In the spirit of celebrating the event’s 15th anniversary, Jersey Fresh International Three-Day Event organizers have decided to change the competitor experience by naming Mark Phillips as the new cross-country course designer for 2017.
“Each year for the last few years, we’ve been trying every year to do something a little new—a little different,” said event organizer Jane Cory. “Some things are more visible; some things are less visible.”
“It is considered part of a continuum of changes and improvements that we’ve been making to the event over the last three years,” added Jersey Fresh International press officer Lisa Mackintosh. “A lot of those changes have been on the VIP accommodations, the vendor accommodations. You know, giving the event more of a true three-star look and feel. It was now time to kind of make a change and focus on the equestrians.”
Phillips replaces John Williams, who’s designed the Jersey Fresh course for 14 years, since its inception. Jersey Fresh runs a CCI***, CIC***, CCI** and CIC** at the New Jersey Horse Park in Allentown.
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“[John]’s done a fabulous job. I think especially in the last five or six years, the courses have gotten better and better and better,” said Cory. “But things don’t stay the same forever, so it seemed like a good change to make.”
The Jersey Fresh International Organizing Committee announced last August that they expanded the cross-country course. With this addition and the influence of Phillips, Cory hopes that this year’s Jersey Fresh International Event, held May 10-14, will give riders something new and different from what they’ve come to expect.
“The biggest thing [Phillips] is going to do is take advantage of the fact that we do have the land,” said Cory. “This is the first year we’ve actually been able to use it. So having that, it allows him to then make the courses be more open and flowing then they’ve been able to be in the past because of the limitation of the space that we had before.”
