Hannah Burnett rode into the show jumping arena with a rail in hand, but she didn’t know that. Her focus was on attaining a clear, careful round with St. Barths. She was one fence away from achieving her goal when a missed distance to the last jump almost put her out of the ribbons completely.

“I was worried about getting too close to the last one, and so I went out a little bit too far,” explained an embarrassed Burnett.

St. Barths scrambled through the fence, and Burnett lost both her stirrups, but she managed to stay on and head for the finish flags to win the CCI** (55.9).

Doug Payne grabbed second with Running Order (59.1) with one rail down, and Rebecca Howard finished in third aboard Roquefort with two rails (61.8).

Burnett said she felt some pressure as she faced Sally Ike’s show jumping course, but she had confidence in her mount. “I love show jumping—it’s my favorite phase,” she said. “He’s a really good jumper, so I wasn’t really, really nervous.”

In addition to the win, Burnett took home a massive load of prizes. Winning the Sea Horse Farm Perpetual Trophy was particularly emotional as St. Barths’ owner, Dick Thompson, had donated it to the owner of the winning horse in memory of his wife, long-time O’Connor Event Team supporter Vita Thompson. Dick found himself in the position of awarding himself his own trophy.

Burnett, 23, also took home the national young adult title, and St. Barths won best conditioned as well as the Mid-Atlantic Horse Rescue’s prize for the best-placed U.S.-bred Thoroughbred.

Payne displayed obvious pride as he praised his green mount for their second-placed finish. Running Order completed his first one-star this spring at the Virginia Horse Trials, where he won the long-format event. The 7-year-old Thoroughbred had only done three intermediates before Fair Hill.

“I’d like to do more, but he’s really not ready. I didn’t think he’d be ready to do as well as he has,” said Payne. “He’ll probably do one more two-star.”

Payne, 28, said the gelding’s Irish steeplechasing background helped him with the wet conditions at Fair Hill, and he thought running a long-format event had helped his education tremendously.

“He was a lot more confident coming off that and really grew up in the process,” said Payne.

Running Order also won the Gen. Jonathan R. Burton trophy for the highest-placed young horse.

Howard struggled a little bit with bitting on Roquefort, as his full cheek twisted snaffle broke yesterday on cross-country and gave him a big rub on the side of his face.

“I had to ride in a snaffle today, and he was really strong,” said Howard. “I don’t think I’ve ever had two rails with him before. I’m obviously disappointed, but he was kind of a different horse today. He jumped great. I was still really happy with him.”

Nine horses jumped double-clear rounds of the 27 finishers. Daniel Clasing made the biggest leap up the leaderboard over the weekend. He and Houston finished dressage in 64th place (65.6) and ended up in eigth after adding only one rail to their penalty score.

Katherine Sunderland made a similar leap, moving up from 69th place after dressage to 12th place. She added only 4.8 time penalties to her dressage score of 69.5 with Southern Tango. She was also the reserve champion young rider behind Callie Judy, who placed ninth with Call On Me.

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