The 700-mile drive from Virginia to Illinois proved well worth it for the O’Connor Event Team. Karen O’Connor swept three divisions, including the event’s inaugural CIC**, and she and her student Lisa Barry topped the two open preliminary divisions. Cathy Wieschhoff of Lexington, Ky., who works with O’Connor, won the advanced division on Ocotillo, July 7-10, in Wayne, Ill.

In Wayne’s first year of hosting CICs at the one- and two-star levels, O’Connor took the two-star victory with Mr. Ripley, a 9-year-old Australian Thoroughbred who was contesting his first intermediate-level event after being dropped back to preliminary during the spring season. Ripley, who was imported last fall, had done two intermediates in Australia.

“I bought him thinking he was a solid intermediate horse and got into trouble this spring,” O’Connor said. “As the intermediates got tougher, he started running out at skinny panels and corners. With horses from different countries, you can’t always go by what their experience is on paper, because the levels, and when different questions are introduced [at each level], are so different from country to country.”

The pair placed first in dressage, but a wrong turn on the twisty cross-country course cost them 18 time penalties and control of the lead. They dropped into a tie for second place with It’s Otto and hometown rider Megan Montague of St. Charles, Ill. With only 7.6 time penalties, young rider Lucia Strini of Scottsville, Va., moved up from second place to take the lead going into show jumping.

The Bill Muenzenmay-designed course lived up to Wayne’s reputation for big, difficult show jumping courses, and double-clear rounds were hard to come by. The course took its toll on Strini, who was eliminated after having stops at two fences.

O’Connor took one rail herself, but Montague took two, to break the tie and determine the winner. Mike Huber finished third with Kittengala, followed by Anne Kaufman and Jamaican Blue in fourth and, in fifth, young rider Rebecca Brown with Twinkle Toes. Brown had a stop cross-country but turned in the division’s only double-clear show jumping round to move up three places.

In the CIC*, Heather Morris looked to be headed for a repeat of her one-two victory with Double Up and Spot Me One at the Trinity River/Fort Worth CIC* in Texas in June. At Wayne, the two horses earned identical dressage scores of 45, and neither added cross-country penalties, so Morris headed into the final day tied for first on her two rides.

However, Double Up, who Morris rode first, dropped two rails to fall to fifth. When she rode into the ring on Spot Me One, or “Billee,” last in the reverse order of standing, she had just a 4.6-point cushion over Jill Gill and Glorious Joy. Gill put in one of only four double-clear rounds in the 38-horse division.

Morris piloted Billee expertly around the course and appeared poised to put in the division’s fifth double-clean round. But at the last fence, the final element in a triple combination, they brought down a rail that had fallen many times. But with no time penalties, Morris hung on to win by a slim, 0.6-point margin.

Ocotillo Jumps To Advanced Win

In the advanced horse trials, the experienced combination of Wieschhoff and Ocotillo took the lead after cross-country and held on to it in style, putting in one of the division’s best show jumping rounds.

Her lead grew considerably when the riders sitting in second and third places came to grief in show jumping. Mark Krause, who had moved up from ninth place after dressage with the division’s only double-clear cross-country round, dropped five fences, while Hannah Sue Burnett, sitting in third place, racked up 36 penalties to drop to sixth place.

With the pressure off, and knowing she was sitting on a solid, experienced show jumper, Wieschhoff went in with a clear plan in mind. “After the top three fell apart, because I had several rails in hand, I decided to go around and [take the option] at fence 7. Time was really tight and I really wanted to jump a clean round. I made a plan and rode the plan.”

The victory is Wieschhoff’s first at the advanced level in about 21³2 years. As she left the last fence of the tricky final combination untouched, the crowd erupted in cheers, sending her on an impromptu victory round as soon as she crossed the finish flags.

“It was awesome,” she said. “I’m just really pleased with him.”

The event was Ocotillo’s first since Rolex Kentucky in April, where a technical refusal kept the pair out of the ribbons. Wieschhoff wants to improve his dressage before planning a trip to England for Burghley or Badminton next year.

A Phar Cry Finishes First

In the intermediate division, O’Connor took the lead in dressage with a 28.5 and never let go with A Phar Cry in the horse’s first outing at this level.

“P.J.,” a 15.2-hand homebred Quarter Horse cross out of the late Karen King’s advanced mare, Late Riser, was highly successful at preliminary but took a long time to gain the cross-country confidence needed to move on, O’Connor said. After about a year and a half at prelim, the horse’s turning point came during the steeplechase at this spring’s Virginia CCI*.

“For people who want to know whether the one-star is good as a long format, that three minutes on steeplechase changed his life, and he became a different horse. He learned how to jump out of rhythm,” she said. “I strongly recommend that the [long-format] one-star remain an integral part of training the event horse.”

Although the pair built a nearly 20-point lead after cross-country, they needed it to hold on to first in show jumping, where they notched 15 penalties.

At the preliminary level, O’Connor and her student, Barry, each won an open division, while Cassidy Lundmark and What’s Shakin’ of Barrington, Ill., added just a rail to their dressage score to lead wire-to-wire in the junior/young riders division.

O’Connor took the open preliminary, division 1, win with Ringmoylan, an 8-year-old Irish paint originally purchased as a foxhunter for owner Jacqueline Mars. When he turned out to be a bit too hot for waiting around in the hunt field, he changed careers. Wayne served as his second event ever, and he showed his inexperience with an unsettling moment in the show jumping, which he entered in first place.

“He was so preoccupied with the atmosphere that I don’t think he even saw the first fence. We were three strides out, and I just had nothing there,” O’Connor said.

But the pair had built up enough of a lead that the rail didn’t hurt their final placing.

In open preliminary, division 2, Barry entered her L’Cedric with the idea of doing a confidence-building event as their last outing before tackling the CCI** at the North American Young Riders Championships.

“I had been doubting myself, and he had been doubting himself and me,” she said. Going cross-country at Wayne, “he perked his ears and said, ‘Where do I go? What do I do?’ It was a good, confidence-building run.”

Ready For More

For everyone who came to Wayne expecting not just a well-run event, but also some of the best cross-country footing to be found during the summer, organizer Katie Lindsay and her crew worked hard to make sure they didn’t disappoint–despite the weather. With little rain, the footing required a lot of work to soften, but the Wayne crew rose to the challenge.

“We wore the tines on the Aeravator down 1 inch,” Lindsay said. “Our guy’s been out there for 10 hours a day for the last two weeks getting things ready.”

The work didn’t go unappreciated. Advanced winner Cathy Wieschhoff, who said Wayne used to be on her regular summer schedule but had fallen off in recent years, said she planned to come back regularly, while Karen O’Connor, who hadn’t evented in the area since her teenage years, also plans to return.

“I sit on a lot of committees for the USEA and hear reports on a lot of events, so I thought, why not? Let’s see a different course, a different venue,” O’Connor said. “We’ll be back. The courses are good and just right for what we came for. They ask all the right questions and yet they ride very nicely and are confidence-builders in all cases.”

Lindsay was pleased with the turnout in the new FEI levels–the first the event has hosted since 1981–and was particularly happy about the CIC*, which had nearly 40 entries. She hopes the two divisions will grow, along with a CIC*** that the event has been approved to run next year.

“It’s just another level of bureaucracy, but I think it’s well worth it as a service to the competitors,” Lindsay said.

Lindsay doesn’t expect running FEI levels to change Wayne’s reputation for offering fair but challenging courses.” I think it’s a mistake to make the FEI courses too difficult,” she said. “Usually, a CIC is people’s first time in an FEI competition, and there’s a lot of other stuff to worry about, just with being at an FEI competition. I’d rather they get around, have a happy experience, and have the FEI experience.

“My goal is to have horses and riders look like they’ve learned something and still have their confidence up and be smiling when they come through the finish flags.”