The future looks bright for Molly Ashe and Chris Kappler, if the results of the $100,000 Lexus NHS Jumper Championship CSI-W are any indication.

Both rode new mounts to big results in the class, a feature event of the National Horse Show, held Nov. 30-Dec. 4 in Wellington, Fla. Ashe won the class on Neuville, while Kappler rode VDL Oranta to a close second.

They’ve each had their new rides since August, and they were each thrilled with the way their horses handled competing on the International Ring in Wellington, under the lights for the evening class. “That’s my first time riding this horse under the lights like that, and he handled it brilliantly, so it was a lot of fun,” Ashe said.

Owner Jane Clark picked out Neuville in the spring, when McLain Ward was riding him, and bought him for Ashe to ride. “It’s obviously a bit of transition from McLain’s ride to mine–McLain told me that I about equal his left thigh,” Ashe said with a grin.

Ashe had been knocking on the door with Neuville in the six grand prix classes she’d ridden him in before the National–including a fourth place in the $75,000 New Albany Classic (Ohio) in September.

“He’s been so close to doing well–4 faults here and there–so it’s been frustrating,” she said. “I think this was my second jump-off with him, so I didn’t really know how much of a shot I had. He’s got quite a bit of experience, so I just trusted his bravery.”

Ashe went third in the five-horse jump-off, and she had to catch Kappler’s clean ride in 43.31 seconds. It looked doable, since VDL Oranta’s big gallop and airy jump weren’t the quickest. “I had to catch everything off the gallop to catch him,” Ashe said.

By leaving a stride out between the first and second jumps, and riding an efficient track, Ashe shaved half a second off Kappler’s time (42.71 seconds).

No one else could put together a clean round, as David Raposa and Audi’s Fanny de la Tour had a stop and a rail, and Christine Tribble McCrea and Lisa Silverman each lowered two rails, although Silverman’s trip was quick enough for third place (see sidebar).

Kappler wasn’t too upset about losing the top spot. “I was so happy with her when I left the ring that I didn’t care where I ended up. It’s so nice to have a really nice horse again and be back in the big ring. I’m excited,” Kappler said.

Kappler has been keenly feeling the loss of his Olympic individual silver-medal mount, Royal Kaliber, since the stallion died of complications from colic surgery a year ago.

With VDL Oranta, a Dutch Warmblood mare (Indorado–Karanta, Nimmerdor), Kappler thinks he may have his ticket back to the big time.

“I saw her quite a while ago and liked her, but it took me a while to figure out how to get her. She wasn’t an easy buy. But in the end, it worked out,” he said.

Dutch rider Angelique Hoorn had ridden the big gray mare until Kappler put together the owners to buy her. “I love her, and she’s been real fun for me. She’s very smart and wants to try and work with you, even though she’s big and strong and difficult,” said Kappler. “I’ve shown her indoors, and outdoors, and now under lights, and so far she’s been kind of the same for me. She’s very consistent.”

With this win, Ashe jumped to the top of the East Coast standings for the FEI World Cup Finals, held in April 2006 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. But she’s not sure if she’ll be going.

“A lot of it is up to Jane—whether she’d like me to go there or try for the World Equestrian Games,” Ashe said. “I maybe wish I’d had him a little bit longer, but I think he’s consistently the same horse, day in and day out, so I think the WEG–a championship format–would be his specialty.”

Guerra Battles For AGA Win
Jaime Guerra’s name might not be the best known in the Wellington rings, but as Todd Minikus put it, “It’s not his first day at the rodeo.”

Guerra represented Mexico in the 1992 and 1996 Olympics and the 1994 World Championships. And now he’s won the $75,000 Budweiser AGA Championships.

Guerra rode Santa Teresita Power Point to the fastest double-clear round in an unusual format (see sidebar). In the AGA Championships, the top eight from the first round return for the second round, not just the clears. Guerra, Minikus and Ken Berkley each jumped clear in round 1, but the five fastest four-faulters joined them in the jump-off. After two four-faulters posted very quick and clean rounds, the strategy changed for the last three.

“I wanted to be not too fast, and not too slow,” Guerra said. “I started cantering not too fast and held the same speed from the first fence to the last.”

Guerra’s clean round and time of 52.65 seconds put him ahead of Berkley on Carlos Boy, who’d gone conservatively in 53.01 seconds as the first of the clears to jump.

“I wanted to be clean, so with that in the back of my head, I went to the last two jumps a little more reserved,” Berkley said. “I wanted to leave one out to the last jump and go for it, but if I’d left that one out and had a rail there, I could have dropped down quite a bit. I played it safe a bit, unlike you would if were just a regular jump-off.”

Minikus played it even safer, cantering around on Flier as the final starter.

“The horse is a much quicker, faster kind of horse. And I’m not a slow rider. I thought my normal speed might be fast enough, but it wasn’t,” said Minikus. “It was a pick-your-own-poison situation. If you take one step too fast and have a jump down, you’d go from being in the top three to eighth real quick.”

But he held on to third, in 54.50 seconds.

While some were disappointed with the class format, Guerra was nothing but thrilled about the performance of Santa Teresita Power Point. A 9-year-old, bay gelding, Power Point was making his debut in the bigger grand prix classes.

“He did a few grand prix [classes] in California, but nothing as difficult as here,” Guerra said.

Guerra and Power Point qualified for the AGA Championships by winning the $40,000 Rocky Mountain Grand Prix (Colo.) and the $30,000 Oaks Classic (Calif.).

Guerra has been bringing along Power Point since he imported him from Germany as a 6-year-old. “He’s more like an 8-year-old, because for one year, I didn’t show him too much,” said Guerra.

He’s planning on showing Power Point throughout the 2006 Winter Equestrian Festival, and then returning to Mexico to try out for their World Equestrian Games team. Guerra had been based in California, but he’s just moved to Wellington.

Hunters Take Center Stage
Holly Orlando isn’t a stranger to winning in the hunters–she rode the inimitable Overdressed to innumerable wins in the ’90s. And now she’s back in the blue ribbons, guiding Why Wait Farm’s Rio Renoir to the win in the NHS Open Hunter Championship.

The class is a five-round classic that incorporates the numerical scores from three classes in the horses’ division and a two-round classic the final day.

Orlando had to come back last for the last round aboard “Rio,” and she clinched the victory.

“I’ve been in that situation before, and it’s always nerve-wracking, especially when Scott [Stewart] has so many in it and so many chances,” Orlando said. “And the math was so confusing that you couldn’t figure out what score you needed to win, or who was leading. I just figured I wouldn’t worry about it.”

Stewart, who rode six of the 12 horses who qualified to compete in the last two classic rounds, finished second with Fellini and third with Truly.

For Orlando, the win was reward for a year of consistency. “He’s had a great year, and he was good at indoors, but to end like this is just wonderful,” she said.

“He wants to win. He tries so hard,” added Orlando. “A couple of classes we haven’t gotten a ribbon in, I can take the blame for. He puts a lot of effort into it, and he’s a good mover and good jumper, and he’s pretty. He’s a great horse, and I haven’t had one of those in a while.”

While it’s Orlando in the irons, she credits trainer Joe Guzman for doing all the hard homework and getting Rio ready for the ring. “Joe does everything with him, and I just get on and go in the ring,” she said.

“That’s been working fine,” Guzman said. “I get to be demanding of him, and then she just gets on and pats him and goes. So he loves Holly more than me!”

Owner Cindy Deibert found Rio two years ago and brought him to Guzman. The 6-year-old Canadian Sporthorse is by the prolific sire Rio Grande. “He’s so scopey and athletic, and it’s very impressive. He’s exciting to watch because he has so much appeal, with his four socks and his great jump,” Orlando said.

At least Orlando got to spend the year showing Rio–Hardin Towell flew to Florida and hopped on the bay mare Miracle just a few days before riding her to win the NHS Junior/Amateur-Owner Hunter Championship. Miracle’s owner, Christy Russo, sprained her ankle, so trainers Ken and Emily Smith called on Towell.

Towell’s no stranger to Russo’s horses–he sold her High Cotton and has ridden him throughout the year. But this was his first time on Miracle. “It’s fun to show different horses, and to win on them is a big bonus!” Towell said.

And he enjoyed galloping around the big grass field of the International Ring. “I love riding the horses out there, especially ones like these with a lot of stride and scope, so you can really show off with them,” he said.

And Miracle was just his kind of ride. “She’s very pretty, and she jumps great. She’s a happy horse, and she looks to please.”

TV-Friendly, Not Rider-Friendly
Todd Minikus, who placed third in the $75,000 Budweiser AGA Championships, made no bones about his distaste for the format of the class.

The top eight riders returned for the second round, not just the clean rounds. It’s a format designed to be friendly for the television crews filming the event, but the riders claim it’s unfriendly for them.

Three horses jumped faultlessly in the first round of the AGA Championships, and the five fastest four-faulters from round 1 joined them for the jump-off. The four-faulters went for broke and posted quick times, leaving the riders with fault-free round 1 scores with a dilemma. Should they go slow and guarantee a double-clear? Or go fast and risk lowering a rail and dropping below the round 1 four-faulters’ scores?

“Earlier in the week, there was a party here at the horse show, and the theme was Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and I think one of the oompa loompas dreamt up the format for this grand prix,” Minikus said.

“This format doesn’t apply to show jumping. All three of the horses that jumped clear over a very difficult course could have been severely penalized because they had to come back for the jump-off with people who’d knocked jumps down in the first round,” Minikus added. “They could have had a rail and ended up in eighth place, not third. That’s penalizing horses that jumped their butts off in the first round, as well as owners and riders. If we want to go play in a chocolate factory, I have some spotted ponies we can dye pink and ride.”

Jaime Guerra, who won the class, agreed, but somewhat less vehemently.

“I would like to have had a normal jump-off. It was difficult enough to jump the first round clean, and I don’t know if it’s right to give the four-faulters a chance to jump off. They had everything to win and could take chances, while we had everything to lose,” he said.

Runner-up Ken Berkley admitted that “it’s not the best format, but it’s the format that they chose, so you have to play by it.”

Who’s Lisa Silverman?
If you’ve been watching recent jumper classes, a name’s been appearing quite frequently that might seem new–Lisa Silverman. She finished third in the $100,000 Lexus NHS Jumper Championship aboard Obelix R and has been a consistent winner in the amateur-owner ranks.

But Silverman is anything but a stranger to the jumper ring. In the ’80s, when her name was Lisa Tarnopol, she was a grand prix star on Adam. They represented the U.S. in Nations Cup competition and placed eighth in the 1986 FEI World Cup Final. But after Adam retired in 1991, Silverman, 42, retreated from the spotlight.

“I started getting busy at work, got married and had kids. But I never stopped loving riding,” she said.

She now has 6-year-old twins, Lucy and Jack, and since they’ve started riding ponies and enjoy going to shows, Silverman decided it was time to get back in the saddle. She started showing in the amateur-owner jumpers again 18 months ago, riding with Norman Dello Joio. And she re-emerged in the grand prix ring this year.

Silverman treated the crowds at the NHS Jumper Championship to a remarkable feat. She was speeding around the jump-off track when Obelix R crashed through the oxer of the B element of a combination. He scrambled to regain his footing on the far side, with Silverman was clinging to his neck. She managed to recover quickly and promptly aimed him for the next fence. They finished third with the fastest eight-fault jump-off round.

“I came into the double at a bit of an angle, and I just didn’t get his eye on the B element, and I didn’t use enough leg to get across it,” Silverman said. “He just sort of tripped over the back rail, and I ended up nearly on his ears. But being the kind, four-legged friend that he is, he just kind of lifted his head up and said, ‘Get back in the tack.’ He kept going, so I thought, ‘I’m in the saddle!’ so I just looked for the next fence.”

Silverman works full-time in New York City real estate and has to plan her show schedule carefully. “Riding is my third job–behind my career and being a mother,” she said.