After taking last year off for a serious illness, Adrienne Iorio is thrilled to be back in the saddle, and her intermediate, division 1, win at the Rocking Horse Winter I Horse Trials, Feb. 2-4 in Altoona, Fla., had special meaning.

“I’m very happy to be back in the tack,” said Iorio, 35, who preferred to keep the details of her illness private. “I missed the people more than anything. I went from being very competitive at events to just being happy to be back out there. I couldn’t stop smiling on cross-country.”

Iorio hadn’t competed Dromore Boy, a chestnut gelding she imported from England four years ago, at the intermediate level since the 2005 Radnor Hunt CCI** (Pa.). “I started riding again in June or July [of 2006],” she said. “I was still quite wobbly.”

Iorio competed the 9-year-old Irish Sport Horse by Old Town Boy at preliminary at Ocala (Fla.) and Poplar Place (Ga.), but Rocking Horse was her first intermediate event since her illness. “I hadn’t walked an intermediate course in quite a while, and my first walk I was a little bug-eyed,” she said. “But they were nice, solid fences and rode well. It was a really nice course to be my first intermediate back.”

While Iorio was ill, her groom Sarah Morton, who’d always wanted to ride in a one-star, competed the horse at preliminary in 2006, culminating at the Morven Park CCI* (Va.), where they finished 19th.

Iorio now hopes to compete Dromore Boy at the Ocala Horse Park CCI** (Fla.) in April. “He has such a wonderful, generous personality, and I’m very happy to have him helping me make my way back,” she said. “I’m thankful for all the helpful people who’ve been so supportive as I creep my way back into it,” she said. “It’s so nice to see everyone I missed so much.”

She hopes to eventually return to the advanced level. “I’m just taking it one day at a time, and we’ll see what happens,” she said. “I’m re-learning my balance.”

She now trains with Darren Chiacchia, who has been competing Iorio’s horse, Better I Do It, finishing fifth at the 2006 Fair Hill CCI*** (Md.).

For Iorio, the storms that ripped through central Florida didn’t affect the event too much, although when she woke up on Friday morning, at the farm she rents near Ocala, her horse van was in “a bit of a lake.”

The event was originally slated to start on Feb. 2, but much of that day was cancelled due to the lack of available medical personnel. The rides were re-scheduled, although the novice and training divisions ran as combined tests.

“[The weekend] was really stop and start, and no one knew quite where they were going, but on the whole everything worked out great,” said Iorio. “The footing was fantastic.”


Learning Together
Kerri Short has owned Fantasia, a 10-year-old, Westphalian mare, since the little bay was 3. “I broke her and got her going, and we’re learning together as we go,” said Short, 25, who won the intermediate rider division.

Short had never evented when she bought Fantasia (Fantastic Boy–Lovely Valentine). She was just looking for a good sport horse prospect and liked the look of the stallion and dam, who were both imported from Germany and living at a farm in New Brunswick.

“She was a typical 3-year-old–hadn’t done anything and no muscle, but she was a gorgeous mover,” said Short.

When Short, who has lived all over Canada, moved to New Brunswick to attend university, she started riding at Rohirrim Farm, which is primarily an eventing barn, so Short sampled the sport.

“Once I did my first beginner novice course, I said, ‘This is the most fun ever; this is what I want to do,’ ” she said.

She now trains with Leslie Law and Lesley Grant and planned to move up to advanced in February. She was thrilled to win the intermediate to start her season.

“It felt great,” she said. “I’ve had a lot of times where I’ve had a chance to do well and made mistakes and would be second or third,” she said. “There’s more people in the States, so it’s more exciting when you win. I knew it was there and I could do it; it was just a matter of getting things to come together. Hopefully, it’s a great start to a great year.”

Short said Fantasia loves cross-country. “She has a good work ethic and is not marish,” said Short. “She’s been pretty easy to bring up the levels–no problems with ditches or water or anything technical, just a matter of getting her straight on her lines. She’s just fun.”

Although the mare stands just 15.2 hands, Short said she doesn’t ride like a small horse. “She has a ton of scope and power; you never feel like she’s too little to get over the jumps,” she said. “And she moves like a big horse. She has really big ears and has been called a donkey,” she added with a laugh. “But I figure, if she can jump like that, she can look as much like a donkey as she wants.”


Born Under The Same Sign
Similarly, Debbie Adams can’t say enough about her Kheops Du Quesnay, winner of intermediate, division 4. “This is the best horse I’ve sat on, by far,” she said. “I’m really excited about him; he’s an amazing horse.”

She found him 21�2 years ago, as a 6-year-old, in France. “I’d never bought a horse bred for jumping; I’d always had horses off the track, but I followed the bloodlines [for jumping], and it’s a pretty exciting thing to do,” she said. “He has an awful lot of natural talent, and it’s a very different process [than a horse off the track].”

The 9-year-old, Selle Fran�ais gelding is by Quouglof Rouge, a former grand prix show jumper in France, out of Stella Du Quesnay. Since “no one can pronounce any part of his name,” Adams simply calls him “K.”

“I’m probably as in love with this horse as any 12-year-old kid you could interview; it’s almost embarrassing,” said Adams, who won her division’s dressage at Rocking Horse. “He has an amazing heart. If he understands the job and can be made comfortable in the job, he’ll never let you down.”

When Adams saw him in France, he was living in a 16th century stone church. The owners had converted a monastery into their residence and the church was their barn. Adam’s only hesitation when she first saw him was his size, since he stands 17.2 hands, and she’s “on the low side of 5’6″ and 115 pounds.” But she’s found that he’s very elastic.

“He’s a dream horse for me–to have a horse like this is a dream at any point in your life,” she added. “There’s not one day I wake up not really excited to work with him.” Adams plans to compete him at the Jersey Fresh CCI*** (N.J.) this spring.

When his papers arrived from France, Adams discovered something else–they share the same birthday. “[Our birthday] falls on Rolex weekend every year–not that I’m being superstitious, but it can’t hurt,” she said with a laugh.

Although Adams winters in Ocala, Fla., her home base is in Medford, N.J. Two other intermediate winners, Buck Davidson and U.S. Eventing Association 2006 Young Rider of the Year, Emilee Libby, also hail from New Jersey.


An Amazing Crew
When tornadoes touched down all around central Florida overnight on Feb. 1, the Rocking Horse schedule was thrown into orbit–for the second consecutive year.

“It was a comedy of errors all weekend,” said organizer Alice Andrews, who received a call from secretary Rick Dunkerton at 4 a.m. Friday. “We’d left the [competitors’] packets in a tent, and they went flying everywhere.”

The emergency personnel arrived first thing in the morning but had to leave after two hours for search-and-rescue work. So with no EMTs, the show had to stop for the day, and Andrews and president of the ground jury, Gretchen Butts, set about re-scheduling ride times for 460 people in seven rings.

“It came down to finding officials and daylight,” said Andrews. “The feat was getting enough dressage judges back for Saturday.”

Debbie Adams offered to judge after she show jumped, and Susan White came from Orlando. Kathy Daily and Cheryl Holekamp also stepped in at the last minute, and Butts called U.S. Equestrian Federation officials to get a waiver to allow the technical delegate to judge the show jumping.

“Alice and her whole crew are amazing,” said Adams. “It almost doesn’t matter what happens going into the event, they always pull it off. She finds a way to make it work.”

Because of the dressage schedule, they weren’t able to run novice and training level cross-country, but they opened the course up to riders the day after the event.

“You spend so much time getting it together and you want everyone to have fun and enjoy being here,” said Andrews. “It was hard not to let everyone run cross-country, but we tried as hard as we could.”

“We depend on them, and they always come through, and they should know how grateful the competitors are,” said Adams.

When the competition resumed on Saturday, there was a half-hour delay for lightning. “I said, ‘I can’t believe this,’ ” said Andrews. Likewise, last year’s event suffered from torrential rains. “I think I’m going to change my date,” said Andrews with a laugh.

But she admitted the situation could have been much worse–one of the tornadoes touched down just 3 miles from the show facility.


Beth Rasin