Lexington, Ky.—Aug. 12

When the Platinum Performance USHJA 3’6″/3’9″ Green Hunter Incentive Championship was added to already robustly popular 3’/3’3″ championship in 2018, one of the hopes was that it would further the pipeline for green hunter development. Today proved just how well it worked, when the Odette, who won the 3’/3’3″ championship last year with Nick Haness, moved up a height and once again rose to the top of the class. In doing so she became the first horse to win both championships.

“This event is a great event for the hunter sport,” Haness said. “It’s such a great thing for the owners and for the development of the young hunters, and as they climbed the ranks last year, they excelled for this year, and then probably horses from this class of graduates will hopefully do derby finals one day.”

Odette, a 9-year-old Oldenburg mare (Casallco—Flying P) owned by John and Stephanie Ingram and trained by Tom Wright, had a banner day in the Rolex Stadium to kick off USHJA Hunter Championship Week. First, she topped a field of 63 in this morning’s qualifying round with scores of 92, 90 and 91, and when she returned for the clean-slate championship round, she upped the ante with scores of 94, 89 and 91 to put her straight on top of the leaderboard.

“Odette’s just a really special horse,” Haness said. “She’s always a horse that comes to the party. She knows the special events, like here in Kentucky for the finals, and rises to the occasion. There’s nothing really tricky about riding her. She’s a natural champion, a natural winner, so it’s just more about staying out of her way and letting her go around the ring and do the best that she can do. It’s pretty special to have been her rider last year and this year.”

Haness started showing Odette last January after the Ingrams brought her. She’d previously been a jumper and had only shown once over hunter fences when Haness first sat on her. In addition to last year’s green incentive, she won 3’3″ green championships at Capital Challenge (Maryland) and Pennsylvania National as well as the Kask/Vogel North American Green Hunter Championship at Capital Challenge. This winter, however, Haness, who is based in Temecula, California, chose not to travel between coasts as much so he lost the ride on her for the Winter Equestrian Festival (Florida). They reunited in April and continued their winning ways by earning the green conformation championship at Devon (Pennsylvania) before topping the $100,000 WCHR Central Hunter Spectacular (Michigan) last month.

It was a busy day for Haness, who qualified five horses for the championship round, two of whom—Clear As Day and Kannon Hill—joined Odette in the top 12. With that many horses out of 29 competitors in the final, Haness had little time to rest between rides.

“We target this championship and this day, so all the horses, pretty much today, I think were ready to go and in a good place mentally and physically prepared for this class,” he said. “ So for me as their rider, I just kind of think quickly before I get a leg up, ‘This horse likes to go right. This horse likes its left lead. You know, watch the lead change after that one jump.’ [I] just changed my mentality on each horse and try to deliver a performance that would best suit that horse’s needs.”

Coming in second today was Tori Colvin and Dicoblue P.S., who is also owned by the Ingrams, on a score of 272.

“He’s a very lovely horse,” she said of the 11-year-old Oldenburg (Diarado’s Boy—Chactine). “I’ve been riding him for about two years now. I mainly do him in the derbies, but he’s a freak to me. [He] is an amazing jump and is so much fun.”

This is the second year the 3’6″/3’9″ championship was held on Tuesday rather than Thursday, which Colvin was said was particularly beneficial for a horse like hers, who will also jump in the derby on Friday.

While both Haness and Colvin have a couple years of experience with their mounts, third-place finisher Hunt Tosh is still getting to know his horse Navigator. Ceil Wheeler purchased the 7-year-old Dutch Warmblood (Heart Touch—Insallah IV S) this spring, and Tosh had only shown him three times before this week.

“The great horses tend to cover up a lot for us,” Tosh said. “The ones that try to win, you try to stay out of their way and hopefully it goes our way. Hopefully as time goes on, you know them a little better throughout their career, and you can try to tweak little things and they can peak differently at different times, but he’s a fabulous horse.”

The Green Hunter Incentive Championships continue at 8 a.m. Wednesday for the 3’/3’3″ horses, who have two qualifying rounds over the next two days, before the championship round at 8 a.m. Friday.

Results

Be sure you’re following along with the Chronicle on Facebook and Instagram @Chronofhorse. You can also read full analysis of hunter championship week in the Sept. 26 issue of The Chronicle of the Horse magazine.