With a win in the CIC*** division, Amy Tryon and her young Thoroughbred are off to Kentucky.

With a barn full of unpredictable, challenging young horses, Amy Tryon tries not to get wrapped up in the highs and lows of training or to get her hopes up for big wins. But when Leyland led the victory gallop at the Galway Downs CIC*** in Temecula, Calif., she did crack a smile.

After his confident showing at Galway, held March 27-29, the 9-year-old, off-the-track Thoroughbred (Roy—Dream Creek), also known as “Trouble Tryon” around the barn, will head to his first CCI**** at Rolex Kentucky.

“You enjoy it when it comes right, because it’s so easy to go the other way,” said Tryon, Duvall, Wash. “He’s green, but I feel that he’s ready for the step up in competition. He passed the test to go. But I take these horses very much one day at a time. You’ve got to enjoy the day-to-day stuff, because it’s so easy for it to go backwards and upside down.”

Leyland, who is owned by young rider Elisabeth Nicholson, Metamora, Mich., sat second after the dressage with a 39.2, close behind Tiana Coudray and Ringwood Magister. The leader retired her young horse after a stop on cross-country, however, and Tryon dropped to third when she incurred 12.4 time faults on Ian Stark’s revamped course.

Tryon neither pushed nor rated her horse and was thrilled with the flow he settled into. However, after walking many different tracks for her other mounts and students, she did have a bit of confusion at one point on course.

“I jumped into the coffin, and then I jumped the ditch and had a serious Pony Club moment because I took two strides and went, ‘Is this a three stride or a four stride?’ I pulled and made it four, and really it was three. Bless Leyland—he decided that was fine. I don’t know what I was thinking of, but other than that I was really pleased.”

Kelly Prather, who finished second in the CIC*** with Ballinakill Glory, said her mare’s cross-country run proved she was back on track for a new season. The pair won the Fair Hill CCI** (Md.) last fall, but Prather thought Stark’s course was a real eye-opener. A keyhole fence on an island, a skinny hunt-style jump at the bottom of a berm and a tricky three- or four-stride corner combination kept riders on their toes.

“Ian really makes your brain work,” she said. “There were tons of questions, but I think none of them were punishing for the horse. I loved the feel out there. There was a lot of big stuff that made my heart pound, but it absolutely rode brilliantly. It feels good to know that even though I was nervous in some places, the feeling over the jumps was amazing.”

The placings were tight on Sunday, and the show jumping course spoiled many hopes, as leader Jolie Sexson pulled two rails with Killian O’Connor and second-placed Prather lowered one. But Leyland and Tryon made their double-clear round look easy and finished on a score of 51.6.

“It was definitely up to height, and it’s hard here with these plastic cups,”said Tryon. “He has a lot of power but tends to get really bunchy, so we’ve had to teach him to relax and almost lope around more like a hunter than to go like a jumper. It’s been an evolution with him, and as he’s gotten stronger and more confident he’s been able to accept that ride instead of needing more help from my hand and leg. He’s a horse that’s very easily distracted, so it’s not uncommon for him to be cantering to a fence looking somewhere else. But I felt like he was trying very hard, and he remained rideable in the ring.”

While her fellow U.S. Equestrian Federation Winter Training “A” List members have been getting help in Wellington, Fla., the past few months, Tryon has been on her own in Washington. But team coach Capt. Mark Phillips flew out for some training sessions, and she’s also ridden with some West Coast show jumpers and Idaho-based Olympic dressage rider Debbie McDonald.

“I think for event riders it’s a little bit intimidating to call people like that up on the phone and ask to ride with them,” Tryon said. “[But the USEF] gave us extra money for lessons this year, and it’s a great opportunity for us to go into the specialized worlds.”

Leyland will travel to Kentucky from Galway Downs, but he won’t be accompanied by his barnmate, Tryon’s other 9-year-old three-star winner, Coal Creek. The Fair Hill CCI*** champion had a reaction to some medication this spring and needed two weeks off, so getting four-star fit by April was just too much of a stretch. Tryon may aim him for the CCI**** at Luhmuhlen (Germany) this summer, or hold off until Burghley (England) in the fall.

Leyland won’t be traveling to the Bluegrass State alone, however. Tryon’s Olympic and World Equestrian Games mount Poggio II is heading to Kentucky to be officially retired in a Sunday afternoon ceremony.

More Blue For Boyer

It’s been more than a year since Julie Ann Boyer and her off-the-track Thoroughbred, Rumor Hazit, have placed out of the top four at an event, and their win in the CIC** division at Galway was their third FEI-sanctioned victory in a row.

“This course was tougher than the CIC** they had here last year and the one at Twin Rivers [Calif.],” said Boyer, Agua Dulce, Calif. She and her 10-year-old mare (Tax Collection—Swoon Dancer) won the latter event in September, as well as the Twin Rivers CCI** last spring. She’s aiming to return there again this year and hopes to move up sometime soon, but fall advanced-level events are sparse in her area.

“Work makes it a little impossible for me to go back East,” she said. “But we all still cheer each other on when California riders go out East. I always hear that it’s a little tougher there, and I think Ian really stepped up the courses here this year to try to make us more competitive.”

Boyer’s dressage score of 47.7 put her in second place behind Tryon and her new mount, Nicodemus, but the 50-year-old amateur pulled ahead with two double-clear jumping rounds to finish on Friday’s score. After finding the bay mare on the racetrack seven years ago, Boyer has forged a unique bond with her.

“I absolutely hated her at first,” Boyer admitted. “She wasn’t that great of a mover, and she was rude and mareish. I didn’t think I could sell her, so I just kept riding her. And about her fifth year, all of a sudden we sort of clicked.”

Working with the mare is now a stress reliever for Boyer instead of an inducer. She works as a police officer in Los Angeles, often pulling the night shift in Hollywood, so heading to the barn is a refreshing change of pace.

“You never know what you’re going to run into,” Boyer said of her job. “I had a great chase last week! Going into that start box is really an adrenaline boost, but sometimes I’d rather go into a house with a burglar than get in that box.

“Of course, once I’m out of the start box I’m OK,” she added, laughing.

As a passionate upper-level amateur, Boyer is also a careful budgeter of both time and money, especially in the current economic climate.

“I work a whole bunch of days so I can have a couple days off,” she explained. “I sleep in my horse trailer on a cot. I’m hoping that eventing keeps on. You pinch your pennies somewhere else and keep coming to the shows.”

Anything But Heart-Stopping

Rachel Dwyer of Temecula had some unexpected four-wheeled friends following her on cross-country, but the huge smile on her face as she galloped to a double-clear round aboard her Holsteiner-Thoroughbred mare, Catch A Star (Casi—Star Of History), made it clear that she didn’t mind the scrutiny.

About a month before the event, Dwyer, 20, experienced heart failure after reacting to some medication, so she was thrilled to be back in the tack at Galway to win the open intermediate division on her dressage score.

“They thought that if I got too much adrenaline pumping I might go back into heart failure, so all the officials and paramedics were notified, and they told me right before I went to the start box that they’d be following me in a golf cart,” Dwyer said. “I did feel a little bit out of shape, but everything else was great.”

In fourth place after the dressage on a mark of 37.3, Dwyer’s faultless jumping performances couldn’t be matched. She works directly across the road from Galway Downs for Terri and Linda Paine at KingsWay Farm, so she’s more than familiar with the facility, but she said this year’s courses were quite different than previous ones.

“I’ve been running intermediate with this horse for a few years now, so I’ve seen a lot of courses, and it seemed like this was one of the more challenging ones,” said Dwyer, who trains with Hawley Bennett. “It was big, and there were lots of related distances and technical questions, but it flowed really well and was fun to ride. Ian did a good job of changing things up and making it more interesting and at the same time keeping it different from the two-star course.”

Sunday’s show jumping track also required a forward ride, especially for Dwyer’s short-strided mare. But the pair pulled off a textbook double clear—one of only three in their division—and yet again, the rider couldn’t contain her smile.

“I hate show jumping,” Dwyer admitted. “I dread it. It scares me, and because of that it’s definitely not my strong suit. But my horse is really careful, so I just really focused on getting her in front of my leg and staying out of her way.”

With one year of young rider eligibility left, Dwyer hopes the third time will be the charm for a bid to the North American Junior and Young Riders Championships. She’s groomed for Area VI the past two years but hasn’t been able to compete her 9-year-old gray mare. In 2007, her final qualifying run was going so well that she absentmindedly ran past a fence on cross-country and was eliminated, and last year her horse began tying up inexplicably the week before leaving for the championships.

“Some sort of internal infection was setting her blood work off, and it was causing her to tie up,” said Dwyer, who was studying journalism at Cal Poly University-San Luis Obispo at the time. “I came back down here [to Temecula] so she could be in a big green pasture all to herself, and I gave her time off until November before I started bringing her back. Then she had a few weeks off [because of my cardiac issues]. I don’t want to get my hopes up this year, but I’d really like to go.

“This weekend was kind of my big test to see whether or not I was going to be OK,” Dwyer continued. “I was really excited that it went so well. I didn’t have a heart attack, so that was good!”