When a professional athlete in the midst of a complete performance overhaul can still skunk the rest of the field on any given day, you know they’re the best of the best. Tiger Woods managed to maintain his domination in the golf world even as he completely reworked his swing, and this summer Becky Holder has been seeking to stage the same sort of coup in eventing.

And with a start-to-finish win in the Maui Jim CIC*** in Wayne, Ill., July 9-12, she looked to be succeeding.

Holder and Courageous Comet topped the same division at the same venue two years ago, but they weren’t resting on their laurels this time around. This year they topped the competition without a single show jumping penalty, finishing on 46.8 penalties, almost 10 points ahead of the pack.

After struggling with inconsistent performances in the final phase over the past few years, Holder’s been combining the best of multiple training methods lately.

“It’s always a work in progress, but it’s starting to come together,” Holder said.

As part of her training for the U.S. Olympic team last year, Holder spent time riding with show jumper Laura Kraut in Florida. She’d been jumping in a hackamore but didn’t have the control she wanted. The bit Kraut suggested, however, didn’t allow “Comet” the kind of freedom he needed to jump around clear.

“Laura worked really hard on our rideability with the bit, keeping him really round and bending through the turns, so that I had more options in front of the fences,” Holder said. “I’ve kind of combined that [training] with my ride in the hackamore. [At Maui Jim] I was able to make good decisions on the course and have him stay relaxed in his back and comfortable.”

Right On Track

Comet, a 13-year-old off-the-track Thoroughbred (Comet Shine—Rosenelli), was plenty comfortable in all three phases at Maui Jim, which was a relief to Holder, since the gelding had pulled a muscle earlier this spring. The injury kept him out of the Rolex Kentucky CCI****, so Holder re-routed him to the Jersey Fresh CIC*** (N.J.). She plans to take him abroad for the Burghley CCI**** (England) in September.

“I’m hoping that we’ve seen the end of that muscle pull, because he came out of both Jersey and this weekend fantastic,” Holder said. “But he was not impressed with the indoor arena at Jersey Fresh. He halted on centerline, picked his head up and was like, ‘Wait, where are my fans?’

“He’s such a ham,” she continued. “He loves the crowd at Kentucky and, hopefully, he’ll love it at Burghley.”

Comet definitely bloomed for the crowd at Maui Jim, winning the dressage on a 40.4.

“He can be spooky and naughty and kind of lazy at home, but you just have to have faith that if you get him into the right kind of venue, he’s going to light up,” Holder said. “It was a beautiful day, the sun came out for his test, and he was still a bit cheeky, but he’s absolutely a pleasure to ride in the show ring.”

On Saturday Comet romped around Ritch Temple’s cross-country course, adding 6.4 time faults on to his score. No one in the three-star division made the time.

Holder co-owns Comet with her husband Tom, whose recent work promotion facilitated their upcoming move to Palmetto, Ga., near Atlanta. The Holders sold their house in Mendota Heights, Minn., this spring, but their new barn in Georgia isn’t finished yet, so Becky is spending the summer at Bea Cassou’s farm in Pennsylvania while Tom travels back and forth to Africa for his employer, Delta Airlines.

“He just left for another trip to Africa, via Paris,” Becky said, laughing. “I just talked to him on the phone, and he said, ‘Oh, I’m going to go to the Louvre tomorrow. I’m so sorry you’re not here.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, I have to gallop today.’ I could have dropped everything for a day or two in Paris, but oh well! We’re trying to make the best of a strange in-between period and keep going.”

The Buck Leading The Blind

If anyone could make an advanced winner out of a blind horse, it would be this season’s eventing superstar, Buck Davidson. At least that’s what race horse breeder Alex Campbell was hoping for when he sent his horse L.A. Albert to Davidson without even meeting the Riegelsville, Pa., rider face-to-face.

“Albert,” a 13-year-old Thoroughbred gelding (Corporate Report—Hello Halo Hello), was partially blinded in one eye during a stable accident in Florida before Campbell sent him to Davidson in the spring of 2007.

The gelding is one of Campbell’s personal favorites, however, so he wanted to put him in a position to succeed in some career. So, after beginning as a flat racer and then moving into the show jumping arena with Aaron Vale and Donald Cheska, Albert successfully made the leap into the eventing world.

“Mr. Campbell loves his horses, and he wants them to succeed,” Davidson said. “He owns about 200 race horses and 40 show horses, and Albert’s his only event horse. So it’s definitely an honor for me to ride for a guy like him, who’s been so successful in the race world, and to have him think enough of me to ask me to ride his horse.”

At Maui Jim, Albert scored his first advanced win, moving up from a tie for eighth place after dressage to third after cross-country. A double-clear show jumping round on Sunday gave him the victory on a score of 37.4.

“I was saying to the guys at the barn before we went to Chicago, ‘You know, Albert’s due for a win,’ ” Davidson said. “And I’m so glad that he did win. I actually think there may be many more in him.”

Most riders would like to have that “if you think it, it will come” power, but Davidson’s past two years with the chestnut gelding weren’t exactly magical. “He’s not old, but I got him a bit late in life, and he was difficult at first because he was a bit of a combination of being too careful for the cross-country and not quite careful enough in the show jumping,” Davidson said.

Because of Albert’s somewhat-impaired sight, Davidson hesitated to push him the way he would his other upper-level horses.

“I always tried to baby him through everything—give him a little bit more time to see the corners and all that,” Davidson said. But after flip-flopping between the intermediate and advanced levels for almost two years while other horses in his barn excelled, he finally realized Albert could only be as good a horse as the ride he gave him.

“He’s such a good jumper, and he’s unbelievably fast,” he said. “He was a bit dodgy at corners and skinnies, and he’s really funny about water, because in his show jumping career he had to jump over it. But he’s over that now completely, and, to tell you the truth, it’s because I’ve just started to go a lot faster with him and stopped babying him. I ride him like a good horse, and at the last two events he’s just been awesome.”

Davidson plans to aim Albert for the Fair Hill CCI*** (Md.) this fall.