The Four By Fours team from Area X rumbled across the beautiful Sonoita, Ariz., countryside to claim the novice-level The Chronicle of the Horse/ Western Adult Team Challenge at the Grass Ridge Horse Trials, Oct. 16-17. The team, consisting of Alicia Murray, Joanne McGovern, Tracey Montgomery and Suzanne Higgins, scored an emotional victory for a closely knit group of women who train together with Barbara Crabo at Four Peaks Farm in Scottsdale, Ariz.

The win was particularly poignant for Montgomery, 43, whose riding has served as a vital lifeline to help her through a tragic period in her life. In the last seven years, Montgomery and her husband, Thomas, lost two infant children, as well as her mother. Devastated by these tragedies, Tracey wasn’t allowed to slip into the accompanying darkness. Thomas bought her a horse after the death of their first child and encouraged her to go on.

“I want to thank Thomas for his patience and support. He got me back into riding because he understood,” she said. “At that time we boarded the horses within walking distance of our house, and he’d drag me out of bed and tell me to take care of my horses, that I had responsibilities. He’s a retired marine, and his structure, the black and white of his life, pulled me through some of the darkest hours. He’s my strength, my anchor.”

They are now parents of 3-year-old twins Olivia and Wyatt.

Her team’s victory at Grass Ridge elicited a visceral reaction in Tracey, bringing herself and her teammates to tears. “This has been a long time coming,” she said joyfully clinging to Murray, and later their team trophy, after discovering they’d won.

Tracey, of Cave Creek, Ariz., rode her 7-year-old, pinto Irish Sport Horse, Gulliver, to provide the third score for the team. “This is beyond my wildest expectations,” said the mortgage banking firm marketing director, who lost 110 pounds in the last year following gastric bypass surgery. “I’m so proud of my friends. I’m so glad they’re willing to put up with me!”

Murray, 29, returned to Scottsdale with not only the ATC blue ribbon and cooler, but also the individual open novice title–on a horse she’d only ridden four times before the event. When Murray’s horse was sidelined with white line disease, Crabo gave her the ride on her 6-year-old, Swedish Warmblood-Thoroughbred, Victoria’s Electra. The mare was bred by Crabo’s father-in-law, Bo Crabo.

They added 1.6 cross-country time penalties onto their dressage score of 32.5 to earn their double blues. “She has the most suspension in her trot, so dressage is really fun,” said Murray, who works in franchise finance for General Electric. “I think she has the most powerful jump I’ve ever sat on!”

Murray is relatively new to Four Peaks, having trained with Dorie Vlatten-Schmitz and Dale Irwin, and was appreciative of the chance to be a part of the team and for the ride on Electra. “This was the first time I’ve ever been on a team. They were so supportive; it’s much different than competing by yourself,” she said. “I fully expected to be the drop score for the team!”

McGovern added only .4 time penalties cross-country for a final score of 40.4 in her first novice event in five years. She rode her 11-year-old, off-the-track Thoroughbred gelding, Golli Wog, who she started in beginner novice this year after a little karmic intervention got her back into eventing.

“I was out trail riding, thinking that I wanted to get back into it but that I didn’t know any trainers in the area, when a truck with a USEA symbol on the window went by,” she said. “After I got back to the barn, I drove around until I found the truck, which belonged to Barb. That was at the beginning of this year. Barb has just been great; she’s what’s made the difference.”

McGovern, 53, works as a marketing director for Agate, a steel company that manufactures barns and covered arenas. The company has supported her riding by providing time off and has even helped with entry fees.

Grass Ridge was also the first novice for Suzanne Higgins and her 6-year-old, homebred Oldenburg gelding, Irazu, who’d had two previous beginner novice outings. Irazu, out of her Anglo-Trakehner mare, is by the Oldenburg stallion, Ideal.

“I realized the horses I had at the time weren’t going to go anywhere, and if I wanted one that would, I’d have to breed one because I couldn’t afford to buy one,” said Higgins, 40, a small animal veterinarian from Phoenix, Ariz. “This is the realization of a dream that started eight years ago.

“He has a really great mind. Anything you put him at, he pretty much just goes. It’s pretty neat to have a horse like that because the ones I had before weren’t!” she said with a laugh.

Changing Gears

Sara Holden, 26, used to compete her 16-year-old, off-the-track Thoroughbred, Scirocco, in the jumpers, but a transition to the eventing world reaped rewards at Grass Ridge. In their third outing at the level, the accountant from Tucson, Ariz., led her teammates Renee Ochsner, Todd Blaugrund and Leslie Waters to the training level ATC victory, with only 6 cross-country time penalties added to their dressage score of 46.0.

Holden, who trains with Liz Atkins, has had the gelding for 10 years. “Dressage is not really our strong suit–I think we moved up four slots after stadium,” she said. “I tell him it’s only two minutes of his life, and he can deal with it!”

Ochsner and Costiano Del Rio, her 17.3-hand, 7-year-old Holsteiner-Thoroughbred, finished close behind Holden with a 53.9, despite a weekend of minor mishaps.

During show jumping, they added at a fence, dropping a rail, and she finished the rest of the course without stirrups. In the cross-country warm-up, her frisky gelding fell on his face during a spurt of bucking after a fence. After pulling themselves back together to go out on course, they had to avoid a truck in their path right before the sixth fence.

The technical delegate removed some of their time penalties as a result of the disturbance, and they finished without further catastrophe. “Then I started untacking after cross-country and realized I had a broken rib from the fall in warm-up!” said Ochsner, who was donning an ice pack under her safety vest, which was doubling as a compression bandage.

She’s had “Costy” since he was 3. “He likes to work, and things are clicking now so it’s really neat to see,” said Ochsner, who also trains with Atkins for show jumping.

Her cross-country trainer is James Atkinson, who did much of the design and construction of the Grass Ridge course, which drew universal praise from riders. The creative, well-constructed fences were challenging yet inviting, and the aeration work done to the soil provided nice footing.

Blaugrund was a big fan of the course, having brought his recently acquired 12-year-old, 17.3-hand Irish Sport Horse, Irish Elvis, to Sonoita from El Paso, Texas, for their first competition together. They added 13.6 cross-country time penalties to their dressage score of 48.5.

“I’m not very good in dressage, but he was good,” he admitted with a chuckle. “On cross-country, at first he was pulling a lot and trying to go too fast, but by the fifth fence he settled down and went really slow. But I’d rather him be slow than go the speed he wanted to go.”

Blaugrund has only had the horse, who competed at intermediate in Ireland, for six months and plans a few more training runs before moving up to preliminary. The 34-year-old trains with his fianc饬 Canadian event rider Amanda Vines.

The other Irish component of the team, Thomas O’Malley, an 8-year-old Irish Draft, owned by Waters, had an inauspicious end to the competition, flipping over the second show jumping fence. He spent the rest of the show resting a sore back at a nearby farm. The Irish Wolfhound, Logan, took his place in the awards ceremony.

“At 16.3 hands and 1,400 or 1,500 pounds, he’s not the most athletic, but he’s a pet and shares a beer and a bag of Doritos,” said Waters, of Thomas O’Malley. “He’s not going anywhere, but it might be time to consider a career change. Pulling a cart might be good!”

War Of Attrition

Despite the lovely course, the turnout for the preliminary ATC, in particular, was weak with only two three-person teams vying for the coveted Chronicle coolers. Of those six competitors, three were eliminated, but to allow for team placings, organizers awarded 500 penalties in lieu of elimination. The winning team therefore only had two riders, Alice Sarno and Laura Borghesani, complete the competition, with Susan Jellum and Alex eliminated on cross-country.

Sarno and Nita Heeter’s 9-year-old Thoroughbred, El Capitan, also secured second place individually in his second competition at that level. The former race horse is for sale because Heeter’s daughter Rachel, his former rider, is attending college.

“I was very pleased with him in dressage. He’s a long, tall horse that doesn’t think he should get round that easily, but he was very relaxed this test,” said Sarno, a trainer out of Santa Rita Stables in Phoenix. “In stadium, he got a little fresh and a little playful, but I was very pleased. I loved the cross-country course. They did a beautiful job.”

Borghesani, Sarno’s assistant trainer, contributed the second team score with her 11-year-old, Thoroughbred gelding, Brave Highlander. “Stadium was pretty much carnage for everybody. It caught a lot of horses off guard,” she said, having racked up 41 penalties in the phase. “Cross-country was pretty cool. I’d never been there before, and there were a lot of up and down fences–banks are something I really wanted to work on.”

Planning to do her first one-star at Galway Downs (Calif.), Borghesani appreciated having the opportunity to work on the “down questions,” which she called one of her biggest issues. “There were really nice, long gallop stretches on the course, too, and we’re not used to seeing that where we are,” she added.

With a background in saddle seat, Borghesani began riding with Sarno about six years ago, after a 10-year hiatus. Now, in addition to her job as Sarno’s assistant, she is applying her master’s degree in exercise physiology to work as an equine therapist.