Australian Andrew Hoy was as shocked as everyone else at the Kentucky Horse Park when show jumping ended at the Rolex Kentucky CCI**** and he was the one holding the watch in front of the TV cameras.

He admitted that he wouldn’t have believed it would happen “until about one minute before the last competitor went in.”

That last competitor was Becky Holder, aboard Courageous Comet, who started the final phase with a two-rail cushion. But the nimble, gray Thoroughbred became rattled after lowering a fence early in the course–as Holder had predicted could happen–and removed three more rails from their cups to drop all the way to 13th.

On Saturday, Hoy and Master Monarch had literally jumped up to sixth with a blazingly fast and faultless cross-country round (19 seconds under the optimum time), and they put the pressure on the top five by finishing the weekend on their dressage score of 53.1. And Heidi White, with Northern Spy, was the only one of those riders to record 8 faults or fewer. In fact, White’s score was 8 faults, and it elevated her from third to second.

Hoy had come to Rolex Kentucky in 2005 with Yeoman’s Point and Moonfleet to continue his quest for the $250,000 Rolex Triple Crown since he’d won the Burghley CCI**** (England) the year before. His quest ended, though, when Moonfleet fell and Yeoman’s Point finished eighth.

“It’s not often that you can come from 17th after dressage to win a four-star,” said Hoy, who admitted to disappointment with his score in the first phase.

But he decided on Friday night that the only thing he could do was add nothing to the marks judges Angela Tucker, Brian Ross and Martin Plewa had given him and see what happened. Even though Kentucky ran as a short-format CCI for the first time, the final results had as little to do with dressage as if it had been a classic-format event.

That was quite a shock to the competitors, especially to the ones on the U.S. team-training list who’ve spent the last nine months working periodically with six-time Olympian Robert Dover on their flatwork. While some have admitted to misgivings and others have even struggled, the effect has been impressive on others, especially the supple Courageous Comet and Amy Tryon’s dynamic Poggio II.

But you still have to jump the jumps, and now, with no roads and tracks and steeplechase to help sort the field out, you simply have to be fast–really, faster than the optimum time–on course to stay in the top rank. Then, as Sunday’s show jumping course showed, your horse has to be fit enough and scopey enough to clear the rails, which are now set at an imposing 4’3″.

All told, 11 of the 37 cross-country finishers added no penalties on cross-country, and nine more finished less than 10 seconds slow. On Saturday night, the top 15 horses had either been faultless or finished with fewer than 2.8 time faults (7 seconds slow), and only two horses in the top 20 had added more than 10 time faults. Plus, only two horses in the top 30 were separated by more than the 4 penalties a jumping error would bring.

And that’s why the standings got reshuffled like a deck of cards when only seven of the 34 horses who started show jumping did it faultlessly. Another 20 accrued 8 jumping faults or more.

Besides Hoy’s round on Master Monarch, the only other clear rounds from the top 15 were excellent efforts by Stephen Bradley (who rocketed from 12th to third aboard Brandenburg’s Joshua) and Phillip Dutton (who made a similar leap from 13th to fourth on Connaught). Will Faudree overcame his show jumping demons by leaving all the jumps up but was 2 seconds slow, leaving him seventh. Hoy would have been second on Yeoman’s Point had they not had 8 faults.

Harder Than It Seemed
The riders seemed oddly relaxed before cross-country, perhaps because the unpredictable element of roads and tracks and steeplechase was gone, and perhaps because, as several observed, Michael Etherington-Smith’s course contained questions everyone had seen before.

But the man who’s designed the test since 1993 had lulled them into a false sense of security.

“It rode much harder than it walked,” said British rider Polly Stockton, who completed cross-country faultlessly to stand second before dropping to seventh on Tom Quigley.

“I think it just all added up, especially when you’re trying to make the time,” said Bradley.

Kim Severson, who was hoping for her third consecutive win after she’d guided Royal Venture to second in dressage, even observed on Friday, “The first part is very nice, and I like the Head of the Lake more than in the past.”

Those words would become ironic. The 16-year-old, Australian-bred Thoroughbred stalled at the first water complex, but then Severson seemed to be working her magic on him over the next nine fences–until they reached the Lake. Then it all went wrong.

“I thought we jumped in OK, but then there was no horse in front of me,” said Severson, who’d jettisoned the reins to save herself on the descent from the maximum drop into the lake. “It was one of the few times I knew I couldn’t stick it.”

Royal Venture didn’t fall, but a soaked Severson retired. “He just showed he doesn’t want to be a four-star horse, and that’s OK,” she said the next morning.

Darren Chiacchia, who overwhelmed Severson’s dressage score by 6.5 points on the stallion Windfall, didn’t finish the course either. But he hasn’t given up on Windfall, as either a four-star horse or a candidate for the World Equestrian Games in August.

Chiacchia had been especially confident because Windfall won the short-format CCI Kentucky offered in 2004 for Olympic candidates and because he’d won his last start at The Fork (see April 21, p. 44). But Windfall stopped abruptly at the narrow, 4’7″ third element of the coffin combination at fence 9.

“I just couldn’t believe it,” said Chiacchia, who said he’d seen that the sloping ground before the ditch was causing horses to shuffle and that he got his balance a bit ahead of his horse.

Still, Chiacchia–admittedly shaken–attempted to jump the straight route at the Head of the Lake as he continued on. But Windfall stumbled, causing Chiacchia to lose his reins as he wandered past the first of the two ducks. The final bell came at the third water complex, where Windfall stumbled jumping the second element and declined the third. Chiacchia retired there.

“We picked a bad day to have a bad day,” said Chiacchia. But he said he plans to run Windfall in the Jersey Fresh CCI*** (N.J.) on June 1-4 in a last-ditch attempt to make the WEG squad.

“The horse has an amazing record, and I never give up,” he said.

Fewer Options
Kentucky certainly put a hole in Chiacchia’s WEG plans, and it clouded the selection picture for Capt. Mark Phillips, the chef d’equipe, and the Selection Committee, of which Peter Green is chairman.

“The only thing that’s certain is that we don’t have as many options as we did on Friday,” said Phillips on Sunday afternoon.

Chiacchia and Windfall especially disappointed him. “It was a very uncharacteristic day for them. We didn’t see the normal dynamic of those two when they’re out on course,” he said.

But Phillips’ frustration spread over more of his charges than just Chiacchia.

“I don’t honestly know what happened [in the jumping phases]. The cross-country wasn’t technically a very difficult course, but between the groups of fences, you must be able to do a good 600 meters per minute, then slow down. And as a result, we finished with a lot of very tired horses, which is one of the reasons show jumping didn’t go as well as it should have.”

He noted that, unusually, four horses in the lower half of the field show jumped clean. “There is a definite relationship between how much of your horse you use on cross-country and how well you jump on the last day,” he said.

Before Kentucky even started, Severson put the decision about selecting Winsome Adante squarely in the selectors’ hands by scratching him, deciding to stand on his outstanding record to preserve him for Aachen. And Amy Tryon did the same with Poggio after placing 15th in dressage.

“I actually came here thinking I would run him, and we didn’t decide until Saturday morning not to. He’s been mad ever since,” said Tryon with a smile.

On Saturday night, Holder, 37, and Courageous Comet seemed to have put themselves squarely into contention by continuing to show tremendous improvement in the dressage ring and by galloping confidently and smoothly around the cross-country course.

Holder has never ridden on a U.S. team, although she was an alternate for the 2000 Olympics with Highland Hogan.

“I kind of feel like Cinderella at the ball, and I’m waiting to turn back into a pumpkin,” she said after cross-country. She added that Courageous Comet “is a very careful horse” and that jumping faults tend to multiply if he lowers a rail. And, basically, that’s what happened.

Top-notch cross-country and show jumping performances put Stephen Bradley, 44, and Will Faudree, 24–both members of the gold-medal team at the 2003 Pan American Championships–into strong WEG contention.

On the four-star veteran Antigua, Faudree was one of the 11 riders to go clear, and on Sunday he kept all the rails up for the first time ever in a three- or four-star CCI. Just 2 time faults in the last phase put them sixth.

Bradley’s weekend peaked and dipped like a rollercoaster. First, he rode From to fourth place in dressage on Thursday and Brandenburg’s Joshua, on whom he won the Foxhall Cup CCI*** (Ga.) in 2005, to 22nd on Friday. But then From grabbed a shoe and twisted it on Friday, causing him to be sore enough for Bradley to withdraw him. Then Joshua galloped confidently around the cross-country course 7 seconds slow before turning in a flowing forward show jumping round that rocketed them from 12th to third.

Like Chiacchia, he’ll aim From for the Jersey Fresh three-star to see if the selectors are interested.

Nathalie Bouckaert Pollard and West Farthing, winners of the Fair Hill CCI*** (Md.) last October, will likely be candidates too, despite a surprisingly high dressage score (55.0) and two displaced rails. They had one of the 11 clear cross-country rounds, though.

John Williams, the top rider on the gold-medal World Championship team in 2002, and Karen O’Connor, a three-time Olympian and three-time Kentucky winner, are in line too, on Sloopy and Upstage. Sloopy overcame a near disaster at the Head of the Lake and 4 show jumping faults to be 10th, while Upstage flew around faultlessly on cross-country but made two mistakes in the ring.

The leading team contender right now, though, is White, who was speechless after accepting her red ribbon and the USEF Four-Star Championship. “It’s all a bit overwhelming,” she said.

Kentucky was the fourth four-star they’d completed, having finished eighth at Kentucky in 2004 and 10th at Badminton last year.

“We knew coming here that this had to be the weekend” to be considered for the team, said White. And she believed she and her 13-year-old English-bred had done the job.

Cross-country “was as good as I’ve ever ridden him, and as good as he’s ever gone.”

And despite the record crowd of 25,900 watching the show jumping phase and her third-placed position, “I wasn’t any more nervous than usual. Phillip [Dutton, with whom she trains] came out to the warm-up to help me as soon as he’d ridden Connaught, and he was there every step until I galloped into the ring.”

Jim Wofford’s Course Analysis: A Test Of “Accuracy And Flexibility”
The pond at 7ABC is a rolltop placed at the edge of the water and constructed so as to produce a maximum drop. What will that feel like? Park your SUV next to a swimming pool, take a running jump at it, and let fly. You’ll have some idea of the sensation horses and riders will get as they jump this rolltop going in to the pond.

That’s why the riders must have already planned their route before they get here. They can either jump the drop on the right side of the pond and make a right bend to another similar rolltop on the left side of the mound. Or they can carefully maneuver to jump that first rolltop and go almost straight for four forward strides to the rolltop on the right side of the mound.

Mike Etherington-Smith loves to test accuracy and flexibility. With his usual ingenuity, the course designer has constructed a third route, which involves bending back and forth over slightly smaller, slightly easier jumps and approaches, but I think it’s wasted effort here. Some 99 percent of the field will tackle one of the straight options, and most of them will succeed.

Mike is going to examine the horse and riders’ ability to turn equally well in both directions.

Flexibility doesn’t just mean turning right and left. It also means going forward and coming back. I’m often asked what makes the difference between good four-star riders and really good four-star riders. My answer is that the really good riders land preparing for the next jump. The really clever competitors here will accelerate to at least 600 mpm within two or three strides.

The track of the course now takes them due north through the infield for about 200 meters, to another turn to another narrow jump at No. 8, Uncle Franie’s Birch. No. 8 is a birch rail, slightly narrow, and slightly airy, with a sizeable drop. You take off from the level, but you land on a slope. You should take one stride, jump a ditch, and two forward strides to come out over the very narrow left-hand side of No. 9.

Any obstacle that’s placed here always rides a little bit harder than it walks. The effect of seeing the ditch behind No. 8 puts a hitch in some horses’ step, and, if that happens, things will probably come unraveled quickly here. The correct line between 8 and 9 is straight, but the opening at 9 is barely the width of a horses’ body. Any deviation from that line is going to cost the rider 20 penalties.

Again the flexibility of the horse is tested because there are only five or six strides before the track turns up the hill for about 300 meters, away from the racecourse grandstand, and leaves the infield.

Again flexibility will be tested after jumping the Sunken Road at fences 11/12ABC, because the riders have to slow down for the precise approach needed at 11 and 12, so they’d better hustle around the left-hand turn to No. 13, the New Corner.

Mike predicts that this fence will cause trouble, but I’m not sure I completely agree. Most of the horses will tackle this fence right next to the red flag and make nothing of the yawning chasm underneath it. Four-star horses these days treat single corners like catnip. (In my days, they were kryptonite.)

There is a long way here, but considering what lies before you, if you don’t attempt the fast route, you probably should retire now.

After the Hollow, No. 15ABCD, you should take a moment to review in your mind the questions that Mike’s asked the horses and riders so far. There was a right-point corner coming out of the pond. If your horse is slightly ungenerous, he might glance off past the red flag. Two fences later, at 9B, the tendency will be for horses to drift to the left. The New Corner at 13 is red-flag corner–and this means the rider must control the right shoulder–yet the question at 15D involves controlling the left shoulder.

So you can see that Mike’s questions are sometimes subtle, but they’re unrelenting. Each fence here in the middle of the course presents some problem in the training and riding of the horse.

Soon, the course crosses Marks Lane, turns left across Nina Bonnie Ave., across the dressage warm-up arenas, then slightly downhill toward what will surely be the most crowded section of the course at No. 19, 20ABC and 21, the Head of the Lake. No. 19 is a large brush fence carved in the shape of a fish that will cause no trouble, but it’s placed there to make sure the riders don’t approach No. 20 too fast. There is a maximum drop behind the rails at 20A, followed four strides later by the first of two identical, massive logs carved in the shape of ducks. Either one of these ducks would be difficult enough, but you must jump them one after another, with only one stride in between, and Mike has placed them so that you must jump over the tail feathers of each duck.

The ducks are 25 feet long, but the place for you to jump is an invisible dotted line the width of your horse’s body. This line stretches from a maximum drop, through the two ducks, followed five or six strides later to an enormous white-flag corner two strides out of the water.

Because Mike’s used brush in this corner, he’s allowed to trim the brush at 4’7″. Looking up the slope as you come out of the lake at 4’7″ of a narrow corner is a sight few of us are ready to tackle. An enormous roar of appreciation or groans of disappointment will tell the outcome here, even if you’re not watching one of the giant TV screens set up around the Kentucky Horse Park.

Immediately after the corner at No. 21, there’s a sharp left-hand turn followed by an enormous oxer over the ditch. No. 22, the Creek Oxer, is built to maximum specifications. It’s a simple jump, but any rider who takes a mental vacation after negotiating the Head of the Lake can have a terrifying experience here.

[Fences 8-9 were the course’s most influential fences, causing six refusals. Fence 7, the Pond, was the second-most influential jump, causing four. Two other fences (the Sunken Road at No. 12, and the Banks and Splash at No. 26) each caused three refusals. Fence 20, the Head of the Lake caused only Windfall’s refusal, but both William Fox-Pitt and Kim Severson retired after falling there, with Coup de Cour and Royal Venture.]


With Special Horses, Two Riders Make Their Mark
Just 20 years old, Sara Mittleider was the youngest rider to contest the 2006 Rolex Kentucky CCI****, yet she and El Primero looked like seasoned professionals as they galloped around the testing cross-country course to finish with a double-clear round.

Mittleider completed Rolex Kentucky last year with “Tony,” but a run-out on cross-country meant she had something to prove when she returned.

And although she arrived at the Kentucky Horse Park one year older and wiser, Mittleider faced tremendous setbacks on her road to Rolex including months of lameness after Tony pinched a nerve while in his pasture and a horrific traffic accident in January that very nearly killed him. (See April 14, p.40.)

“I’m so glad that my horse gave me his best go at a four-star,” said a delighted Mittleider after her finish. They only added 4 penalties to their dressage score when she missed the distance to the last fence in show jumping and dislodged the top rail.

But Tony also won the best-conditioned award. “I was shocked,” she admitted. “I thought that my training in some aspects was shortened [because of the accident]–like the conditioning.”

She was even more excited when the eventing team coach, Capt. Mark Phillips, asked her to jog Tony on Monday so the selectors for the World Equestrian Games eventing team could take a look at him.

“It was a big honor to jog him up on Monday,” she said. “I’d like to do something overseas, and [Phillips] told me that should I improve my dressage and do well at the mandatory outing, then I’d be considered for the WEG team.”

Mittleider said that it helped to have run the four-star last year.

“I knew how some of the jumps rode and where you could make time on course,” she explained. “Visually it looked easier than last year, but it didn’t ride that way. It was a visually deceptive course and caught quite a few riders off guard. I thought it was a great course and really enjoyed it. You had to be on at every fence and not get distracted.”

Tony will have a well-deserved break when he and Mittleider return home to Kuna, Idaho. “I’ll let him have the rest of May off,” she said. “In June I’ll start dressage instruction. I’ve been working with Kathy McClatchy in Sun Valley, but I’m going to go work with Debbie McDonald in June.”

While Mittleider hopes her memories of Kentucky will propel Tony’s international career forward, Jenna Schildmier will be cherishing the event as probably her final, wonderful round on Tumble Dry.

When Tumble Dry arrived in Lexington, Ky., in the fall of 2002, it wasn’t to the pomp and circumstance of the Rolex Kentucky CCI. Instead, Schildmier and the veterinarians from Rood and Riddle veterinary clinic in Lexington spent an hour dragging him from the trailer on a tarp, in hopes of getting him to treatment that might save his life.

Although “Obie” had been fully vaccinated for West Nile virus, he had somehow contracted the disease, and for four weeks, Schildmier didn’t know whether he would live.

He finally did pull through, although the veterinarians assured Schildmier her horse would only be pasture sound. Schildmier planned to give a home for life to the horse who had once enabled her to fulfill her goal of competing at the North American Young Riders Championships, and she left Obie in Indiana while she went to train in Scotland with Ian Stark. But when she returned home that winter, she slowly started Obie back to work.

“I just couldn’t give up,” she said. Three years later, her reward was a clean cross-country round at the Rolex Kentucky CCI.

“He’s a brilliant horse,” said Schildmier, 22. “I was expecting a good ride because that’s his thing; he’s a really safe cross-country horse. I knew if I could keep my eye up and stay out of his way, he’d jump the fences.”

Schildmier competed in the 2005 Rolex Kentucky CCI, but Obie pulled a muscle on steeplechase, and halfway around the cross-country, she pulled him up and walked home when he started to feel like he wasn’t making it across his jumps. “I knew then that there was another day, and it was yesterday,” she said on Sunday at Kentucky. “He’s 18 this year, and this is probably his last event.”

As she galloped across the finish line on Saturday, Schildmier couldn’t hold back her emotion. “Now I can say I did it, and this is my four-star horse,” she said. “He always had four-star quality but he never got to show it.”

Schildmier’s goal for the year had just been to get more competitive at advanced and compete in the Jersey Fresh CCI*** (N.J.). “We ran Red Hills [Fla.] and The Fork [N.C.], and his cross-country just got better and better,” she said.

The decision to enter Kentucky wasn’t easy. “He’s given me so much; he’s done Radnor [CCI** (Pa.)] and Fair Hill [CCI*** (Md.)] twice, and I felt like he’d given me more than he needed to. I knew something could happen [at Kentucky], and I was afraid I wouldn’t show him gratitude by asking for more, but he seems to like it.”

Although Obie wasn’t at his best in Sunday’s show jumping (32 faults for 30th place), Schildmier will always have her memories of what she accomplished on Saturday with an especially meaningful partner.

“It seems like such an unattainable feat,” she said. Sara Lieser and Beth Rasin

A Final Run For 3 Magic Beans
He’s always come unglued by crowds and the noise they make, and the record crowds at the Rolex Kentucky CCI certainly compromised 3 Magic Beans’ performance in dressage and show jumping in his final international start.

But on the cross-country course–well, that’s where the 17-year-old Thoroughbred showed, again, that he’s one of those rare horses who could jump a five-star course, if there were such a thing.

It was his fifth start at Rolex Kentucky, and “Beans'” record will show that he’s completed 10 four-stars and the 2000 Olympics (plus two three-stars and two two-stars), all but one with no jumping faults. All told, he’s started 72 events at the preliminary level or higher since 1995, every one with owner Nina Fout, of The Plains, Va., aboard.

“He’ll do the odd horse trial or two if he feels like it. He doesn’t like being neglected,” said Fout, adding with a smile, “but he’s not going to hunt.”

Fout wanted to run him at Kentucky a fifth and final time since he missed it in 2005 after breaking a lumbar vertebra by falling in the pasture just before the event.

Fout started riding Beans at age 4, after he washed out as a race horse for her father, the late trainer Paul Fout. He’d been bred by Margaret Henley, whose horses Paul Fout trained, and Nina had ridden his sire, Henley’s Hidden Capital, in a hurdle race. After two wind operations, Henley decided to let Nina try him as an event horse.

“He’s been a member of the family since he was 2, and he’s taken me everywhere I ever dreamed of going,” said Nina. They competed three times at the Burghley CCI**** (England) and twice at the Badminton CCI**** (England), plus wining the team bronze medal at the Sydney Olympics.

Nina’s only problem on cross-country has been keeping him under control, and he’s had scores of time faults because Nina had to circle or slow down far before combinations. The only three-day he didn’t finish was the short-format CCI at Kentucky in 2004, where “we made toothpicks of the second fence,” said Nina.

So she kept Beans “in fourth gear” this time and finished with 22.8 time faults. “He has a fifth gear, but why use it this time?” Nina said. “I was thrilled he still went out there and did his job happily.”

Now Nina will continue with the family line. She’s riding a 4-year-old out of Beans’ full sister, named Hidden Promise, at novice level. John Strassburger

To read Jim Wofford’s complete course walk, along with photos of every fence, go to www.chronofhorse.com and click on Archives.
For daily reports on Rolex Kentucky and many more photos, go to www.chronofhorse.com and click on Archives.