Over the past six months there have been many articles written in the Chronicle and other publications about the future of our hunters and what changes need to be made. New divisions, new jumps, handy classes added to most rated divisions and a High Performance Hunter Division, an idea formulated by George Morris, have been considered.

The U.S. Hunter Jumper Hunter Task Force, the USHJA Junior Hunter Task Force and the USHJA High Performance Hunter Committee are having a two-day retreat in early September to work on these ideas and
concepts so we can move forward to make the professional hunters stronger.

Members of these committees are passionate enough to give up two days of their busy schedule for this retreat. We all feel it’s time to sit down and really develop sound and healthy proposals to increase the money in our 3’6″ and higher hunter divisions. We need to encourage owners to want to keep a top working hunter in the ring and develop specialty classes that will allow these hunters the spotlight they deserve. It’s an exciting time. Our hunters deserve long overdue attention and change.

In June, the first High Performance Hunter Classic was held outside of Chicago at Canterbury Farms (see p. 18). This class was organized through the hard work of Diane Carney and the staff at Canterbury Farm. Many sponsors contributed wonderful prizes, and Rush and Carl Weeden put up the prize money of $10,000.

The course was set with the same jumps used at last spring’s AHJF Hunter Challenge, held during the Rolex FEI World Cup Final in Las Vegas. George Morris had designed the jumps used for the class in Las Vegas, and the Canterbury course was spectacular. There were coops, log jumps, rolltops with real grass, stone walls and snake jumps. The fences were made to be inviting with brush as ground lines.

The organizers treated the owners, riders and staff to a VIP tent with fantastic food, drinks and champagne. My professional rider, Jennifer Alfano, made the 13-hour trip to Chicago from New York with
her two top working hunters. She placed first and third with Once And Again and Rock Star, respectively, and, as a professional, she had a blast doing something different and challenging.

Meredith Bartolone, who owns Once And Again, and Jennifer Burger, who owns Rock Star, attended the class and had a great time too. They were treated like royalty and had fun supporting this fantastic class.

Diane Carney raised extra money to pay the shipping on any horses that traveled from a long distance, but Meredith and Jennifer chose to give that money back to the class for next year.

The first round was a designated course, but the second round offered riders the option to add extra jumps into a second designated course. This concept gave the riders a chance to show off each individual horse’s best jumping and handy skills. It was different, exciting and a fun class.

While most shows have time schedules that don’t lend themselves to classes like the one at Canterbury Farm, it’s time to change tactics and spotlight the top hunters.

I’m not in complete agreement with George Morris, who believes we should discontinue using ground lines for these types of classes. Straight up and down jumps are not inviting. I showed as a junior over outside courses at shows such as Chagrin PHA (Ohio), Bloomfield Open Hunt (Mich.), Piping Rock (N.Y.) and North Shore (N.Y.). Those jumps were straight up and down, solid and the courses were very long.

In those days there were no three-foot or lower divisions. You went from pony hunters to 3’6″ junior hunters. There was no amateur division; you showed in the green or regular working hunter divisions when you were no longer a junior and you wanted to stay with the hunters. But these shows did offer different classes, such as the appointment classes, the ladies to ride class and the stake classes.

Horses and riders were bold and had a great deal of pace around those courses. This country had top show hunters and top riders just as we have now. But, remember, there were not as many shows then—people stayed home in the winter, and the numbers of people showing was far fewer.

We cannot go back. Time schedules at most shows will not allow for that.

The shows that featured the old-fashioned, expansive outside courses are long gone or show management has created three rings out of the once huge outside courses. Time is not on our side.

Likewise, Thoroughbreds that cannot make it at the racetrack are old-fashioned and a breed that’s being passed by for the hunter ring now. It takes so long to make up these horses, and owners are not willing to spend the time or money it used to take to bring one up through the ranks.

The European horses (warmbloods) have taken over because there are so many imported with miles and experience as part of their resumes. Most of the time these horses take as much time to adapt to the hunter ring as our Thoroughbreds did, but, in most cases, their temperament is calmer.

Our course designers have to learn to be more creative in their jobs too. They shouldn’t cave in to the pressure of the typical single, outside, diagonal, outside, diagonal. Hunter courses need to be inviting, but each vertical doesn’t need to be a triple bar design using flowers. The handy hunter classes need to have options too.

When the course is supposed to be 3’6″, then that’s what it needs to be at the A-rated level. We have to stop watering down our courses to accommodate horses and riders who aren’t at that level. We have many other divisions that are training divisions. We need to use those divisions to create better riding, whether they’re used as stepping stones to higher divisions or an end in themselves.

It’s also time to stop allowing the hunter divisions at the top levels to be so generic.

We have to start putting the spark and the bling back into horse shows. We need specialty classes to return to our horse shows, and they cannot be scheduled at the end of the day on Sundays when everyone wants to go home. These classes should be featured in the schedule, held on Friday evening or Saturday afternoon, when spectators are in attendance.

The courses for these featured classes need to be different and challenging too. Show managers need to cater to the specialty classes and provide some real money. If we make these classes exciting and worth jumping for, more people will jump on the bandwagon and soon the sponsors can’t help but take notice.
I hope that this upcoming retreat will address some of these problems and generate a movement to help the hunters evolve into something better. It’s been this way for too long!

It’s up to those of us who have hunters as our passion to find ways to make the higher level hunters what the jumpers are all about in Europe. We’ve proven that this country wants to support horse shows at all levels, so now let’s follow the  Canterbury Farm example and make some of them special.