who serves as CEO of the organization and has been intimately involved with planning and executing the event. “Sometimes when we hear that one team is ‘stacked,’ then the next team is going, ‘Well, I’m going to get so-and-so as my FEI rider.’ There’s some serious maneuvering going on.”

The 10-team, three-phase competition will take place on the main grass field in Valkenswaard. The format is similar to USEF Junior Hunter Finals, with an under saddle class worth 10%, a classic round worth 40% and a handy round worth 50%. In the jumping phases all the FEI riders will go first, then each of the junior/amateurs, then the professional hunter riders, all judged to the typical hunter standard. Each team gets a drop score.

“A lot of the hunter riders have told us, ‘This is going to push us. You try making a rollback like Richard Vogel does,’ ” said Sorensen. “I think it’s super exciting. It’s going to have a team vibe on the big, beautiful grass field, and you’re probably talking about four-minute rounds so the whole team can really concentrate on each rider.”

Sorensen said a goal for the organizing team was to make the event as friendly to U.S. competitors as possible. A big part of that is bringing on a familiar group of staff and officials to make the event run smoothly.

Experienced manager Mike Belisle will run the hunter portion of the competition, which is being held in conjunction with a CSI4*/2*/1*. Six judges will be presiding over the class: Rachel Kennedy, Archie Cox, Shane George, Bob Crandall, Hope Glynn and Adeline Wirth-Negre. Five are USEF-licensed judges, and the other, Wirth-Negre, has been developing the sport of hunters in her native France, starting the Hunter Club de France in 2005. British Columbia-based ‘R’ hunter course designer Kevin Holowack will be in charge of the tracks and the jumps, and starter Pat Duncan, who’s run many of the busiest in-gates in the United States, will be on hand as well. Veteran judge Bobbie Reber will be the commentator, and Olympic course decorator Flora Baptiston will be bedecking the jumps.

The Baran Hunter Classic is being run as an exhibition, and while it’s not a U.S. Equestrian Federation-recognized competition—the USEF doesn’t license foreign competitions—the organizers are using USEF rules. There will be drug testing, Lustig said, and a USEF steward will be on hand as well.

The Genesis Of An Idea

Heading into the 2024 Winter Equestrian Festival (Florida) season, Lustig approached Baran about sponsoring a charity hunter team class at the show, and she immediately said yes. After all, the class would combine two of her passions: top hunter sport and giving back to the community. Little did she know that the Kristen Baran $100,000 Neil S Hirsch Boys And Girls Club Team Hunter Exhibition marked beginning of a partnership that would spawn something much bigger.

“I was very happy and grateful to be able to give back to the Boys and Girls Club and also support the equestrian communities that I love so much,” said Baran, who splits her time between Water Mill, New York, and Wellington. “I thought it was a one and done, then Andrew said, ‘You know what? We can do it at the Hampton Classic [New York].’ ”

The resulting $50,000 Kristen Baran Hunt Team Stake, which benefited several non-profits including the Stony Brook Southampton Hospital (New York), in which three-person teams of one professional and two juniors or amateurs competed together, went over so well Lustig and Baran reached out to Tops while they were still at the horse show to start the ball rolling on the European evolution of the event.

When Liza Boyd first heard about the Baran Global Hunter Classic from her longtime friend Lustig, she wasn’t positive it would be a fit for her. Sure, she’d had a great time doing the class at WEF with her daughter Elle Boyd, but who could she ride in Europe?

Her first thought was to bring her derby-winning mount Ondine d’Orleans, and when that didn’t fit into the mare’s program, she wasn’t sure who she could take. That’s when owner Ashlea Hodgkiss suggested she bring MTM Crossed My Mind, also an experienced derby contender, who would be a perfect fit, Liza said, thanks to his steady personality.

Liza compared the event to the advent of the USHJA International Hunter Derby program.

“When the derbies first came out, we were wondering and questioning [how they would work], and look at how that’s evolved over the years,” said Liza. “Hopefully this could follow that.”

Liza and MTM Crossed My Mind will be on a team with her 15-year-old daughter Elle and Hardrock Harmonie SIH, with the third team member still to be decided.

“But I think what really made me want to do it was a phone call with Andrew [where he said], ‘This could change the hunter sport, and it could be something that you and Elle could do together,’ ” she said. “That’s really important to me, the experience for Elle and myself. I’ve never ridden internationally, and it’s [on my] bucket list. I guess it was either this or I needed to put my whites on and try to be a grand prix rider. So when I looked at it like that I thought, ‘This is a chance of a lifetime, and it’s something that Elle will remember forever.’

“I think getting the hunters highlighted at a big iconic facility like that is really exciting and gives us something different to look forward to,” she added. 

The Europe-North America Connection

Sorensen said that while North American show hunter riders tend to think of their sport as unique to their home, there’s a strong connection between the two continents when it comes to hunters. To start, hunters have their roots in the foxhunting brought over from Great Britain and Ireland. Then there are the top hunters themselves, who are overwhelmingly bred in Europe and shipped across the pond. And, Sorensen said, there are more hunters in Europe than North Americans realize.

“A lot of people also don’t realize that there are hunter horse shows in [the Netherlands]; there are hunter horse shows in Belgium,” as well as in France, England and Ireland, he said. “So not to the same extent that it is in North America. I think in North America, hunters is 60 to 70% of the industry. In so many ways, hunters already are global.”

Lustig said that the European hunter shows tend to be at a more local level, and that’s part of what has interested those in Europe: the chance to see the world’s best in the sport. He said breeders, horse dealers and European horse fans in general are excited.

“I was just in Europe, and I was driving all around looking at horses, and I would say something like, ‘You know what we’re doing?’ and they’re all like, ‘Oh, we know what you’re doing,’ ” said Lustig. “I mean, everybody there knows it’s happening, and they’re all coming, and they’re so excited. That’s how a lot of these people make a living, is selling us horses. So they’re so interested that, for the first time, horses from this country are coming over, and they can watch [hunters] live. It’s different than seeing a video.”

Looking Ahead

Organizers hope that this class is the start of something bigger: a hunter series that crosses oceans. Sorensen is excited to help build excitement with help from Tops’ media team as well as his brother, Will Sorensen, who was the head of marketing and promotions for the Ultimate Fighting Championship. 

Chris added that there will be some events held in North America as well.

“The intention is to grow it into a series, but a series that overlays onto existing horse shows, a little bit similar to WCHR, and a series that complements and is an asset to businesses, whether that be a horse show business or a stable business,” he added.

In addition organizers are thinking about holding a semi-final in the spring at a European destination location—it’s challenging for many trainers to head to Europe in the fall because of the U.S. hunter championships—as well a final at Liberty Park, New Jersey, the site of a new Longines Global Champions Tour competition as soon as 2026.

“You know, the dressage [riders] go to Europe, the jumpers go, the three-day [riders] go—even driving horses and [para riders] go to Europe,” said Lustig. “In the USEF there are more hunters than any other single group, and we don’t go to Europe. So part of our dream is to bring hunters to the world. Because why should we be left behind when every other discipline is going?”