A new venue and new scoring guidelines can’t keep him from the blue ribbon at the $25,000 The Chronicle of the Horse/USHJA Chicago Hunter Derby.

When Jersey Boy put his head down and gave a good shake after jumping the first fence in the $25,000 The Chronicle of the Horse/USHJA Chicago Hunter Derby, his rider Jennifer Alfano momentarily questioned whether her round was going to go the way she’d planned.

But 11 fences later, when the announcer proclaimed that Jersey Boy had earned a score of 209—14 points ahead of the second-placed pair—it became evident that the winningest derby horse in the country was well on his way to another victory.

“I was a little worried that he was a little too fresh,” said Alfano with a laugh. “He shook his head a little bit, but then he sort of took a breath and settled in.”

Judges at the Aug. 30 feature at Annali Farm in Antioch, Ill., debuted a new scoring system, which rewards riders for taking higher option fences in the first round (see sidebar). Alfano took easy advantage of the new rules, earning baseline scores of 95 from judges Louise Serio and Geoff Teall and 91 from George Morris and Scott Williamson. They added 5 points from each set of judges for their option fences, as well as 7 and 6 style points, respectively.

“It’s nice to be rewarded for doing the higher jumps,” Alfano said. “That way if you have a little mistake somewhere, at least you feel like you can make it up.”

But it was no surprise that Jersey Boy, who led the 2008 ASG Software Solutions/ USHJA Hunter Derby Series standings and placed second at this year’s $100,000 Derby Finals the week before Chicago, didn’t commit any errors that warranted “making up for.”

“That’s an incredible partnership,” Teall said. “They have such tremendous trust in each other, which is so nice to watch. The field was difficult out there, and plenty of people had problems, but he always just jumps and makes it look easy.”

In the handy round, Alfano went for broke again with the 7-year-old Hanoverian gelding, owned by Susie Schoellkopf’s SBS Farms. They won the round by a margin of 13 points with scores of 91+9 and 93+8 for a total of 201.

“With Jersey Boy you can always show off a little bit in the handy,” said Alfano. “He’s great at turning, and on this particular course there were a lot of long gallops. He’s got such a big stride and is so scopey, so this was a really fun course on him.”

This was only Jersey Boy’s second derby on grass, but his overall winning margin of 35.5 points, on a score of 410, was an emphatic affirmation in favor of the footing.

“They really made it a special day,” Alfano said of the organizers, who hosted a brunch, charity auction, horseless horse show and other activities at the standalone event. “It’s a long way for us to go, but it was definitely worth the trip—win, lose or draw—because they did such a nice job.”

“It was an awesome class,” Teall concurred. “We so rarely get a standalone event in our sport, and it makes it so special.”

A Countryside Course

Annali Farm’s rolling, expansive jump field boasted plenty of challenges for the 35 starters. Show manager and course designer Bobby Murphy placed a jump within a dark copse of trees, set another off a tight turn from the rail, and forced riders to jump both square oxers and airy verticals angled uphill and downhill.

Flapping flags and a large pond with a fountain also distracted some horses who were already feeling cheeky in the unseasonably chilly August temperatures.

Five days of rain preceding the show made the footing outlook dicey, but riders stayed off the course, and the sun emerged just in time to dry it enough for the competition. Certain elements were eventually excluded from the course, such as the bank, just to be safe.

“Many of these horses aren’t used to up and down hills, and the course had some slope to it,” Serio said. “The terrain made it a little bit different, but as a judge I’m always for the riders. You’re always cheering for people to do the best they can.”

Several horses had unexpected problems, however. The majority occurred at the one-stride combinations, which jumped downhill in the first round and uphill in the handy. Caitlin Maloney’s Peron stopped out there, and Tina Judge and Trust Me had one refusal. Kelley Farmer also retired Clooney after a stop, and Caroline “Carl” Weeden fell from Croquet there.

But Alfano and Jersey Boy handled the double well, taking the higher option in both rounds, as though they were schooling over cavaletti.

“I think it got a little harder in the handy when you turned around and came the other way to it,” Alfano said. “But with him you don’t really have to worry about stuff like that, which is nice!”

Alfano did choose to take the lower options with her second horse, Kid Rock, a gray gelding owned by Bright Star 158 LLC, who was contesting his first derby, but Alfano piloted him to eighth place on a total score of 294. They had one rail in the handy round at the double combination.

“He’s only a first year horse,” she said. “I wasn’t planning on really being crazy. I just wanted to have a nice round to give him confidence in his first derby. He was great; I was really proud of him.”

Second At His Second

It was only the second career derby for Rush Weeden’s mount Balisto, but that didn’t prevent him from taking runner-up honors. The lanky, 8-year-old Belgian Warmblood usually competes in the equitation and jumper classes with his owner, Alec Bozorgi, of Lake Forest, Ill.

Weeden and his wife Carl, who finished fourth in the derby with Topsider, own Annali Farm. Carl serves on the advisory board of the Chicago Equestrians For A Cause organization, and she helped organize this year’s derby proceeds donation to the Chicago Children’s Memorial Hospital.

Last year’s Chicago derby was held at M.K. Priztker’s nearby Evergreen Farm, but Rush said his wife “volunteered him” to take the charity competition on this year after Pritzker announced she wasn’t hosting her annual grand prix.

“Bobby Murphy’s crew has definitely been hustling the past few weeks to get this place ready to horse show,” Rush said. “Everybody worked late and pulled together to make it go.”

With all the hustle and bustle in the lead-up, Balisto was almost left in the barn on derby day.

“We were planning to show him, but we had so much to do getting the grounds organized and ready for the event that we took him off the list,” Rush said. “But then on Thursday I thought, ‘You know, we’re doing a lot of work. We might as well enjoy it.’ I certainly wanted to do this class. I would have rather have been first myself, but I’ll take second!

“I was happy with the horse,” he continued. “He was a little bit nervous coming down the back trail to the ring, but for the first time I thought he really settled down more in the ring. He looked a little at the jump going toward the pond and the fountain, but overall he just felt solid as a rock.”

Balisto’s fluid first-round performance scored an 186.5 for fifth place, and Rush was able to improve on that mark in the handy round even though he erred on the side of caution more than once.

“I could have cut through the trees a little earlier, but I didn’t have that as my plan,” he said. “I saw a couple of people do that, but I wasn’t sure that my horse wouldn’t spook, so I took maybe a little bit of an easier option.”

He also chose the lower uphill in-and-out, unwilling to risk having a rail down. To make up points, however, he showcased Balisto’s hunt field suitability by galloping to the last three fences.

Last month Rush spent several weeks riding his jumpers on big grass fields in Calgary, Alta., with Ian Millar, so even though he’d been staying off his home turf all year to save it for the derby, he felt quite comfortable on the terrain.

“I enjoy these types of classes,” he said. “There’s nothing like jumping on grass. You can have some of your best riders and horses, but it can really throw them off because they’re so used to going on our artificial footing now and flat ground. It makes me concentrate maybe a little bit more than I would on sand.”