Richard Spooner scores a profitable one-two finish in the big class, and Saer Coulter has a big rookie result.

Richard Spooner made short work of winning the $100,000 Grand Prix of Del Mar on May 2 in Del Mar, Calif. Spooner had the ride on two of the three horses in the jump-off—Ace and Cristallo. And the first to jump off, junior rider Saer Coulter on Cats Are Grey, had pulled two rails. The class was Spooner’s to win.

Spooner chose to make sure he had a clean jump-off round in his hand aboard Ace, touring the short course in 50.62 seconds. But then he picked up the pace on Cristallo, seeking to defeat himself.

Cristallo had the time but just ticked the top rail of the last fence, dropping it and putting him into second. Ace had proven to be the winning card of the night.

“Ace has been getting fantastic. I’ve had to take my time developing him,” Spooner said. “He’s 11 now. He’s a wonderful indoor horse, but he’s also great outdoors. Every horse is different, and he needed to get a lot of experience. A lot of European tours have been great for him to get that experience.”

Ace and Cristallo will get plenty of European experience as after Del Mar, Spooner shipped to Europe to show for the summer. On Ace, he was named to the U.S. team for the Meydan FEI Nations Cups (formerly the Samsung Super League) at La Baule (France), Rome (Italy) and St. Gallen (Switzerland).

Coulter is also headed for Europe—she’s going to spend the summer showing in the Netherlands. Taking third place to Spooner in her fifth grand prix start was just the confidence boost Coulter, 18, needed.

“It was so exciting. I was just happy to go clean in the first round,” she said. “I just started in the grand prix classes at the end of [the HITS Desert Circuit (Calif.) in March], so that really was the biggest course I’d ever jumped. I wasn’t expecting at all to go clean in the first round. I was shocked when I did. I landed over the last jump and looked at the clock because I hadn’t heard any rails fall, and I was sure I must have had a time fault!”

Coulter bought Cats Are Grey in January as a reliable teacher for her debut in the grand prix ranks. “We bought her because she’s done a lot and she’s safe,” she said of the 12-year-old Holsteiner mare (Cathargo—Al Mudshadila). “She’s always there for me. She carries her own rhythm really nicely. She’s not afraid, and she’s scopey but not super-careful, so if I make a mistake, it doesn’t scare her. She’s willing to forgive me for my mistakes! I just have to stay calm riding her, and it all comes together.”

She started showing Cats Are Grey in the low junior jumpers at the HITS Desert Circuit in February, then moved up to the high junior division. She made her grand prix debut on March 13 in the $25,000 HITS Grand Prix. Starts in the $50,000 Desert Circuit VII Grand Prix on March 15 and the $25,000 HITS Grand Prix on March 20 followed, with rounds of 8 or 12 faults in each.

But in the $25,000 Surfside Grand Prix—the qualifier for the $100,000 Grand Prix of Del Mar—Coulter achieved her best result yet of a four-fault round and qualified for the big class.

The course for the $100,000 class was the biggest she’d seen.

“Walking it, I was just so focused on learning the dynamics of the course,” Coulter said. “I don’t think I’ve ever actually been so calm going into a class in my life, because I think I was so focused. It was big, and I was nervous because I was in such incredible company. I just thought about how to ride the lines and how to shape them. I wanted to make sure I knew where I was every step of the way. I had no expectations of jumping a clear round. I just wanted to jump the course well and ride well, whatever came out of it.”

After her clear first round, Coulter realized she had to try to do it again. “Going into the jump-off, I knew I was up against Richard, and he’s incredible. He’s so fast, so I was just happy to be in that company. I thought, ‘I’m just going to go in there and have a safe round.’ I had 8 faults, but it didn’t matter to me. Being third to Richard is not bad at all,” she said.

Coulter, of San Francisco, Calif., trains with Mary Manfredi and Peter Lutz. She made it clear to them at the end of 2008 that she had big goals for 2009.

“I made a decision at the beginning of the year. I’m going to keep riding in college, but obviously I won’t have as much time. So I wanted to really put my all into it this year. I talked to my parents about it, and they were supportive. I had thought about moving up to the grand prix classes last year, but I knew I had to really focus on it and put the effort into riding at that level,” she said. “I’ve been doing junior jumpers three years, so it was the next logical step. I decided to make the commitment, because you can’t be doing the grand prix if you’re not spending a lot of time in the saddle. And it paid off!”

Coulter will attend Stanford University (Calif.) in the fall.

Robinson Retires

Richard Spooner’s partnership with the great Robinson spanned more than 10 years and captured the attention of show jumping fans all over North America. The charismatic gray Hanoverian gelding was hard to miss in the ring with his flipping white tail and his trademark tongue hanging out of his mouth. In fact, a commemorative sculpture of Robinson mid-flight included the famous tongue.

At the Del Mar National (Calif.), on May 2, Spooner rode Robinson, 21, into the ring one last time for a retirement ceremony. “It was hard for me, but it was a happy moment at the same time. He looks fantastic; he was fresh and feeling great. He retired 100 percent sound and happy.

It was hard not to show him, he was feeling so good!” Spooner said.

Spooner and Robinson’s time together started in 1996, when Spooner found him in Germany at Marcus and Meredith Michaels-Beerbaum’s farm. “When I got to Robinson, I went in the stall and that was it. He just had a look in his eye,” Spooner said in an earlier Chronicle article.

Robinson (Raphael—Garina) and Spooner were always a force to be reckoned with in jump-offs and were the ones to beat on the West Coast for more than a decade. Spruce Meadows in Canada was one of their favorite venues and the site of many memorable wins. In 2002, they won the $131,553 ATCO Power Queen Elizabeth Cup and the $115,096 Chrysler Classic Derby there in the same week.

“He made me. I was honored to be part of his career,” Spooner said.