Tiana Coudray rides the talented gray to the top of his first advanced outing.

Tiana Coudray and Ringwood Magister have been winners multiple times on their way up the levels, so it was only fitting that they won his advanced-level debut at the Ram Tap Horse Trials in Fresno, Calif., on Feb. 13-15.

Coudray and the striking gray gelding won the Galway Downs CCI* (Calif.) in 2007, then placed second in the Twin Rivers CCI** (Calif.) last year. They finished up 2008 with 14th place at the Fair Hill CCI** (Md.).

“This was his first advanced and our first outing of the year, so I just wanted to get around,” said Coudray. “He’s been coming along really well this winter,” she said of her 8-year-old Irish Sport Horse gelding. “He had a pretty good dressage test and he jumped wonderfully in show jumping in the mud, which was really deep! And he was great on cross-country. So I’m thrilled.”

The schedule for the weekend had to be rearranged due to the weather. Heavy downpours on Friday during dressage flooded part of the cross-country course and made the lower show jumping arena unusable on Saturday.

Organizer Bill Burton moved the show jumping to Saturday and had all the divisions jumping in the upper stadium arena.

Cross-country was tentatively scheduled for Sunday, depending on Mother Nature. Luckily there were only a few rain showers on Saturday, and the footing on the cross-country course held up, though the first two fences of the intermediate course replaced the first two fences on the advanced course due to mud.

“The gods started smiling and the sun came out by the time I rode my advanced dressage test,” said Coudray. “By that point the footing was much worse than it had been earlier in the day because all that rain had soaked in. I thought I was going to get washed away it was raining so hard for my training level horse in the morning.”

Ringwood Magister coped with the mud, and Coudray believed he put in the best test that he could have considering the conditions. His dressage score (33.3) put them in third place and a clear stadium round moved them into first.

Only five of the eight entries in the advanced division ran cross-country—they all jumped clean but with time penalties. Coudray had 2.8 time faults on the course.

“The fact that he actually ran fairly close to the time was not my choice,” said Coudray, laughing. “He was fairly strong. I was planning to have a lot more [time penalties]. He had his way and we went a little faster than I wanted.

“He was fantastic, though. I think he jumped the toughest combination the best. It was a combination of big tables. You jumped a skinny table, three strides to a big table, and then three strides to a skinny table. They were all very narrow and all higher than they were wide. He was super. He really stepped up.”

Coudray, 20, has only been eventing since 2003, though she had experience competing in dressage and show jumping at that time. She spent her first year or two working on her own and then met her trainers, Bea and Derek di Grazia, when she joined the young rider program and they were the coaches. Coudray is now an assistant trainer for the di Grazias in Carmel Valley, Calif.

“I couldn’t do this without them or my sponsors, Mountain Horse, Veredus, Advanced Protection Formula and Steinbeck Country Equine Clinic,” said Coudray.

Coudray imported Ringwood Magister from Ireland when he was coming 4. He is by Master Imp, the same sire as her first event horse, King Street. His dam is Cloonkeen View. Coudray competed at the 2007 Rolex Kentucky CCI**** with King Street.

Last year, Coudray was a member of the gold-medal CCI** team from Area VI at the North American Young Riders Championships (Colo.) riding Ringwood Magister.

Leyland Concentrates On Winning

Amy Tryon kicked off her season as well, traveling from Duvall, Wash., for her first event of 2009 and winning the open intermediate division with Leyland.

Leyland, a 9-year-old Thoroughbred (Roy—Dream Creek) was eighth at the Fair Hill CCI*** last year, but Tryon wanted to ease him back into competition and work out some kinks. With the Northwest plagued by incessant rain this winter, Tryon hadn’t been able to show at any preperatory schooling shows.

“It was like, well, we’ll see what he can do, and hopefully by now he knows his job,” said Tryon. “He was actually pretty relaxed. Last year at Fair Hill I was riding him in a different bit and I didn’t like the way he felt in the show jumping there. So we kind of went back a little bit to basics. I put him back in a plain snaffle and I felt that he was much happier jumping in that, so I was really pleased. I didn’t have the greatest show jumping round at Fair Hill with him, which was completely my fault. So I was very happy we were able to put that behind us.”

Tryon purchased Leyland—now owned by the Nicholson family of Michigan—off the racetrack as a coming 5-year-old. They led after the dressage, despite the inclement weather. “I was thrilled with Leyland,” continued Tryon. “He was obedient and he did the best test that he’s capable of doing in that sort of weather and mud. He did everything I asked him to do.

“He just cantered around cross-country,” said Tryon. “I wasn’t trying to go quickly with him but just trying to stay in a nice rhythm and cruise around. His big thing has never been about the jumps; it has always been a little bit about his attention span. He gets a little distracted some times, and so the hardest thing for me is that delicate balance of trying to keep his focus but not overdoing it and getting in his face too much.”

You Can’t Stop The Irish

A muddy day didn’t slow down Lindsay Connors of El Granada, Calif., who won the preliminary rider division on her Irish Sport Horse gelding Ballingowan Pizazz.

Her trainer, Dayna Lynd-Pugh, limited Connors to 10 minutes of warm-up before her dressage test because of the footing. “The footing was still atrocious for my dressage, even though the sun was out,” said Connors. “We joke that he’s a tough Irish thing, and no amount of mud is going to slow him down.” Their score of 28.9 put them into the lead.

Connors gets nervous before her show jumping rounds, though she’s not sure why. This time Lynd-Pugh wasn’t sure if they were going to scratch or not and waited to make the decision when they walked the course on Saturday morning.

“That was probably better for me,” said Connors. “I didn’t get nervous until she said we would go. It was a good course, and the footing wasn’t an issue at all. The course wasn’t too tricky, but I think people were over-thinking the footing. So it was really nice to have a clean go. The first outing of the season is always a nail-biter.”

Connors had 8.8 time penalties on cross-country to just squeak by Kate Miller and Governess by .9 points for the win.

“He and I like to lollygag a little on cross-country,” said Connors. “There were a couple of places where I took my time and I wasn’t in a hurry. I have to get over that habit.”

Ballingowan Pizazz is by OBOS Quality, an Oldenburg stallion with a lot of Selle Français blood. His dam, Rocklea, is an Irish Sporthorse by Leabeg. Lynd-Pugh imported Ballingowan Pizazz from Ireland two years ago for another client, and Connors purchased him 11⁄2 years ago They’re qualified for the CCI* at Galway in March.

Just Like Her Brother

Robyn Fisher topped both the open preliminary division on R Paradise and the open novice division on Clair de Lune. Both horses won on their dressage score.

Fisher originally entered R Paradise in the open training division but moved the 8-year-old Holsteiner mare up to preliminary. She walked the cross-country course on Thursday and saw that it would be forgiving enough for R. Paradise to make her preliminary debut.

R Paradise had been a broodmare until last April, when Fisher purchased her from Tally Chang. R Paradise is by Sabotage, the same sire as Fisher’s former four-star horse Le Samurai.

“She’s demonstrating so many of the same qualities as Le Samurai that it’s just uncanny,” said Fisher. “I’m just really excited to have her and to see if she’ll be anything like her brother.”

R Paradise was the only horse in the open preliminary division to have no time faults on cross-country, finishing exactly on the optimum time.

“I wasn’t even going for the time,” said Fisher. “I was just trying to make sure she galloped straight. She’s still green with skinnies, so I had to take a little bit of time and care with that stuff to guarantee she jumped it and didn’t have a silly run-out. I just made sure to give her a little bit of time, really slow down and let her see what she had to do, and it seemed to work.”

Fisher has only been riding her novice winner, Clair de Lune SE (Contender – L’Vienna, Largo Z), for six months. When she started riding the 5-year-old Holsteiner stallion for his owner Rose Sullivan of SE Farms in Moorpark, Calif., he had never jumped under saddle. Ram Tap was his second novice event, and Fisher hopes to move him up to training level at the end of March.

“He was a little bit green in the beginning of the cross-country because he’d only gone cross-country once before,” said Fisher. “But once he figured out what it was he was a champ. He got it and was happy and didn’t mind any of it. It was a good way to start the year.”