Saugerties, N.Y.—Aug. 6

Kelley Farmer went home Saturday night from HITS Saugerties with a bruised body—but not a bruised pride.

After taking an uncharacteristic fall from It’s Me in the handy round, Farmer literally “got back on the horse”—horses, in fact—and swept the top three positions in the $100,000 USHJA International Hunter Derby, topping the class with Jane Gaston’s Baltimore. After performing a brilliant handy round that resulted in a class-best 197 score, she moved up from 10th to second with Kodachrome; she rounded out the top three with Point Being.

“I should stop now, or maybe I should live at [HITS President and CEO Tom Struzzier’s] $100,000’s, I’m not sure,” Farmer joked. “The fact that Tom has done this, and HITS has put up this kind of money for derbies, is great. It’s great for hunters, it’s great for the derbies, and I can’t say thank you enough to the group. I just hope people follow along. I hope it becomes a trend and catches on, because it gives people a reason to have hunters and want to keep them, and they can think of them more like grand prix horses, and I think that’s where our sport is going.”

Farmer, Keswick, Va., has now won all four of the $100,000 derbies on HITS’s Hunter Derby Tour. In November, she took home the top prize at the National Sunrise Series at Thermal (Calif.) with Avatar Real Estate LLC’s Dalliance. Then she won with Mindful at the Ocala Masters (Fla.) before returning to Thermal to triumph on the Desert Circuit with Baltimore. With his second $100,00 derby victory, Baltimore became the fastest derby horse to reach $100,000 in career earnings.

“He’s an amazing, amazing horse,” Farmer said. “I really appreciate Jane [allowing me to ride him].”

“That’s a great horse,” added Larry Glefke, who runs Lane Change Farm in Wellington, Fla. and Lexington, Ky., with Farmer. “I knew it from the first day I trained him.”

Kelley Farmer and Baltimore

The 11-year-old Oldenburg gelding led from start to finish over the Rian Beals-designed track, a marathon-like course of 14 fences that wound around the full expanse of the facility’s grand prix arena. Natural obstacles lined the outside rails; horse and rider combinations jumped an entire tree trunk in both the classic and handy rounds.

“I thought he built a beautiful course, and you could gallop and jump,” Farmer said. “There was a big crowd, and you finally had people watching hunters, which is a rarity these days, unfortunately.

“That is a big ring, and there were a lot of jumps,” she continued. “It was long, but for $100,000, you’re supposed to jump a lot of jumps, and you’re supposed to jump a big course. Rian Beals has built appropriately for the money, for the quality of animal and for the caliber of competition. This is the high-end of the hunters, of our sport. You’re not supposed to jump 10 jumps at 3’6″. You’re supposed to jump what he built. It was a long way around there, but that’s the thing. They’re hunters, but they have to be jumping fit and be able to jump. That was not just a hunter test. They have to be able to do it like hunters and have quite a bit of ability.”

Farmer had a nearly ideal first round on her four mounts, qualifying all of them for the handy round. She occupied the top two spots with Baltimore and Point Being, respectively, and sat in sixth with the stallion It’s Me and 10th with new mount Kodachrome.

Farmer and Kodachrome

In round two, things didn’t go quite as planned. Kodachrome skyrocketed up the standings with his slick handy round to lead the class with a 374 total score, but It’s Me stopped at a barn door-like wall fence before unseating Farmer at a combination that caused multiple refusals in the first round. After a brief moment on the ground, Farmer got up and walked unaided to the ingate to ride her final two mounts.

“I might be a little sore and a little black and blue, but I’m fine,” she said. “I gave him a bad ride to the wall. I missed, and after I did that, I think he was a little, ‘What am I doing?’ I created it. He was just like, ‘What is Mom doing?’ “

She didn’t let the miscue affect her. With only herself to beat, she outdid herself with Baltimore, receiving the only 90s of the day to seal the win. Baltimore’s winning total was 378, while Point Being finished with a 365 score. No other horse received a score above 360.

“I love that horse,” Farmer said of Baltimore, who also won derbies at Gulf Coast (Miss.) and Kentucky Spring this year. “He deserved to win. But all the horses were great today.”

Farmer will now head to Lexington with all four horses for the USHJA International Hunter Derby Championship, Aug.18-20.

“If I was ready for here, chances are I’m going to be ready for next week,” she said. “I feel lucky to have the group of horses that I have going and that they are where they are and are as ready to go as can be.”

Farmer and Point Being