Stephen Bradley celebrated his 44th birthday on March 26, and he got the best present he could have asked for when he and Brandenburg’s Joshua won the advanced, test A, division at the Poplar Place Farm Horse Trials in Hamilton, Ga.

He and Joshua added only 3 time penalties to their dressage score on their way to victory. Bradley also placed 21st in open intermediate on Maria Land’s From, who’s returning to competition after an 18-month rest for a tendon injury.

Jennifer Libby on Draco placed second in the division, followed by Amy Tryon on Poggio II. Ralph Hill and Bad Boy Billy took the lead in dressage on an impressive score of 29.6, but 16 time penalties on cross-country, as well as jumping and time faults in stadium, dropped them out of the running.

Having established himself as one of the best in the world by competing at the Olympic Games in 1992 and winning the Burghley CCI**** (England) in 1993, Bradley, of Leesburg, Va., won the Rolex Kentucky CCI*** in 1996. But then he waited nine long years for another big victory, which he claimed at the Foxhall Cup CCI*** (Ga.) last year with Joshua, owned by William Lowe.

Now Bradley is aiming both Joshua and From for the Rolex Kentucky CCI**** on April 27-30, hoping his horses will end up on the short list for the World Equestrian Games.

“I seem to go in cycles, with upper-level horses and young horses, but no steady flow of horses coming up the levels,” he acknowledged. “I’ve had good luck with these two, and I just want to keep that going.”

He said that the team training session with Robert Dover the day before Poplar Place, along with Dover’s help in the dressage warm-up, helped him ride a test that put him less than a point behind Hill and Bad Boy Billy at the start of the competition, despite being the first horse in the ring, at 8 a.m.

“We were a stride late on one of the flying changes, which is a fairly significant mistake, but the trot work was so active that he was still less than a point off the leader,” Bradley said.

“If Robert hadn’t been there to pump us up before the test, I don’t think I would have gotten the score,” he added. “Afterwards, we went back to the warm-up area and did our homework, and I think that helped all of the riders a lot.”

Bradley said that Josh galloped around the big course like a pro. “Having talked to Mark Phillips, I knew I wanted to get a good work on cross-country, so I ran both horses hard and got a good fitness workout” in preparation for Kentucky, he said.

Bradley, whose praise for the event and its organizers was genuine, said his only complaint was that things ran late on Sunday.

He show jumped at 5 p.m., “and the sun was really a factor. They had separate courses for all the levels, so the jumps had to be reset for height and also for direction. They could have made it easier on themselves and had things go more efficiently if they’d run that differently. But the courses rode well, and the money they have invested in the footing is really worth it.”


Winsome Adante Looks Ready Too
Kim Severson won advanced, test C, with the indomitable Winsome Adante, with whom she’s won Kentucky three times and brought home the Olympic individual silver medal and the World Championship team gold medal. And she took second on Royal Venture, who won the ad-vanced horse trials at Pine Top Farm (Ga.) on March 4-5.

Severson is aiming both horses, owned by Linda Wachtmeister, for Kentucky and the World Equestrian Games.

Severson said that Royal Venture had been going exceptionally well in this year’s training sessions. He’s often in his famous stablemate’s shadow, but Severson hopes that the 16-year-old gelding will get his chance this year.

British superstar Leslie Law and his top horse Shear L’Eau easily won the second division of advanced, test A, with 39.2 penalties when dressage leader Kelli Temple of Canada, riding Paris, incurred 26 faults in show jumping. Ashley McVaugh and All’s Fair grabbed second (41.1), and Buck Davidson moved up four places to finish third on Private Treaty.

Law, who relocated to Florida from England over the winter, has continued his competitive success on this side of the pond, having now won two advanced horse trials as he too aims for Kentucky, where he’s competed several times before, and the WEG.


A True Two-Star
Becky Holder and Glorious Joy, a 10-year-old, Thoroughbred mare owned by Jill Gill, took the early lead in the CIC** with a score of 45.0 in dressage. They never looked back on their way to the win, finishing a solid 3.9 points in front of Severson and Tsunami (52.9).

“She can be a hot, temperamental mare, so I was glad she settled in and had a nice dressage test,” said Holder. “On cross-country, she was very fast, catty and brave. Tremaine Cooper did a wonderful job with the course. I was nervous about the water complex, because it was big, but she jumped it spot-on.”

Holder thought it was truly a two-star course, not just a re-flagged intermediate course. “I’m taking her to Jersey Fresh [New Jersey], and this was a good preparation for the CCI**,” she said.

She also liked Jan Brodkin’s show jumping courses, especially since the courses were different for each level. “Gloria’s a good show jumper, and I knew I had a few seconds in hand, so I rode the last few fences super-carefully,” she noted.

Previously, Holder has driven 22 hours from her home in Mendota Heights, Minn., to compete at Poplar Place, but this spring it took only six hours from the farm that she and her husband, Tom, purchased in Wadesboro, S.C. Eventually, when Tom retires, they will move there full-time, but for now Becky is using it as a winter training base.

Becky has won divisions of Poplar Place’s advanced a couple of times before with her four-star horse Courageous Comet, but this time she opted to do only dressage and show jumping with him, having placed fourth with him in advanced at Southern Pines the previous week.

Last year, Holder was on the USEF team of developing riders that competed at the Luhmuhlen CCI**** (Germany). “It was a great international experience and a wake-up call for us all on how much work we have to do to be contenders at the international level,” she said. “We’ve all been doing our homework and working overtime. The training sessions with Robert [Dover] have made a difference, too. I think you’ll see a lot of super dressage scores from the U.S. riders this year.”

In the CIC*, Amy Tryon, of Redmond, Wash., rode a 6-year-old, off-the-track Thoroughbred to the win. Tryon has been riding Leyland, owned by Elizabeth Nicholson, of Metamora, Mich., for about a year. He’d proven too difficult for his young rider owner. Nicholson has since purchased a more experienced horse, and the family hired Tryon to bring Leyland up through the ranks.

“We found him through Janet von Pressentin, who finds a lot of my horses off the track,” said Tryon, who rode Leyland to victory at Southern Pines too. “It’s very generous of his owners to let me ride him. They’d like to see him get to the four-star level eventually, and I think he has all the ingredients: he’s built uphill, he’s forward and he jumps well. He’s ready to move up to intermediate now, and hopefully he’ll run in a two-star this fall.”

Tryon also placed third in advanced, test A, with Poggio II, her partner at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, and 12th with Woodstock in the other second section of advanced, test A. She hopes that both horses will qualify for the WEG.

“Ideally, I’d get to take both of them to England to train for the summer, and then when it gets down to it, I could choose which one is going better at the time,” she said. “But that’s the ideal situation, and in horses the reality is usually a different story.”

She galloped Poggio faster than she’s ever run him at a horse trial before (20 seconds slow). “Usually I go like a snail at horse trials because he gets so wound up, but he was as rideable as he’s ever been,” she said.

Unforeseen Accidents
The atmosphere at the Poplar Place Horse Trials was dampened by the deaths of two horses on cross-country day: Ann Glaus’ Crestwood Michigan and Sinead Halpin’s Tommy II. Both were the result of accidents incurred while jumping fences that have been on the course for several years. Neither rider was seriously injured.

Event organizer Donna Stegman said that Capt. Mark Phillips, the U.S. cross-country course advisor, was watching both horses and said that they both appeared to be galloping and jumping in good form before the accidents occurred. David O’Connor, the U.S. Equestrian Federation president who is part of the investigation committee required by the Federation Equestre Internationale because one death occurred in the CIC**, was at the event and saw the accidents occur.

Crestwood Michigan, competing in the CIC**, was jumping up a bank and broke his leg when he hit it on the reveting. The second horse, Tommy II, winner of the Radnor Hunt CCI** (Pa.) last October, was competing in the advanced horse trial when he flipped over a galloping fence.

“It’s a horrible thing that happened,” said Becky Holder, winner of the CIC**. “[Designer Tremaine Cooper’s] courses are wonderfully built and technically correct. Something like this makes you feel lucky to spend time with the horse that you’re on, and reminds you of the risks you’re taking even when things are going well. All our hearts go out to both those girls and their horses.”