With seven stitches in his chin, Phillip Dutton may have looked like the Red Hills CIC***W got the better of him, but nothing could be further from the truth.

Dutton not only took the title from defending champion Darren Chiacchia, but he also placed third (with Connaught) and sixth (with Nova Top) and guided his students to three spots in the top 10. Dutton, never minding the injury from smacking his chin on Connaught’s head at the coffin on cross-country, overwhelmingly dominated the event in Tallahassee, Fla., March 11-13.

Dutton’s win, before the weekend-long crowd of 40,000 spectators, came aboard The Foreman, a 9-year-old, bay gelding who just keeps showing more and more promise.

“Phillip just loves that horse and really has transformed him,” said owner Annie Jones. “He’s always believed in him, and he’s making a believer out of me.”

The Foreman placed second in dressage, 5.6 penalties behind Chiacchia and Windfall, and steadily moved toward the lead, with the division’s only clear cross-country round and just one lowered rail in show jumping.

Dutton and Chiacchia faced off against each other last year in this World Cup qualifier, but Chiacchia and Timothy Holekamp’s Windfall won that match, just ahead of Dutton on Nova Top, who had won the year before. This year, Chiacchia had one rail to spare in show jumping, but he pulled two, still a good score for the day, since most horses took down three or four.

“The cross-country here is one of the more demanding courses, and it showed a bit today,” Chiacchia said after show jumping.

But he wasn’t too disappointed with the strong performance of his 2004 Olympic team bronze-medal partner, who’d only had one advanced run before Red Hills this year.

“He was phenomenal [on cross-country],” he said. “He was a machine. He knows his job and knows it well. He’s had a busy past few years, so I’ve been picking and choosing just the best competitions to run him at this year. But the flip side of that is you get the opportunity to get a little rusty.”

The top two horses, separated by just .2 penalties, couldn’t be more different in type or background. In 2000, when Windfall was Ingrid Klimke’s alternate for the German Olympic team, The Foreman (registered with The Jockey Club as Four Across) was still racing, rather unsuccessfully, in $2,500 claiming races.

Windfall, a Trakehner stallion, always excels in the dressage, but he isn’t designed to be as quick across the country as his Thoroughbred counterpart, who raced at Charles Town (W.Va.) before Dutton and Jones found him.

While The Foreman’s dressage keeps improving, he has already proven that he specializes in cross-country–and especially speed across country. At Red Hills, he was the only horse to make the time, a feat he also accomplished when he won the Fair Hill CCI*** (Md.) last October.

This year The Foreman will be making his first start at the Rolex Kentucky CCI****. Dutton will also be bringing veterans Nova Top and Hannigan, while Connaught will run the CCI***s at Foxhall (Ga.) and Jersey Fresh (N.J.).

“I’m quite excited about him in general,” said Dutton of his rising star.

Nova Top was Dutton’s Olympic mount in Athens last August. “I haven’t quite gotten him right since Athens yet,” said Dutton. “Perhaps I have not been as firm in my training with him because he went to the Olympics, and I was a little star-struck with him.”

But he was especially impressed with Connaught at Red Hills, as the 12-year-old, Irish-bred gelding jumped one of only three clear show jumping rounds. The other two were Dutton’s students Jan Thompson, who placed fourth with Waterfront, and Bonnie Mosser, who was seventh with Jenga. And his student Heidi White also picked up just 1 time penalty, on Northern Spy.

This year, Dutton wants to travel to Malmo, Sweden, for the FEI World Cup Final, Aug. 11-14. “But I’m not sure The Foreman is the horse [to take],” he said.

If Dutton qualifies as one of the five Australian riders eligible, he’ll be able to select which horse he takes.

The Foreman may not be his choice since, despite his accomplished resume–which also includes a fourth place at the Fair Hill CCI*** in 2003 and a CCI** win at Bromont (Canada) in 2003–he remains a mental challenge. “I’m always dealing with his nervousness,” said Dutton. “Any time there’s a big atmosphere, he’s worried.”

And this year’s redesign of the cross-country course, with a final warm-up in the center of the spectators’ field and between galloping lanes, didn’t help to relax him.

“He wasn’t too easy at the start box. But I can’t expect them to build the event around my horse,” Dutton added with a laugh.

But once on course, “Chip” showed his supreme athleticism and rideability.

“He has a lot of speed, and through experience, I can utilize that,” said Dutton. “When I go fast, he doesn’t lose his rideability. In fact, I could have gone faster.”

Dutton liked the changes to Capt. Mark Phillips’ cross-country course, which included the new start. “There were three fences to get you going, where as before it was twisty and turny early on,” he said.

And he liked the challenge of the show jumping course. “It was a very tough course, one of the toughest I’ve seen,” he said. “It was big and square with a lot of tough turns and rollbacks. It’s as difficult as you’ll see, but that’s the way the sport’s going, so it was good for us. There’s no point going to the World Cup if you can’t jump here.”

Third Time’s A Charm

Cricket Worthen had a lot of appreciation for Tommy at the end of the weekend at Red Hills. “This is the first time I’ve had three advanced horses, and thank god I brought three because I lost one every day,” she said with a laugh.

Worthen, a professional from Landrum, S.C., was blown out of the dressage arena when Let It Rain acted up on Friday in the CIC division. Then, on Saturday, Broadstone Whitehall, whom she rode at last year’s Rolex Kentucky CCI****, took exception to sculptures of dogs beneath fence 20, the Lazy Daze Hammock.

“As I came to the fence, his head got lower and lower, and then he spooked, and I hit the dirt before I knew what had happened,” she said. “He was afraid of the dogs under the jump. The people who caught him couldn’t even get him back up the hill [close to the fence].”

But Tommy didn’t put a foot wrong in Worthen’s second advanced start with him. After seeing a videotape, she imported him from Australia, where he’d done two advanced events, but three of her four buyers backed out at the last minute, once he was already on the plane, so now Worthen has to sell him to pay off her debt.

“I wanted to at least get one advanced in before I said he was for sale,” she said. “He’s a real sweetheart, the kindest horse. You could leave him in the barn aisle and say, ‘Stay Tommy,’ and he would stay there all day.”

Since she doesn’t know the 12-year-old chestnut well, Worthen said she was more nervous than usual before setting out on cross-country. “It was a big course for our second time together,” she said. “I didn’t push him, but he just cruised around.”

Worthen blamed herself for the three rails they lowered in show jumping, but when overnight leader Kristen Bond pulled 10 rails on Diablo Centimo, Worthen reclaimed the lead she’d established in dressage.

Greystone Is Back

It’s not often that the Pakistani national anthem plays at a U.S. event, but that’s exactly what happened when Nadeem Noon won the CIC** over 54 riders. Noon, who came to the United States 20 years ago as a student, moved from third place into the lead when he and Greystone V posted the fastest cross-country time, finishing just 5 seconds slow.

Greystone, a 14-year-old Irish Sport Horse, won the 2000 Bromont CCI* (Canada) and competed in the 2002 Fair Hill CCI***. He is the first upper-level horse for Noon, of Bloomington, Ind., but last year a stress fracture in his hock sidelined him for nine months.

Noon trains as often as he can with Dutton, making the 12-hour drive to Pennsylvania two or three times a year and working with him over the winter in Aiken, S.C. But his riding career had a more unconventional beginning, as he learned to ride in Pakistan, playing polo and hunting wild boar. Now he and his wife, Sherry, run Up And Over Stables, where Noon teaches and trains.

“I owe him everything,” said Noon of the horse he’s ridden for six years, owned by Patti Grim. “We’re both pretty obstinate, so we have to be a bit diplomatic with each other. He knows he’s the king. He has lots of presence and bosses the other horses around.”