Anyone familiar with the sport of eventing would have recognized the handsome black gelding trotting powerfully down the centerline at the USEF Junior Dressage Championships on July 7-9.

Cape Town won the 2003 Radnor Hunt CCI** (Pa.) under Clark Montgomery. In the ensuing years he’s had a career change but he hasn’t given up his winning ways, as he and Hannah Shook emerged as the individual winners in Pebble Beach, Calif.

The 12-year-old Dutch Warmblood-Thoroughbred has only been paired with Shook, 15, since February. After his victory at Radnor, he failed to continue up the levels in eventing. He’d started out as a straight dressage horse, so he returned to his roots and ended up in the barn of dressage trainer Linda Oliver. It was there that Shook’s trainer, Diane Ritz, first saw the horse. Ritz is a student of Oliver’s and competes a stallion of hers named Tron.

Although Cape Town had an unusual history, Ritz knew immediately he was a horse that would suit Shook, who is from Charlotte, N.C.

“I knew it would be a good match,” said Ritz. “This kid can ride anything.”

So Ritz arranged for Shook to purchase the horse sight unseen. But it wasn’t the smoothest of starts for the pair, as Cape Town hadn’t shown since his eventing days.

“It had been two years since he’d been in a ring,” said Ritz. “There were many tests where they scored in the 40s because he was leaping and plunging. But when he finally figured out he wasn’t going cross-country, he settled down.”

Despite the rough beginnings, Shook had unshakable faith in her new partner. “For some reason, I just never wanted to give up on him,” she said. “He is so amazing and so fun to ride.”

Still, when asked when everything started to come together for the pair, Shook couldn’t help but joke. “Uh, what’s today? Sunday? Friday. Friday is when it all came together,” she said.

On Saturday, the pair showed no signs of their rocky beginning, putting in a nearly flawless team test, highlighted by powerful extensions, and metronome-like rhythm the judges rewarded with a score of 67.10 percent. Her test on Sunday still had perfect moments, but Cape Town broke into the canter in his first trot half-pass, and Shook became momentarily disoriented and did her second walk pirouette in the wrong direction.

“I was just thinking too much,” she said ruefully. “I’ve gone off course [in that movement] in that test before.”

Despite the mistakes, the judges still found the overall quality of their test superior and gave her a score of 66.00 percent, giving her the win in the individual test and securing her overall title with a combined score of 66.55 percent.

Shook plans on contesting the juniors one more time before moving on to Young Riders, and she’s looking forward to continuing her relationship with the horse she calls “a special guy.

“I enjoy riding him every day. Every day is new, every day is different. He teaches me something every time I sit on him, and I just enjoy him,” she said.

Race For Team Gold
Just behind Shook throughout the weekend was Amanda Stearns, a veteran of the Junior Team Championships, whose overall second-placed individual finish (65.02%) led Team Freedom–Stearns, Rachel Campbell, Ariel Stern, and Jessica Banaszak–to the victory. Stearns was on the 2005 gold-medal team, but this year she was aboard a new mount–FEI veteran Mitchell.

Stearns’ trainer, John Zopatti, owns the 12-year-old Dutch Warmblood gelding. Stearns, 15, began leasing the handsome gray in November, and she quickly formed a bond with him.

“This horse has only been ridden by a professional, so to come here and do well with a kid means a lot to me,” she said.

Stearns, who traveled all the way from Royal Palm Beach, Fla., to compete, is especially grateful for the ride on Mitchell, since Zopatti suddenly found himself horseless this spring. But, instead of retrieving his mount, he continued to help Stearns toward her dream of riding in the Junior Nationals.

“He’s given up his only horse to help me,” she said. “He’s just happy to see his horse in the ring.”

Mitchell is a horse with a lot of talent, but he’s also a calm and focused presence in the ring. He and Stearns put in two strong tests, highlighted by his smooth transitions and powerful extensions.

If Stearns brought the most experience to her team, then Campbell was the baby of the group. She and her chestnut Mecklenburg gelding Discoverer only started doing the Junior classes this year, and they were initially named the alternate to the entry list of 12. Campbell got the call only seven days prior to the start of the competition, and she had to scramble to find transportation for her horse from their home in Wylie, Texas, to Pebble Beach.

Although she had a few mistakes–“Disco” is green in his flying changes and has, according to Campbell, “plenty of energy in the ring”–he and Campbell are a charming pair. Her excitement of just being able to compete was evident–as was that of her parents, whose enthusiastic cheers could be heard all the way back to Texas.

Stern and her 12-year-old Westphalian gelding Raffaelo finished third individually and contributed strong scores (64.25% and 64.45%) for Team Freedom.

“My horse is the steady eddy,” the 16-year-old Perris, Calif., resident said. “He’s known for it, and it helped this weekend. He’s not the best mover–he’ll never get a 70–but he’s not one who blows up in the middle of a ride.”

Stern, who trains with Kim Monk, has been competing Raffaelo for six years.

The final members of Team Freedom–Banaszak and her Dutch Warmblood gelding Mango–have only been competing together for a year, but they’ve been together for two. The bay was originally imported for another rider, but he contracted a terrible case of shipping fever that left his future uncertain.

“We had heard about Mango, that he was sick and needed a home, and somehow we ended up with him,” said the sophomore from Placerville, Calif. “We spent all of last year rehabbing him and just started competing him this year.”

Oh, So Close
Throughout the weekend, the scores were so close that it wasn’t until the last moment that anyone knew which team had emerged victorious. The final standings gave the edge to Team Freedom (63.79%), with Team Independence less than a point behind (63.18%) and Team Liberty breathing down their necks (62.59%).

“Coming in [to the individual test] we knew we were behind by less than 2 points and had to step up,” said Stern.

“That’s what made this competition fun. One little mistake, and that’s your tenth of a percent,” added Stearns.

With the exception of Campbell, who’d only been on the team for a week, the girls had been e-mailing for several weeks, as soon as they knew their team members.

They all roomed together throughout the competition and immediately found they had a lot of common experiences.

All of them are straight-A students, because, as they said in unison, “You don’t get good grades, you can’t ride”–a parental out-look they have in common.

The girls laughed over the shared experience of pulling all-night homework sessions to be able to go to a show and agreed that riding had helped them learn time-management skills, as well as discipline, respect and patience.

Stern and Stearns plan to move up to the Young Riders level next year, but Campbell will be sticking with Juniors. Banaszak will see how the rest of her season goes with Mango and then decide.

Johnson Makes Lemonade Out Of Lemons
It was every competitor’s nightmare.

As the first rider into the ring at the USEF Junior National Championships, Katie Johnson and her Dutch Warmblood Meeko were already battling their nerves and the complexity of the team test. But their task was made harder by two children playing unsupervised next to the ring. As the two boys folded and unfolded chairs, shook and tossed a soda can, and tossed a ball, Meeko became more and more unglued.

Johnson kept her cool as best she could and tried to soldier through, but the children were soon joined by a pair of maintenance men working on a piece of equipment in the same area of the ring. Meeko melted down at this point, alternately freezing and wheeling, trembling with terror.

Of the five judges, only Jeanne McDonald, the judge seated at E, could see the cause of Meeko’s distress. As soon as Johnson managed to position him for his final, trembling halt, McDonald leapt from her box and called for a judges’ conference—clearly stating for all to hear that the circumstances were simply unfair. After a brief conference, the officials decided that Johnson would be offered a re-ride at the end of the class.

At the end of the class, Johnson and Meeko took their re-ride. Although she rode conservatively to soothe the still-frazzled nerves of her partner, their score of 59.20 percent was a clear improvement over their previous ride.

On Sunday, they put in a harmonious and strong test to get a 61.00 percent. They finished ninth overall individually, but the awards ceremony proved more exciting than Johnson was expecting when her fellow competitors voted her the recipient of the Sportsmanship Award for overcoming the adversity of her first ride with strength, humor and bravery.