Andrea Leatherman was just like any other eventing teenager, searching the shedrows of the Charles Town Race Track (W.Va.) with a few thousand dollars she’d saved tucked tightly in her pocket, on the prowl for a good looking racehorse in need of a new job.

She found Mensa (registered name Marissa G), who had just the right look for a resale project—a bay gelding with a cute face, a little bit of chrome, a sensible brain, and a good, athletic walk. She was 18 and Mensa was 5.

She planned to make him up and sell him for enough money to buy “a good horse.” Fast-forward eight years, and Mensa is, in fact, that good horse. As Leather-man developed him through the levels, she discovered that he had a cat-like jump and the heart of a lion.

He became her first upper-level horse, and they matured together into the winners of the Jersey Fresh CCI*** on May 11-15 in Allen-town, N.J. Leatherman and Mensa (Colonial Affair—Fire The Secretary) were in fifth after dressage but moved up to the lead with a double-clean cross-country—one of just four double-clean performances in the division.

“I wanted to start off kind of quiet and make sure that he was riding well, and then at the end, I could kind of kick and make up time. We did just that. Everything rode just like I was planning,” Leatherman said.

“At 6 minutes [into the 10-minute course], I was still 20 seconds down on the time. He’s fast, but he’s not a strong horse to ride at all. I figured that if I was down on the first half of the course, I could kick on for the last two gallop stretches and make up time. I’ve never kicked him before, because he’s so fast, and on the shorter courses you don’t have to kick him. So, I kicked him, and I was like ‘Whoa, there’s that gear!’ ”

John Williams designed a course that made the CCI*** anything but a dressage competition. Alexandra Slusher and Doug Payne—in first and second after dressage—jumped clean but collected time penalties in the double digits to drop down the standings.

Of 17 cross-country starters, three retired on course after refusals, and five picked up jumping penal-ties. The bogey spot of the division was a brush arrowhead coming out of the first water, where six riders ran into problems.  

Just Making Sure

The foot speed that was key for Leather-man and Mensa on cross-country also came into play in show jumping. Sally Ike’s course proved very tough, with a tight time allowed. Leatherman went into show jumping with Nina Ligon just 0.6 points behind. Ligon and Fern-hill Fearless gave her a slim margin of error by jumping clean but with 5 time penalties.

“Before I went in, [trainer and boy-friend Buck Davidson] told me that I had a rail in hand. I jumped the second-to-last fence and I was clean, so I kind of thought, ‘Whew.’ But then I thought, ‘Wait! Time’s hard to make!’ So, I kicked him on, and I’m glad I did because it was so close,” Leatherman said.

In fact, she also finished with 5 time faults. “I just wanted to stay relaxed,” she added. “He’s a great horse, and if I give him a good ride, he wants to leave the rails up. Going into [the show jumping], I was just so thrilled with how cross-country went that that’s what I really came here to accomplish. Before I even knew the time, I was just thrilled that I’d had a clear round and had done the best I could. When I heard that the time was good, it was icing on the cake.” Leatherman and Mensa moved up to advanced two years ago, and they placed sixth in the 2009 Bromont CCI*** (Que.) after Leatherman fell off at the Jersey Fresh CCI***.

In July of 2010, Leatherman was kicked by a horse she was jogging, breaking some ribs and lacerating her liver. By the time she was recovered, the fall season was over. This spring, Leatherman and Mensa won a division of advanced at Poplar Place Farm March (Ga.), and Leather-man had flirted with the idea of entering the Rolex Kentucky CCI****.

“I thought, for my education, it was probably better to come to another three-star, because my three-star record had been kind of shoddy. He’s a great horse, and he’s ready for a four-star, but I knew it was better for me to come and try to do well at a three-star first. I did exactly what I wanted to do,” she said. Leatherman, who graduated from the University of South Carolina in 2007, is from Rock Hill, S.C., but now lives in Riegelsville, Pa., with Davidson and works out of his farm. She’s aiming for her first Fair Hill CCI*** (Md.) this fall.

“I haven’t done Fair Hill yet, so that kind of makes sense, since it’s close. I should probably do that before I get too excited and spend crazy amounts of money to go somewhere else,” she said.

Meeting In The Middle

Will Faudree, on the other hand, used a win in the Jersey Fresh CIC*** as a final prep for a trip abroad. He’s got the Luh-mühlen CCI**** (Germany) in June on the schedule for Pawlow, and winning the CIC*** was a welcome sign they’re ready. Faudree and Pawlow had the distinction of being the only combination in the CIC*** and CCI*** to put in a double-clear show jumping round, which moved them up from third to first.

Tiana Coudray, who had been leading, had three rails to drop to second. Faudree credits his other CIC*** ride, Andromaque, who finished sixth, for Pawlow’s clean go.

“In knowing that the time was so tight, I started very quickly on her, and she got a bit flat. I was putting the time above the quality of the canter that I had,” he said.

Andro-maque finished with no time penalties but two rails.

“When I went in on Pawlow, I knew I needed to go quickly and make good turns, but I also needed to stay slow in my mind, get in a rhythm and refresh the canter. That’s what I did, and he jumped super,” Faudree said.

Faudree and Pawlow finished 15th in the 2010 Rolex Kentucky CCI****, but a minor injury later that year took them out of the running for the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games team. The injury also delayed Pawlow’s conditioning schedule enough that Faudree decided to aim for Luhmühlen this spring rather than Rolex Kentucky. The Irish Thoroughbred (Marcuzzi—BC Illusion) came to Faudree’s barn in Hoffman, N.C., in the summer of 2007.

“He’s been through a bunch of different barns and riders, both in the United Kingdom and here in the States. He’s a very quirky horse,” said Faudree, who evented Pawlow through the intermediate level, trying to sell him the whole time, before current owner Jennifer Mosing bought him in March 2009.

Faudree and his groom, Natalie Varcoe- Cocks, have found ways to accommodate Pawlow’s eccentricities both on the ground and in the saddle.

“You cannot clip him. He’s put a few people in the hospital over it,” Faudree said. “How Nat can make him look as beautiful as she does is amazing. We’ve accepted him for who he is and haven’t tried to change him. We know that we’re not going to. We just meet him in the middle. “I have a great partnership with him. I always say I have a pact with him. I don’t ever ask him to come to my side of the fence, and I don’t ever go to his side, but we sit in the middle and have a conversation,” Faudree continued.

Smart Move Sweeps CCI**

Saturday wasn’t a good day for the dressage leaders in the CCI**. Phillip Dutton won the dressage with Ben, but as one of the first pairs on the cross-country, they fell at the first water jump. Then, Kim Severson—who was third after dressage—retired Wiley Post on course after a few stops. It was up to Jessica Phoenix on Pava-rotti to inherit the lead, since she’d been second in the dressage and jumped the first half of the CCI** course with no penalties.

But Pavarotti had squeaked by over a few of the fences, and the ground jury didn’t like what they were seeing. After Pavarotti hung a leg over the coffin at 11ABC, the ground jury stopped them on course before the 13th jump and eliminated them. (See sidebar, p. 34) So when Lisa Marie Ferguson and Smart Move jumped around with a double-clear trip, they grabbed the lead.

“I was thrilled with my horse, and unfortunately, other people didn’t have as successful a day,” Fergusson said.

“It surprised me to see the results. But I find that when you focus on your horse and your ride, after cross-country, you don’t really know what’s happening until the end of the day.” They came out the next day without a rail in hand over Caitlin Silliman and Catch A Star, but “Smarty” left all the poles up to win.

“He’s a great show jumper, so I wasn’t nervous,” Fergusson said. “I had Phillip [Dutton] helping me in warm-up, and he told me how to ride the course. Smarty is a very good show jumper, and it’s just nice when the plan works.”

The 7-year-old Welsh Sport Horse (Brynarian Brenin Ap Maldwyn—Dream Contessa) gelding and Fergusson, Van-couver, B.C., won the CIC** at Fair Hill (Md.) in April and placed second in an intermediate division at the Ocala Horse Properties International (Fla.) earlier in the year. But Fergusson still isn’t sure she’ll try for the Pan American Games. “He’s young, and I don’t want to rush him,” she said.

“I’d like to develop him and see what he decides he wants to do. He’s going to sit in a field for six weeks first. Then I’ll pull him out and reevaluate.” Smarty is by the same stallion as Fergusson’s first advanced horse, Uni Griffon.

Though Uni died after completing the Maui Jim Horse Trials (Ill.) in 2009, Fergusson now owns another horse by the same stallion and one full brother. “They are super willing and really forward, which is a nice combination,” Fergusson said. “They’re super cool horses. They love to jump, and they especially love to run and jump. They tend to be really sound, and they’re very personable.”

Fergusson spent the winter in the living quarters of her horse trailer in Wellington, Fla. She worked with Betsy Steiner in dressage and Frankie Chesler for show jumping. When she came north for the competition season, she started training with Dutton. “He’s a really great match for this horse,” Fergusson said.

“He’s about train-ing the horses to understand their jobs and to do it to the best of their abilities and to produce riders that can help the horses but also stay out of their way. And let’s face it, there’s not a better cross-country rider in this country!” Silliman, 21, has ridden Catch A Star, an 11-year-old Holsteiner (Casi—Star Of History, Maxistar) mare, since last August, and she moved up to second from seventh on the strength of her jumping phases.

“She’s just a cross-country machine,” she said. “I have to give so much credit to her old owner, Rachel Dwyer, for making her that way. This was the first round I’ve had where I felt like we were spot-on everywhere. She’s very bold. She’s quick but not strong, and she loves to gallop and jump out of stride.”

Silliman works for Boyd Martin in West Grove, Pa., and Aiken, S.C. But she started out working for the other Martin, Boyd’s wife and Grand Prix dressage rider Silva. “I got lucky because it was when she was pretty new over here still,” Silliman said.

“I had started riding with Boyd, and I took some lessons with her. She didn’t have much help then either, and I ended up going to dressage shows and grooming for her.”

After about a year with Silva, Silliman started working for Boyd. But she still appreciates the time she spent in the little white ring. “It was so huge for my riding to spend all this time working on the flat,” Silli-man said.

“I owe Silva so much credit. She taught me on her Grand Prix horses, and it was such a good experience.”  

Roquefort Rocks In CIC**

Rebecca Howard and Roquefort’s partnership hasn’t always gone as smoothly as it did during the Jersey Fresh CIC**. There, the pair won the division by adding just time penalties to their score. But just over a year ago, Howard was recovering from fractured ribs, two broken collarbones and a punctured lung after Roquefort had a rotational fall in the advanced division at Pine Top Horse Trials (Ga.) on Feb. 28.

“He and I have had some tough luck together. We haven’t really been able to get on a rhythm. I got him, and then he got hurt. Then I got him going again, and I got hurt. I feel like we haven’t put together a whole season just because of bad luck. So I’m hoping that this year we get to keep going,” Howard said.

The pair won the dressage, and though Roquefort added 8.8 cross- country time penalties, he stayed in the lead. “The course was great,” Howard said.

“There was lots of galloping, and he jumped super. He was very relaxed in the warm-up, which helped a lot. Some-times he gets wound up, and it takes him the first few fences to get focused, but he went right out of the box pretty straight and settled in. He jumped big into a few of the waters, but he was good.

“He’s not a full Thoroughbred horse, so you have to stay on a good rhythm. That’s how he makes the time. He’s a good galloper, but he’s got to keep on going, and he did,” added Howard.

The worst fall of the day occurred in the CIC**, when Shannon Baker and Cordonelli fell over the log oxer before the Jersey Fresh water complex. Both walked away, but the frangible pin on the oxer needed replacing.

Howard, Norwood, N.C., was on course when the fall occurred, and she was held for about 15 minutes.

“I’ve actually never been held before,” Howard said. “I was OK—I was just trying to think about the procedure of it.”

The next day, Roquefort jumped one of only five faultless show jumping rounds to secure the win. “The course was interesting,” said Howard.

“It was pretty much all related distances, so you really had to make a decision on your line. That works out well for me, because I sometimes struggle to find a rhythm on that horse, and that helped me stick to it.”

Howard is aiming the 13-year-old Dutch Warmblood (Jackson—Gazelle, Aram) for the CCI** at Bromont and considers him a possibility for the 2011 Pan American Games team for Canada.

“It’s great to have things come together and I’m really happy for his owner, Jim Cogdell,” Howard said.

“He’s been really patient with the both of us.”