For the thousands of spectators who gather to watch the show jumping at the Red Hills CIC***-W, the finish is usually a closely contested nail-biter. But this year, in Tallahassee, Fla., the excitement
of the final day of competition, March 16, couldn’t overcome the grim atmosphere that surrounded the event in the wake of three major accidents the day before.

Darren Chiacchia, Olympic and World Championship veteran and 2003 Pan Am Games gold medalist, as well as the 2004 CIC***-W champion at Red Hills, suffered a rotational fall aboard Baron Verdi in the preliminary cross-country, March 15. He was lifeflighted to Tallahassee Memorial Hospital, where, at press time, he remained unconscious in intensive care. And two horses—Jonathan Holling’s Direct Merger and Missy Miller’s Leprechauns Rowdy Boy—suffered freak pulmonary hemorrhages on course in the CIC***-W and advanced divisions, respectively.

After placing third in the dressage (44.7), Montgomery, winner of the 2001 Radnor Hunt CCI** (Pa.), took over the lead in the featured class with the division’s second-fastest cross-country round.

“I always knew he was nice and talented, but I never knew how much he wanted it,” said Montgomery, 27. “It’s really encouraging that he’s turning out to be a nice horse. This whole event is about confidence building for him and me.”

Montgomery found Up Spirit in England three years ago, and Holly and Bill Becker of Dallas, Texas, purchased him. “It was a one-horse trip,” Montgomery said. “I was in England for 24 hours [to see him]. He’d done really well in the young horse competitions there.”

Now he’s taking Up Spirit back to England, leaving three weeks after the event to train at Mark and Sandy Phillips’ farm in preparation for the Saumur CCI*** (France).

“I don’t have kids; I don’t own anything. I’m in a transitional period, and I said, ‘What the hell,’ ” said Montgomery, who will be moving to England with his wife, Jessica. “The top of the top riders are there, and we both wanted to experience that. I’d love to see how they do it and how I measure up.”

Montgomery, originally from Bryan, Texas, is on the U.S. Equestrian Federation winter training list, and he hasn’t ruled out a trip to Hong Kong for the Olympics, even though his horse hasn’t competed in a four-star yet.

“He’s a young horse, and if he keeps performing well, I hope he will be kept in consideration [for the Olympics] if some of the four-star horses drop out,” said Montgomery modestly.

Given the way the 9-year-old Irish Thoroughbred handled Mark Phillips’ challenging course, he surely impressed some selectors. “He was fantastic [cross-country]. I couldn’t have asked him to be better,” said Montgomery. “He’s been a slow horse, but the more confidence he’s gotten, the more he’s galloped. He took on the course and listened to me well. Considering all the problems, he did everything really well.

“It means a lot that we were able to get the job done [on cross-country],” he added.

On Sunday, Montgomery said that Up Spirit was tired, which resulted in two rails down in show jumping, but he still won by more than 6 points over Karen O’Connor and Rebecca Broussard’s Allstar.

“He really went in there and tried his heart out for me. It opened my eyes as to what type of horse he’s going to be,” Montgomery said.

Some horses with far more experience than Up Spirit didn’t complete the cross-country course, including dressage winners Dobbin and Corinne Ashton, who were eliminated with two stops at fence 8 (The Mouse Trap and Wedge) and two stops at fence 20 (Alligator Alley, the third water complex).

Amy Tryon’s 2006 World Equestrian Games bronze medalist Poggio was also listed as retired, but his problem was just some bad luck, as he got his tongue over the bit, causing Tryon to pull up.

“He was jumping well, and I’m disappointed, but it was the smarter thing to do,” Tryon said. “There was no point in getting off, taking the bridle off and putting it back on.”

She plans to run him in a preliminary horse trial at Poplar Place (Ga.) before heading to the CIC*** at The Fork (N.C.).

Wonderful For Winter

Mike Winter scored his biggest win to date in the CIC*** aboard his longtime partner, Wonderful Will. He took the lead with a clear show jumping round after overnight leader Jennie Brannigan withdrew Kozmo Sunday morning.

“I have the advantage of knowing him so well,” he added. “I have a good history with him, and we both hear what each other is saying.”

Winter has qualified both Will and Kingpin for the Olympics, where he hopes to ride for Canada. “I feel super lucky to have two horses qualified and two horses with the chance for qualifying,” he said. “I’ve never been in this position, and I feel really privileged.”

The other two horses he could qualify are Mary Bess Sigman’s Manhattan IV and Glen Morangie. Sigman broke her back in a freak accident on a young horse who bit the stirrup iron and flipped over on her.

“They’re both very nice horses I picked out for her, and I have the ride through Jersey Fresh [in May],” said Winter.

Having the biggest win of his career come during such an emotional event was bittersweet for Winter. “I haven’t won a three-star before, and it’s exciting for me and my whole team,” he said. “But it was a very disappointing weekend for the sport. There were a lot of losses, and it was very sad. It’s going to take several weeks to figure out who, what and where it should be held accountable and what changes should be made.”

Winter believed that the losses should be grieved and not immediately overridden with debate. But with that said, he was still concerned about the issues at hand.

“This is such a public event. The local media is all here, and you don’t get that a lot in this country,” he said. “This will bring the sport into the spotlight and not in a good way. We have to do things to get the faith of the public we want to have, to let them know that we do it for the love of the sport and these exceptional equine athletes. We all have a huge love and admiration for our partners.”

Winter said the cross-country could be modified to make it more horse- and rider-friendly: “There is a way to ask the difficult questions while building the jumps in a shape that’s more forgiving,” he said. “But I think we should focus on the loss before we get into that.”

Mosser Masters The Advanced

Majestic Bear’s first advanced run since the 2005 Jersey Fresh CCI*** (N.J.) turned into a winning one as he and Bonnie Mosser topped the advanced horse trial.

Mosser, Kennett Square, Pa., has been riding the 14-year-old Thoroughbred, owned by Blair Stoveld, for more than a year. “He was coming off an injury when he came to my barn, and I’ve been bringing him back slowly,” she said.

Rumsey Gilbert sold the horse after he came off the track, and he ended up with Suzanne Kloud, in Phillip Dutton’s barn, where Mosser campaigned the horse in his first preliminary event many years ago. After Stoveld purchased him, she shared the ride for years with Susie Beale. But now he’s for sale again.
“His owner is off to med school, and Bear has to pay the bills,” said Mosser.

She said she brought him to Red Hills knowing he could handle the track. “He is honest and fast, and I knew he’d jump around,” she said.

Mosser was held just before the Mouse Trap and Wedge at fence 8, while medics attended to Molly Bull, who’d fallen at fence 23, the Outpost corner. “He was so good,” said Mosser. “He just popped over the rails and took two strides out.”

Despite the difficulties for other competitors, Mosser didn’t believe this year’s course was more difficult than past years. “It hasn’t changed,” she said. “The toughness and the terrain hasn’t changed, and I know that about this event. It’s not harder than in the past. Some questions were maybe a little stiffer than expected, but it’s always been a strong course here.

“It requires a lot of balance, and if you want to go fast, it’s hard to balance at speed,” she added. “It’s not a galloping track.”

She said her history as a competitor—both in eventing and in ski racing—helped her deal with the events on cross-country day. “Seeing the energy and feeling it, I really had to go to myself and stay with my plan and stick to it,” she said. “I told my students, ‘Their mistakes are not your mistakes.’ ”

She chose not to compete Merloch, her mount for the Rolex Kentucky CCI, at Red Hills because of the type of course it is. “This is more of a jumping track, and Rolex is more of a galloping track,” she said. “Southern Pines [N.C.] is more galloping [and that’s where Merloch is competing].”

But Mosser, like everyone else, kept Chiacchia in her thoughts. “My heart’s out there for everybody who had a loss,” she said. “We’re all thinking of Darren and how we have to handle it. Darren is a believer in the sport, and he stands behind the sport. I think his supporters will be there, and we will all be there.”

Like Mosser, Phillip Dutton, who has won Red Hills’ CIC***-W three times, chose not to bring his Rolex mounts this year.

“They’re not quite ready to go quick [this weekend], and I thought the temptation would be too great if I brought them,” he said.

Instead, he brought Acorn Hill Farm’s homebred Bailey Wick (Pallas Digion—Northern Axis) and won the CIC**, among other top placings.

“I’m really excited about him,” he said of the flashy Irish Sport Horse. “He handled it easily, and in an ideal year, he would get to Fair Hill [CCI*** (Md.) in October].”

Was The Course Too Technical?

When riders walked his slightly modified course, said course designer Capt. Mark Phillips, they told him that it looked more open than ever before. The track largely followed that of previous years, and the fences were beautifully built this year by Eric Bull.

“In hindsight, it rode more difficult than what we thought, and it’s food for thought for the future,” Phillips said.

In the CIC***-W, out of 22 starters, only eight managed to finish without jumping penalties. All of the 18 refusals came at either the Red Hills Barn (fence 7), the Mouse Trap and Wedge (fence 8), the Funky Fungi (fence 11), the Mercedes complex (fence 19) or the Alligator Alley water jump (fence 20).

In the CIC***, 11 of 22 riders managed to jump clear, and the 16 refusals were more scattered throughout the course. In the advanced class, out of 11 starters, there were eight refusals, one rider fall and one horse fall, with four clear rounds. No one came close to the time in any of these divisions.

Phillips, chairman of the FEI Course Designers Advisory Group and chef d’equipe of the U.S. eventing team, has designed the advanced courses at Red Hills since they first ran in 2001, and the only major accident in the years since then was when The Native, ridden by David O’Connor, suffered cardiac failure on course in 2003.

“It’s a fine line with course design. Sometimes you’re on one side or the other,” said David O’Connor, the U.S. Equestrian Federation president who is also a course designer and chairman of the FEI Safety Committee. “From a designer’s point of view, it happens in a heartbeat. It ended up being a course that was a little tricky, and a lot of people didn’t have the run they’d hoped for.”

Phillips explained that the Mouse Trap fence required a forward ride to the rails and the two strides that followed to the cheese-shaped wedge with a mousehead poking out the top, the likes of which horses would not have seen before. “That’s how you ride that type of fence, and if you weren’t [forward], you had a gap and a runout.

“It was a funny day,” he added. “Younger horses like the ones ridden by Clark [Montgomery] and Allison [Springer]—they were ridden exceptionally well, and the horses went exceptionally well.”

The weekend didn’t inspire his confidence in terms of the upcoming Olympics. “We have a lot of work to do; that’s clear for all to see,” he said. “A lot of the horses were disappointing in dressage. The course was more difficult than anticipated, but even so, some went very well, and some need improvement.”

Karen O’Connor and the 2007 Pan American Games team and individual gold medalist, Theodore O’Connor, had runouts at the cheese wedge at fence 8 and the narrow turtle out of the water at fence 20.

“Teddy was jumping great, but he joined the club of horses who never saw the wedge of cheese,” she said. “He tripped up the step out of water—the distance is an odd distance for him, and he did the same thing last year. I feel like the horse jumped well, but it doesn’t come up on the scoreboard.”

O’Connor, who finished second on Allstar in the CIC***-W, said the course was especially challenging for a keen horse like Teddy.

“The terrain, the woods, the trails, the atmosphere and the long hack to the cross-country course all take a horse out of his rhythm,” she said. “Then you have a blind jump and a blind jump on a half-stride. The course designers are crossing the line. What did that prepare our horses for? The horses are backed up now. They’ve almost got that feeling in their heads, like, ‘What are you going to throw at me next?’ When one horse makes the time at preliminary—and Boyd [Martin] will even tell you that he had to go so fast—it’s not meant to be that way.”

She said the fourth fence, a very narrow opening in a Spanish moss-covered tree, was the first thing to back up the horses. “It’s hard to see [the jump], and there’s a big drop. Then you have maximum rails and an oxer with three straight strides, then an S-turn, then you go to the cheese…it’s a cumulative effect. It’s not one fence that’s a problem but the shell shock. Horses have to see what they’re jumping.”

“You can have one or two questions, but you need fences that you can put your hands down and gallop to,” said Amy Tryon, who finished second aboard Leyland in the CIC***.

In the CIC***-W, Phillip Dutton had one stop at fence 8 on his green advanced mount, Nina Gardner’s Loose ‘N Cool.

“Obviously, [the course] didn’t work,” he said. “The hard thing with course design is that it’s a difficult line. The time’s a bit hard to get, and that comes from someone who likes to ride fast. And that creates a problem.

“It needs to be opened up so it’s not so twisty,” he added of the course. “I know that’s hard in a pine forest, but the accuracy questions were overdone.”

Leslie Law, a British team rider who lives in Bluemont, Va., and Ocala, Fla., said the courses were very strong for the time of year. He finished third in the CIC*** on Troy Glaus’ Private Heart and was eliminated on Fleeceworks Mystere Du Val.

“I set out with the intention that if the horses were finding it too much, they’d get pulled up,” he said. “Usually you set out to ride what you’ve walked, but [pulling up] was certainly in the back of my mind.”

Law liked many parts of the course, such as the Mercedes complex at fence 19 and all three water complexes. “But the cheese wedge was a silly fence, a fence to trick
horses,” he said. “There was just the odd fence that was a trick that wasn’t really appropriate.”

Instead of bringing the whole barn, said Law and his wife, Lesley Grant-Law, they think carefully about which horses they bring to this venue, which always has had an uncharacteristically twisty track through the trees.

But other aspects of the event, such as the show jumping arena surrounded by crowds and the atmosphere of a major competition, play an important role in the development of a potential international horse, said Law.

“This event has a huge part to play in the production of horses, but the cross-country didn’t,” he said. “The event as a whole is super. But we as professional riders are trying to do a professional job producing horses, and, a little bit, the cross-country took that out of our hands.”

Given the difficulties, Phillips will likely make more changes for next year. “It’s a difficult piece of ground, with the trees and the terrain,” he said. “With the advantage of hindsight, if you could live the day again, you’d try to make it more straightforward.”