William Coleman was not certain that Tivoli Farms’ K. du Manoir would be on top of his game, since the horse had been taking things easy for a while, but the handsome chestnut gelding proved that the downtime had not dulled his edge.

The pair took the early lead in the CIC** at the Cosequin Stuart Horse Trials and Adequan USEA Gold Cup series event in Victor, N.Y., July 19-22, with a dressage score of 42.8 and added just 2 time faults on cross-country to win the event. They’re now firmly at the top of the Gold Cup series intermediate leaderboard with 260 points, 80 points ahead of Stuart Black and Fleeceworks Mystere du Val in second with 180 points.

Coleman is aiming K. du Manoir for the Fair Hill CCI*** (Md.) this fall. “My horse was a little cheeky [on cross-country], but he hasn’t been out since May,” he said. “It was a nice course. The ground firmed up reasonably well after the rain on Thursday, although it was a little slippery in the back. I liked the number of jumps on course—it didn’t over jump the horses or make them jump too many jumps. At this point in the season it’s nice to keep it short.”

While the terrain is very hilly at Stuart, it gave course designer Derek di Grazia some interesting options for placing the fences. It also made it challenging to finish inside the time allowed.

“I didn’t run my horse’s legs off,” said Coleman. “I tried to take the tight lines to make up time.”

Holly Payne, Gladstone, N.J., was second after dressage with Jill Gordon’s Madeline, and with a bold ride cross-country maintained her position until the final phase, when a rail down dropped her to fourth place overall. This was Madeline’s first two-star.

“She’s very quick,” said Payne of the 7-year-old. “She’s little but she likes to take control, and there were so many tight turns out there that she wanted to fight me a bit, but she was pretty good.”

Holly’s mother Marilyn Payne, a noted dressage judge, won open novice, division 1, riding Safe Harbor.
Corinne Ashton and Dobbin moved up from seventh after dressage to second overall, finishing on their dressage score of 54.4.

Ashton, who won the advanced division in the Gold Cup event at Southern Pines (N.C.) this spring, said that she was disappointed with her dressage score.

“I was first to go on Friday morning at 7 a.m., and it was raining and the wind was howling,” she said. “I was concerned about the weather and that it was so early, and he was wired and wild as a result. It was hard to get to the top spot after that.”

She mused, “Eventing’s tough—it’s a ridiculous thing that we try to do all things well in a weekend! It’s an addiction, though, and Dobbin is the horse of a lifetime and really gives me his best.”

It rained so intensely on Thursday that the organizers decided to move novice cross-country to Friday morning. That made for a busy morning for competitors and volunteers, but it allowed competitors to compete in a horse trials rather than a combined test, since the pelting rain would have made it impossible to run cross-country on Thursday.

Winning Weekend For Byyny
Jan Byyny and her new acquisition Syd Kent, a New Zealand-bred Thoroughbred that she purchased herself and imported from England just a couple of weeks ago, moved up from fifth after dressage to finish third overall in the CIC**.

Byyny won the open intermediate (33.8) with her longtime partner Task Force, owned by J.C. Chester, and won open preliminary, division 1, with Dario, owned by Alice Lawaetz. Her student Charlotte Merle-Smith finished second in open preliminary, division 1, on Cyrillic, and Byyny finished fourth on Deborah Hunt’s Cordonelli.

“It was a great weekend for everyone from Surefire Farm,” said Bynny with a grin.
 
“Dario is amazing,” said Bynny. “The faster I go cross-country the bigger his stride gets, so I have to be careful. He is young, but the atmosphere didn’t bother him. Jedi [Task Force] was a really good boy. I have been working on his rideability, when I need to put him together and have control when I get in trouble. He kind of ran off with me at the Sunken Road and was quick across the water jump, but then he settled. I have only had Syd for three weeks, so I think he needs more fitness, but all the horses recovered great after cross-country.”

Byyny credited her low dressage scores to the work she has been doing with German dressage trainer Sylva Martin. Incidentally, Sylva’s husband  Boyd Martin, finished second and third to Byyny in the open intermediate riding August Vettorino’s Match Play (40.9) and Windurra P-L’s Neville Bardoff (41.9), respectively. His student, Cayla Kitayama, finished fourth riding Esker Riada, a horse that she purchased last year after he com-peted at the World Equestrian Games with Werner Geven for the Netherlands.

New Opportunity
The Martins moved to the United States earlier this year from Boyd Martin’s native Australia and are based at Phillip Dutton’s True Prospect Farm in Pennsylvania. Working for Dutton, who also emigrated from Australia, Boyd rides many of the young horses and takes on the top rides when Dutton is not available. Neville Bardof is his regular ride, but he competed Match Point and Mardie Faucette’s Risk Taker, who finished fifth in the CIC**, at Stuart since Dutton was competing for his newly adopted U.S. team at the Pan Am Games (see Aug. 3, p. 8).

“Phillip and [his wife] Evie have gone out of their way to help me get started over here,” said Martin, 27, who has competed nine horses at the four-star level and been long-listed twice for the Olympic Games. “They let us live out of their garage and made the transition here much easier than it should have been.”

Martin said that he and his wife are working hard to establish themselves professionally in the United States, and he hopes that working and training with Dutton will give him the edge he needs to make an international team.

Kitayama, who moved from the San Francisco Bay area to study at Villanova University (Pa.) and trains with Dutton and the Martins, commented, “Boyd and Sylva are both very positive and hard-working. They are both out teaching and working at all hours, which is great for me because I often can’t get to the barn until 6 p.m. Having someone of Sylva’s caliber here is great, because she is willing to work with anybody and everybody including little girls on ponies and Thoroughbred event horses.”

Amber Heintzberger