Even if you couldn’t hear the announcer relaying his winning time to the crowd, you would have been able to tell that Pato Muente smoked the jump-off course to win the $50,000 Grand Prix of Roanoke. Muente’s exuberant celebration in the ring would have tipped you off.

“What the crowd wants is a good show,” the 32-year-old native Argentinean, now based in Middleburg, Va., said jubilantly following the win. “I am Argentinean, and we are a little bit of a show-off. I admit it.

“But seriously, these horses, they do so much for us. The best thing that we can do is to celebrate. And I think it is good for the sport,” Muente said while signing autographs for his fans after riding As Di Villagana to the top of the feature class of the Roanoke Horse Show, June 18-23 in Roanoke, Va.

Muente’s was one of only two clear rounds in the jump-off that brought five of the 13 entries back into the ring. As always in Roanoke, the size of the ring was a major factor for the riders as they mapped out their strategies.

“The course wasn’t humongous, but because of the size of the ring, the jumps come really fast,” Muente said.

With 11 fences, including a double and triple combination, the Salem Civic Center was a sea of rails. “If you don’t have a horse that focuses really well, you will have trouble. The horses don’t know which jump comes next,” Muente said.

Muente purchased As Di Villagana three years ago after the stallion had been imported from Europe. Since then, the pair has jumped 30 clear grand prix rounds both in this country and abroad.

“He’s allergic to wood,” Muente said with his impish grin, “and that’s good. But I believe the horse is 80 percent of the team, and the rider has to be the other 20 percent. In the first round, he saved me [after a huge effort over a triple bar jumping into a combination]. But quality horses have to save you sometimes. I saw one thing and he saw the other and made it happen. If he were an average horse, I would have had a rail down.”

Muente plans to show As Di Villagana for two weeks in Lake Placid, N.Y., after which the stallion will spend a month in quarantine in order to ship semen to Europe. As Di Villagana has 260 offspring registered in Europe, of which Muente owns four—all carbon copies of their sire.

Tracy Magness on Tarco Van Ter Moude made a concerted effort in the jump-off to best Muente’s time, but Tarco Van Ter Moude had his own ideas about the order in which the fences ought to be jumped and only a quick reaction from Magness kept the pair from jumping the wrong fence. The miscommunication cost them valuable time, and Magness finished clear, but more than a second slower than Muente.

“My horse tends to be really strong,” Magness explained. “He gets spooky and instead of backing off, he goes more forward. He does that more indoors than outside in a big ring. Tonight he was sighting in on the jumps saying ‘let me at them,’ but not at the right place.

“It caught me by surprise,” Magness admitted about her line, which was supposed to take her just to the left of one jump on the way to the next fence. “I was totally looking at where I thought we were going, which was supposed to be on the inside of the jump. Instead he thought we were supposed to jump it, which I thought for a second we were going to do! So I was just happy when we went around it.”

Tarco Van Ter Moude is an 11-year-old Belgian Warmblood purchased 11⁄2 years ago by Magness’ parents, Mr. and Mrs. John Bartko, whom she describes as her greatest supporters.

“We’ve been on a roll this year,” said Magness, from Baltimore, Md. “He’s been a good match for me and my riding style. I’m petite, and I like forward-going horses. I can’t have a big, slow horse because it gets too hard for me to put it all together.”

Harold Chopping rode two horses into the jump-off and took home the yellow and white ribbons with the two fastest times of the day, but four-fault scores.

It was the first grand prix class for the 8-year-old Danish Warmblood Andante, who ended up in third place. Kelly Maloney owns the horse.

“Nervous” is how Chopping described Andante. “I think the crowd and atmosphere was very new to him, so we tried to keep it simple. This was actually the third class I had jumped with him this week, because I felt he needed to get into the ring.”

Andante completed the jump-off in a blazing 45.86 seconds and brought groans from the crowd as the last fence came down.

Maloney showed Andante last year in Florida in the adult amateur jumpers with the goal of keeping him as an amateur horse. Chopping saw his talent and stepped him up to the grand prix level. Chopping, of Southern Pines, N.C., said, “He’s very careful and brave. Whether she keeps him, or whether she sells him, I am having fun right now.”

Roanoke was part of a long-term plan for Chopping’s fourth-placed ride, Performance Colorado.  Owner Megan Paget-Brown has her sights set on qualifying to compete with him at the North American Junior and Young Riders Championships in Lexington, Va., in August.

This was Chopping’s only ride on the 13-year old Danish stallion, that he described as being very laid back for a stallion. “When you’re warming up, you kind of wonder if you have it all together, everything is so casual,” Chopping said. “Maybe he doesn’t look so fast, but he has a huge step and is very scopey. I only jumped three jumps in the warm-up for jump-off. I just made sure he felt good and said, ‘let’s go with it.’ ”

A rail also kept Performance Colorado from the front of the victory gallop, although both of his times were faster than the winning time, “Faster wasn’t enough,” Chopping said. “I think I could have left those jumps up. That horse [As Di Villagana] is very fast and very careful and that allows him [Muente] to ride aggressively. He did just enough and I didn’t.”