The Maryland-based professional scores a win in her horse’s first advanced event, despite dismal conditions.

You couldn’t necessarily claim that the four division winners at the Pine Top Advanced Horse Trials weren’t hoping for their own individual victories, but it’s safe to say their wins were unintentional, in the very best sense of the word.

After 4 inches of rain fell in Thomson, Ga., the weekend of Feb. 27-March 1, completion was the main objective for what remained of the field on Sunday morning. No one pushed for time on the waterlogged cross-country course, so winning was a mere afterthought for most riders. In fact, with a rare Georgia snowstorm approaching most had already hightailed it off the property before the final scores were even posted.

Colleen Rutledge had to endure a long and treacherous drive back to her home in Frederick, Md., through the winter storm that blasted the entire Eastern seaboard, but she had the satisfaction of knowing her trip had been worth it. Her 12-year-old Irish Sport Horse, Dillon, came away from his first advanced event with a win.

“I’ve never told him he couldn’t do something. I’ve just let him tell me what he could and couldn’t do,” said Rutledge, 32. “He’s just so honest and really takes up for me. I’m so lucky to have him. He’s one of the best horses I’ve ever sat on.”

After being imported from Ireland as an upper-level prospect, Dillon (by Cavalier) endured some physical and behavioral problems and eventually ended up in the HorseNet rescue program in Maryland, where Rutledge found him six years ago. He’d competed through training level but needed substantial chiropractic and veterinary work before attempting anything more.

“We fixed his body and his mind, and he gives me everything he’s got now,” said Rutledge. “He’s very athletic and clever, and we tease him about being a 16.2-hand pony. He’s got the attitude, the cattiness, everything. If he can get away with it, he will.”

The pair did have one bobble on cross-country at Pine Top, which Rutledge called a simple green mistake. Dillon thought he could “get away with” leaning down on the eighth fence, an especially tall, square table. It was an awkward effort, but he managed to scramble over.

“It was the first really big fence on course, and he thought it was tiny until he got right down to it, and then it was like he said, ‘Oh dear God, it’s big!’ Rutledge said, laughing. “And I’m like, ‘OK pony, let’s see how good of a pony you actually are!’ He got really respectful after that. He jumped the next fence beautifully!”

The pair added 18.8 time faults to their dressage score of 36.7 to top advanced test A, division 3, on 55.5. Boyd Martin and Benwald finished second (56.4).

Rutledge, the mother of three children under the age of 8, is based in Maryland year-round at her Turnabout Farm. That means plenty of driving to spring events, and since she and Dillon hope to qualify for a CCI*** this year, the traveling isn’t likely to stop anytime soon.

“Ideally, we’ll do either Jersey Fresh [N.J. in May] or Fair Hill [Md. in October], depending on which one he decides he’s ready for,” Rutledge explained. “But this was his first advanced and only my second. I’m going to see how far he wants to take me.”

He’s Basically Perfect

Another first-time advanced partnership topped the advanced test C division. Michael Pollard and Icarus have both competed at the highest level separately, but Pine Top was their first run together. Having won their last three intermediate starts, their victory was no surprise, however.

“He’s the best horse by far that I’ve ridden,” Pollard said of the 11-year-old off-the-track Thoroughbred (Boundlessly—Suzan’s Silver). “He’s fast, he’s willing, and he’s great on the flat and easy to ride. He’s basically perfect.”

Pollard’s wife, Nathalie Bouckaert-Pollard, spotted the gray gelding running at the preliminary level in Kentucky four years ago and decided she had to have him. She trained him up to advanced, and when the couple took some time to develop their business in 2007, their friend Will Coleman took over the ride and scored a fourth-placed finish at the Jersey Fresh CCI***. Bouckaert-Pollard had her first child, son Phineas, last August, so she’s taken some time off from competing but still rides four to five horses a day at the couple’s Chatsworth, Ga., farm.

“I’m able to ride a couple times a week, and then obviously on the weekends,” said Pollard, who runs the family’s carpet recycling, chemical manufacturing and riding arena footing businesses. “We’ve got a full plate at the moment. We’re not getting bored. It sure is nice that Nathalie does all the work though, because it makes me look good!

“The horse did a very good dressage test, but Nathalie hammered me on the many points that I gave away that I shouldn’t have,” continued Pollard, who placed third with a mark of 30.7. “I guess if I’m going to ride her horse, I’ve got to hold myself to a little bit higher standard.”

After a week of show jumping practice at the HITS Ocala (Fla.) winter circuit, Pollard and Icarus scored a double-clear round in a deluge of rain at Pine Top, and on Sunday they added 16.8 time faults to their score to beat second-placed Mike Winter and Kingpin (57.5).

“As I was getting tacked up on Sunday I thought I was nuts, and I think several other people around our barn thought the same,” Pollard remarked. “But I knew that I had studs that would hold in that ground, and I was fourth to go so I figured it wasn’t going to be too chewed up at that point.”

Prepared to pull up at any point during the course, Pollard was pleasantly surprised by how well it rode and his horse’s easiness in the conditions.

“I didn’t really have any idea what my time was going to be, and I really wasn’t that concerned,” he said. “But he covers the ground and rates himself quite easily, so he came out being very quick without a whole lot of effort to do so.”

With a winning rapport clearly established, Pollard hopes to get Icarus to the Rolex Kentucky CCI**** in April.

“It’s a little ambitious to start, having never taken the horse advanced yourself, and think you’re going to get to Kentucky at the end of the spring season, but that’s sort of what we’ve talked about,” he said. “He’s certainly capable, and Will gave him a great ride at the three-star. I think it would be well within his ability to do it.”

Brannigan Is Still Unbeatable

Jennie Brannigan’s mount Cooper is still new to the advanced level, but he proved it’s well within his ability as well, winning test A, division 2, from start to finish (54.2).

Brannigan, originally from San Diego, Calif., works for Phillip Dutton and Boyd Martin in West Grove, Pa., and Aiken, S.C. She and Cooper, an 8-year-old Dutch Warmblood gelding (Corland–Praciana), were nearly unbeatable at the intermediate level last year, and Brannigan won the U.S. Equestrian Team Foundation Jacqueline B. Mars International Competition and Training Grant. She hopes to head to England for the Bramham CCI*** in June.

Over the winter Brannigan trained with Martin’s wife, Grand Prix dressage rider Silva, and the week before Pine Top she rode with U.S. Chef d’Equipe Capt. Mark Phillips in Aiken as part of her developing rider training. She was thrilled to lead her division at Pine Top on a dressage score of 25.8.

“Silva told me if I didn’t get 8s on my changes she’d be angry with me, so I was relieved when I scored those,” she said. “And Mark actually sat on Cooper last week and really helped me with getting him up and not curling behind the bit and getting him pressing more into the contact.”

Despite some “carnage” she witnessed just before her show jumping round—several horses pulling rails left and right in the Friday afternoon downpour—Brannigan added another double-clear round to Cooper’s record. They cantered around the cross-country for 28.4 time faults but still won the division by more than 5 points over Will Faudree and Pawlow.

“I know I’m a kid, so I went out there and just really tried to ride smart,” said Brannigan, 21. “All I was working on was Mark’s point—to get down to the base of every jump and add if I had to, even if that meant that I needed to go slow. The rain just made it that much easier to do that.”

With a burgeoning career and a young superstar horse, Brannigan is trying to make decisions based on the pair’s best interests in the long term. She’s also navigating the unfamiliar waters of organizing her first syndicate to ensure that financial constraints won’t hold Cooper back.

“I’m starting to trust a little bit that he’s going to be big player in my future, so I need to take care of him,” she said. “He gave me a lot of wins last season, and he’s proven that he can run around and make time. Now I need to prove that I’m not an idiot. Running at Pine Top really was in his best interest, so I ran around slow and happened to win, and that’s great. But it’s not about how many points I can rack up or how many blue ribbons I can get every weekend. It’s more important for him to be safe and sound and ready for more.”

Bragging Rights In The Rain

Silva Martin’s dressage training also produced another winner in advanced test A, division 1. Jan Byyny admitted that flatwork isn’t Syd Kent’s forté, but the 11-year-old New Zealand-bred Thoroughbred has grown much stronger over the winter with some help from Silva and Dutton.

“He’s maybe one of the best jumpers I’ve sat on in my life, but his dressage work is behind the rest of his jumping,” said Byyny. “He’s a little slow behind, but he’s getting stronger. If I get his dressage down, watch out!”

Byyny, Purcellville, Va., and “Syd” (by Barbaroom) posted 36.3 penalties in the dressage, then jumped double clear in some of the worst weather on Friday.

“My friend told me she thought it rained harder on me in the show jumping than anybody else,” Byyny said, laughing. “Not that it didn’t rain hard on everyone, but it literally went sideways when I went in there.”

The pair added 19.6 time faults to their score on Sunday to finish on a mark of 55.9 over Boyd and Remington XXV (59.0). While she was personally happy for a win, the best part of Byyny’s day was calling Syd’s elderly owner, J.C. Chester, while he waited at the airport for his flight home from the event.

“He stood out on cross-country to watch and got absolutely soaking wet, but was just as happy as could be,” she said. “I asked him why he didn’t have his umbrella from the day before, and he said it belonged to the Green Boundary, where he was staying, but because he had checked out he didn’t want to take it. So it was so nice to be able to call him and say, ‘Guess what, your horse won!’ He got bragging rights for getting so wet.”

Chester, who has owned several horses for Byyny, stepped in to purchase Syd after she found him in England two years ago with U.S. rider Julian Stiller. After recovering from a chipped navicular bone, the gelding has been on the past two U.S. Equestrian Federation winter training B lists. He placed seventh at the Fair Hill CCI*** last fall, and Byyny hopes to take him to Rolex Kentucky this spring. That is, if the quirky gelding decides he’s ready.

“He definitely has his own personality, and he’s actually a really hard ride,” Byyny admitted. “He has a serious buck in him. I didn’t realize the full extent of it at first, but now you often see me with a neck strap on. He’s dumped almost everyone at the farm. But all the great horses have something like that, right?”