Rich Fellers is on a roll. The Oregon professional scored his third consecutive World Cup-qualifying win in the $50,000 Tourneau CSI-W on Feb. 8, during Week 3 of the HITS Desert Circuit in Thermal, Calif. Fellers’ string of wins dates back to November and the L.A. National CSI-W in Burbank, Calif. He then claimed the top check in the $50,000 Tournea CSI-W on Feb. 1, during Week 2 of the Desert Circuit.

All three wins came aboard Harry and Mollie Chapman’s Irish-bred stallion Flexible (Cruising—Flex), and put Fellers into the middle of a very hot race for the FEI World Cup Finals, held April 23-27 in Gothenburg, Sweden.

They aren’t bad results for a horse who missed 2 1⁄2 years of his career due to injury. “The vets told us he was finished,” said Fellers. “We were making plans to sell him back to Ireland to breed mares. But he recovered, miraculously.”

Fellers found Flexible, now 11, from breeder Edward Doyle in Ireland. The bay stallion doesn’t look like your average grand prix horse. He’s slightly built and stands only about 16 hands.

“Obviously he’s not a physical specimen, but he’s a great fighter,” said Fellers. “It just comes down to pure freaking guts and heart. He just tries so hard.

“Flexible is not only brave but also careful. He just doesn’t want to touch the jumps,” said Fellers.
Flexible has an explosive jump, which is sometimes a problem for Fellers.

“He jumps me loose,” said Fellers. “At my age I don’t have the strength and athleticism I had in my 20s, so I have to do some work.”

Fellers’ win earned him 20 World Cup points and put him in third place overall. Canadian Chris Pratt holds the top spot, though, which means Fellers is second in the standings among U.S. riders in the West Coast league, from which the top three are invited to the finals. The top three U.S. riders from the West will be invited to Sweden for the finals next spring.

Keri Potter is also campaigning for a trip to Sweden. She took the red ribbon on Feb. 8 with Rockford I. She was only a .10 seconds too slow to catch Flexible and was happy with the result.

“My horse jumps so big that I don’t think I could have changed anything,” said the Del Mar, Calif., rider. “I went as fast as I could, and he was just going higher and higher and higher.”

She laughed as she said, “I can’t really complain about that problem.”

Potter found Anthony D’Ambrosio’s course—set in new indoor arena on the Thermal showgrounds—very challenging. “All the fences were set at funny angles, and you really had to ride the right track to make sure the horses jumped clean,” she said. “It was a tricky, hard course that rode quite big.”

Potter got Rockford I from Pessoa Stables in Belgium, where she was riding at the time. “He was a sale horse in the barn that nobody really liked. He wasn’t that spectacular and didn’t jump that great, and really nobody looked at him,” Potter said.

He got passed down from Potter’s former husband Rodrigo Pessoa to one of the other riders. “One day I asked if I could ride him, and they said ‘Sure, why not?’ ”

Potter detected a lot of talent in the untried jumper and turned the horse into her special project. “I put in the time and effort, and he just kept getting better and better,” she said. “We do have a good bond, I have to say.”

John Pearce, who operates his Forest View Farms out of Stouffville, Ont., Canada, took Archie Bunker to the win in the $50,000 Purina Mills Grand Prix on Feb. 10, during Week 3 of the Desert Circuit.

Pearce hopes the Oldenburg gelding (Contender—Winea) will carry him all the way to the Olympics in Hong Kong this summer. “He’s been very successful since Day 1. He was young horse champion in Canada as a 6-year-old. He continued in his career with very few problems,” Pearce said.

That was the case until late last year, when the gelding began to have some trouble. “He ran into a wall for a few months after the [Spruce Meadows] Masters,” said Pearce. “I’ve worked a lot with him, just getting him to listen to me. He’s a much bigger-than-average horse, 1,600 pounds of solid muscle. He’s not an easy horse to maneuver, especially when you get into tight areas.”

Pearce wasn’t all that surprised when Archie Bunker hit that particular wall. “A lot of horses go through a stage between being young and becoming mature where they become very awkward, and I believe that Archie’s just getting over that,” he said. “He is getting handier, he is getting more responsive, he’s getting fitter and he’s building up more blood and more stamina. That comes along with training and maturity.”
Pearce thinks his gelding will be ready for the demands of the Olympics come summer and hopes the selection committee includes the pair on the Canadian team.

 Matt Hinton

Cross-training was the name of the game for Jenny Karazissis. When she heard about the new USHJA International Hunter Derby Classics, she knew Swoon would be the ideal horse for them. But in an unusual move, she used jumper classes to prepare him for the challenge.

Karazissis showed Swoon in the regular working hunter division during Week 2 of the HITS Desert Circuit and then, during Week 3, the week of the hunter derby, entered him in Level 2 and 3 jumper classes.

“I thought that would be a good way to let him see different kinds of jumps, jumps with no groundline, scary colors, that kind of thing. I tried to incorporate handy turns and some galloping, and it really paid off,” she said.

“On Tuesday, they had a Level 2 jumper class on the grand prix field, and it was more difficult than the hunter derby, but I thought it would be a good way to get him out on the field. And he handled it great; he’s really such a nice horse.”

The multi-division preparation paid off when she and Swoon took to the grand prix field under the lights on the evening of Feb. 10 for the $10,000 ASG Software Solutions/USHJA International Hunter Derby Classic. Round 1 asked the field of 27 to jump a typical classic course, then the top 12 returned for a handy course in which judges awarded bonus points for brilliance and handiness.

“He’s very brave. He doesn’t spook and he’s got a huge stride,” Karazissis said of Swoon. “I’m not afraid to gallop at a fence because I can trust that he’s going to stay off of it. With the size of his stride, I can make really tight turns even if it’s into a combination or line. I really felt like it would be a good class for him.”

Karazissis held first and second after Round 1, on Tonia Cook-Looker’s Aragon and Swoon, respectively. When Aragon dropped a rail in Round 2 and Karazissis really went for it on Swoon, the bay gelding took over the top place. Grand prix rider Richard Spooner rode Guns N Roses into third place.

Owner Eva Gonda rode Swoon in the amateur-owner hunter division in 2006, but she spent most of last year in Europe, showing jumpers. Karazissis was enlisted to keep Swoon in work at Gonda’s El Campeon Farm.

“When we heard about these classes happening this year, I really tried to prepare him for these events. The Gondas have been really supportive of my goals for that, and I’d like to thank them for that,” said Karazissis. “I was at an advantage since at El Campeon, they have so many different rings, big grass fields, and natural obstacles. I was able to make sure he was fit, in good shape, and exposed to all that.”

The course for the hunter derby took a few seasoned hunter campaigners by surprise, even in Round 1.

“The problem area was a combination early in the course. It was a bright blue-and-white picket combination,” Karazissis said. “After having done the jumpers with my horses, I knew my hunters could just canter right through it. But it wasn’t something you generally see in the hunter ring, so some horses had a little trouble with it.

“There were option jumps, where you could either jump 3’6″ or 4′. The judges were rewarding if you chose to do the harder option. And there were natural-type obstacles, like an airy snake jump and a wall with ivy. In the handy round, they even had a pile of rocks that was an option—you could jump them if you chose. And the handier you were, the more points you got.”

Karazissis plans to aim Swoon for the next USHJA International Hunter Derby Classic, to be held on March 15 during the HITS Desert Circuit finale and then possibly the ones held at Oaks Blenheim (Calif.) in March and at the Memorial Day Classic (Calif.) in May. “These classes are definitely a step in the right direction. I’m looking forward to continuing to go in them, and ultimately they’re hoping they’ll be 4’6″ and I’ll be so excited if that happens,” she said. 

Molly Sorge