Horse show mornings dawn early for everyone, but Laura McKinney’s show days start in the dark. Before riding Jimtown Again to the adult amateur hunter, 50 and over, championship at the KHJA horse show, McKinney was up at 4 a.m. to bring in and feed more than 40 broodmares.

She then drove to the showgrounds at the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, Ky., on Aug. 24-28 to show.

McKinney runs Stony Point Farm, a Thoroughbred farm in Lexington, Ky., that’s been in her family for more than 45 years. She takes in broodmares for boarding and foaling and does sales prep for yearlings, weanlings and broodmares. In between all that, she finds time to bring along young hunter prospects.

Given her business, McKinney has shown mostly Thoroughbreds in the past–ones she’s broken and trained herself. But Jimtown Again is a Dutch Warmblood, and one who has challenged her.

“I was looking for a prospect–if he’d been going, I wouldn’t have been able to afford him. And he’s definitely been a prospect and a project. He’s been a very long project, but he’s coming around,” she said.

In early 2003, McKinney was visiting her sister and happened to see a videotape of a promising young horse in Holland. “Julie Winkel said ‘Laura, you just have to have a look at this video.’ All it showed was him plopping over a rail in an indoor, and he looked kind of cool,” McKinney recalled.

But when Jimtown Again arrived, McKinney was in for a surprise. “We figured out that he’d just been gelded, and he’d never been outdoors in his life. He was so terrified of everything. And all the mares in heat had him absolutely crazy. All the things that you kind of don’t think of when you raise horses were major for him. He had to learn how to be turned out, to eat grass, all the things you take for granted that horses know,” she said.

On top of that, Jimtown Again was a little greener than she’d thought. “Basically, he didn’t have any miles at all. They found out he was a good jumper, and they got enough out of him to do the video, and that was it. He was really basically an unbroken horse,” she said.

“You can’t push him–you have to go slowly with him, and with my schedule, it’s taken even longer,” she continued.

The only chance McKinney gets to show is during the summer months–spring is full with foaling and the fall is sales season. So, McKinney shows a few shows at the Kentucky Horse Park each summer. “We used to go to all the big shows, and I know what that’s like, and I really don’t have any desire to do that again. I can’t leave the farm, and I like to sleep in my own bed at night,” she said.

McKinney’s whole family rode–and skied–competitively when she was growing up. Her sister, Tamara McKinney, went from showing as a junior to winning Olympic gold medals and multiple skiing World Cups. And her brother, Steve, broke the downhill speed skiing record.

Her sister Ouisha is now her ground person and helps her groom at shows. While growing up, McKinney rode with her mother, Frances, but now she does all her own training.

She named Jimtown Again in honor of her late mother. Frances had a top conformation horse decades ago named Jim James Again, whose sire was Jim James. Since her new prospect’s sire was Jimtown, McKinney decided to pay tribute and name him Jimtown Again.

Now 8, the Dutch Warmblood is repaying her patience. “It’s kind of a relief. I always knew he was a good jumper, but I wondered if he’d ever get his act together, and he really has. It’s very rewarding,” she said.

Sequel Has A Winning Story

Terry Brown is also reaping the rewards of a patient approach. She’s spent the last two years making Sequel into a superstar, and he’s paying her back with championships left and right. They concluded five weeks at the Kentucky venue with the second year green and regular working hunter tricolors–a feat they’d accomplished each week of the circuit.

“He’s the ideal hunter. He’s very pretty, a beautiful mover, a stylish jumper, and he does everything correctly,” Brown said of the 11-year-old Hanoverian. She imported Sequel in 2003, but he took a while to getthis good.

“He did the first year green division last year. He won quite a bit, but he had his moments. He’s a very cautious horse, and he worried about a lot. It was a different ride, with a looser rein. But the year has done him a lot of good, because he’s become a dependable campaigner, and I think he understands and enjoys his job now. He’s fabulous at the four-foot because it’s easy for him,” Brown said.

“I wasn’t sure he’d ever win the first class, but now he does. He’d be a little spooky and study the jump a little too hard, and it would cost him the class. But that’s gotten so much better.”

Sequel is currently leading the Farnam/USEF Horse of the Year standings in both the regular working and second year green divisions.

While Brown runs a busy sales business out of her Showcase Ltd., in Canton, Ga.–with her partner, Tim Sweat–she admits it would have to be an exceptional offer to buy Sequel. “I’d like to keep him. He’s a great advertisement–he brings business to my doorstep–and I’m very fond of him. He’s part of the team,” said Brown.

“He’s got great range. You can have a very acceptable, safe trip on him, but you can also feel when the time is right and push him to extract a brilliant performance, and he can do it. He’s truly a privilege to ride,” she added.

The Next Generation

Lately, Brown’s been teaching the children of students who rode with her as juniors. Trainer Mindy Darst is also starting her own second generation of winning.

Her daughter Meredith Darst, just 8, is at home on a pony. At KHJA, she rode Just A Minute to the small pony championship and Dare Me Little Willy to the reserve.

Meredith, of Lebanon, Ohio, has only been riding Just A Minute, or “Prissy,” since the beginning of the year. Just 8, the mare is a little bit green and sometimes challenging. Willy, however, is at the other end of the spectrum, as a 21-year-old veteran. They lease Willy from owner Mike Warden.

“Willy is definitely her security blanket. She just started riding a lot of new ponies, and whenever one gets a little hard, she can go back to Willy and get her confidence back. He is truly the perfect pony,” said Mindy.

Meredith is definitely starting off her pony career with a bang. In July, she took seventh in the USEF Pony Medal Final. “The thing about her is that the harder it gets, the better she does. She doesn’t get nervous,” said Mindy.

The KHJA show was the scene for Pacifico’s triumphant return. A year ago, the 9-year-old gelding underwent colic surgery. But he’s back in action better than ever, and he won the high junior/amateur-owner jumper classic with owner Ashley Woodhouse.

Woodhouse, of Minneapolis, Minn., used her time off from showing Pacifico to win the USEF/Cacchione Cup at the IHSA Nationals in May. She’s a sophomore at Skidmore College (N.Y.) and balances showing with school. She rides with Scott and Rene Lenkart.

She’s had Pacifico for five years, and she made her way up through the junior jumper ranks to the grand prix level with him. Last year, they were second in the $30,000 Country Heir Grand Prix at the Kentucky Horse Park in June–just before Pacifico’s surgery. He had to have another surgery six months later to fix some complications, but he’s returned to action better than ever.

Three horses had gone clean in the jump-off, with increasingly faster times. Just before Woodhouse went, Mary Elizabeth Moore rode a blazing round but lowered the last rail. Woodhouse knew she had to be quick. “He’s not the fastest horse–but he was so good today–he was fired up!” Woodhouse said. They galloped to a clean round more than a second faster than second-placed Kels Bonham on Orley.

What Do We Do With The Other Hand?

Louise Serio, Geoff Teall, Aaron Vale and Tommy Serio are used to hearing whooping, hollering and clapping–but it usually comes at the end of a hunter round, not in the middle of a reining pattern. That’s right, for one night, these four hunter-jumper riders put on big belt buckles, fringed chaps and cowboy hats. And they slid, spun and galloped, in a celebrity reining class.

During the KHJA horse show, the indoor ring of the Kentucky Horse Park was host to the Fiesta in the Park show for the National Reining Horse Association. And Colleen McQuay, an active trainer and competitor in both the reining and hunter-jumper worlds, saw an oppor-tunity to cross-pollinate between disciplines. In collusion with Serio, she got the four professionals to swap boots and compete on borrowed reining horses. Vale and Louise prevailed in the scoring, but there wasn’t anyone who didn’t have fun.

After just one practice session, they all performed admirably. Teall was thrilled to ride “the reining version of a Geoff Teall-trained adult amateur horse. All I really have to do is hang on,” he said. And while he and Tommy Serio expressed amazement that they were penalized in the scoring for patting their horses mid-pattern, they thoroughly enjoyed themselves.

Louise Serio was much more at home, probably because she has her own reining horse traveling with her. “About a year ago, I called Colleen and said, ‘I need a hobby–I want a reining horse.’ She didn’t call me back for about a month, and I’d kind of forgotten about it. But then she did call, and said, ‘I’ve got your horse!’ It’s a horse that they’d bred and raised and shown, and won a gold medal on the USET Nations Cup team,” Louise said.

But Louise has only been able to show her reining horse a handful of times. She’s working hard to adjust to the new demands, however. “It’s completely different than we’re used to. They don’t use a consistent leg–they use leg, and then take the leg off. Steering with one hand is a whole new challenge.

Here, I had a lot of fun. I had two horses to show, and two other horses to ride, and in the celebrity class, I got to ride a really top horse, who was fantastic. She was above my ability, really,” Louise said.

The celebrity class brought spectators from both disciplines, and Louise noted that the interest extended beyond the one night. “It’s been interesting all week to see how many hunter/jumper people are down there watching them all warm up and show. It’s been a nice mix of people,” she said.

And there were quite a few reiners dressed in Wranglers and big spurs, watching the grand prix, whooping and applauding as each rider cleared a fence.

King Dethrones Vale

It’s always hard to beat Aaron Vale, and lately Vale’s been on a roll, winning both the grand prix classes at the Trader’s Point Charity (Ind.) in the beginning of August and then claiming first, fourth, fifth and seventh in the $30,000 Rood & Riddle Grand Prix the week before the KHJA.

But Kyle King put a quick stop to the streak, taking the top check in the $30,000 KHJA Grand Prix aboard Riptide.

With two horses in the four-horse jump-off, Vale looked poised to win. But he pulled rails on both of them, and when King galloped into the ring as the last starter, Scott Lenkart was leading the class on Impulsive. King’s slick track on Riptide brought them home a half a second faster than Lenkart.

“He’s deceiving–he’s very smooth, and he’s got a big step, but it looks slow. From 1 to 2, I think I did one stride less than anyone else, and I kind of took a bit of a risk to the last plank vertical. I knocked it down on all my other horses today, so I figured maybe this time it’d stay up,” King said wryly.

King is somewhat of a new face on the East Coast. A veteran of the West Coast grand prix circuit, he decided this summer to trek east. “I’ve got some nice new sponsors and some good backing behind me, so I’m going to take a shot at doing the World Cup-qualifying classes. If I want to do that, I know I need to be on the road to do it. So, I’m pretty much on the road from now until Spruce Meadows next year,” King said. He plans to show at the HITS Saugerties (N.Y.) venue and at the American Gold Cup (Pa.) before the indoor season.

King has a farm in San Marcos, Calif., but was based out of Bend, Ore., for the summer. He traveled to Kentucky at the beginning of August with Riptide and a few other horses. On Estival, he was second to Vale in the $30,000 Rood & Riddle class the week before, and he has the young horses Kosta and Finette in his string.

King’s last visit east was in 2001, and he’s enjoying the change of scenery. “There are different faces. At home, we have Richard Spooner and here you guys have Aaron Vale. Any time I can beat any of them, I’m pretty happy,” he said.