If there were a perpetual trophy for the $150,000 Ford Grand Prix of the Desert, Richard Spooner would have retired it years ago.

Spooner has now won the class six times on five different horses. He earned his most recent victory with the Irish-bred mare Ezrah, a horse he purchased last fall.

The grand prix served as the grand finale of HITS Desert Circuit VI on March 13 in Indio, Calif.

Spooner had planned on riding three horses in the big class–Millenium (the horse he picked to earn valuable World Cup points), Robinson and Hilton Flight. But Hilton Flight had a last-minute shoeing problem and had to be withdrawn, leaving Spooner to choose among his other three grand prix horses.
Ezrah was the obvious choice. “Ezrah won the Friday grand prix and made the decision easy,” Spooner said.

And then he shook his head at the vagaries of fate. “I could have picked a different horse, and it would have been a totally different result,” said the Los Angeles-based profes-sional. “That’s what show jumping’s all about.”

Not only did Ezrah win the class, but she also did it without a jump-off. The last horse to go in the first round, S&L Willie with Tracy Fenney up, almost made a horse race out of it. But the pair was a hair too slow around the course. Just 1 time penalty left them all alone in second.

Willie was rested last year, and at 10 is still relatively green. Fenney, from Flower Mound, Texas, couldn’t have been happier with how well the Dutch-bred gelding had performed at this Desert Circuit. “He came back strong, and I’m real excited that he could pull that off,” she said.

The weather in Indio had been extremely hot during the week, and the horses looked a little lethargic. Sunday dawned much cooler, though, with a northerly breeze, and Leopoldo Palacios adjusted his jumps accordingly.

“The other days, I had to be very careful not to be too hard on the horses,” said the Venezuelan course designer on Sunday. “But today we can have bigger fences.”

Fenney was impressed. “It’s been a long time since I jumped a course that big,” she said.

The size was only one of many challenges Palacios set for the riders, and Fenney’s careful ride was a result. She’d have certainly preferred to have forced a jump-off with Spooner, but she declined to second-guess her choices in the ring.

“I pulled one too many times to the Ford jump and the last jump,” she said. “I figured it was better to be clean.”

One of the problem lines was a quadruple bar to a one-stride combination, then a gallop to the open water, followed by another double combination. Fenney knew the solution was to make sure S&L Willie was set up for the first jump.

“Getting in is the problem with him,” she said of the gelding’s attitude toward combinations. “He tends to lift his head and look at stuff. Once you jump in, then he’s pretty much in his gear.”

The Ford Grand Prix settled the race for the Budweiser FEI World Cup Final in Las Vegas on April 21-24. Nicole Shahinian Simpson and Joie Gatlin were already in. But Spooner and Gabby Salick were tied for third, with only three riders guaranteed an invitation to Las Vegas in April.

Spooner’s ride on Millenium (tied for 10th) moved him into third all by himself, and things looked bad for Salick after a 13-fault performance on Sandstone Laurin. Her luck was in, though, as World Cup officials decided to accept four riders from the West Coast League.

Salick planned to spend the intervening month preparing Laurin for the big event. “I’m going to focus on getting my horse as comfortable and as happy and as sound as I can,” she said. “He’s an older horse, he’s very high-mileage, and had some bad injuries in his life. I want to make sure he goes there on all cylinders.”

Mandy Porter came to Sunday fifth in the World Cup standings, and she could have spoiled the party for Salick had she won the big class. But her tie for 20th place (with Salick, at 13 faults) kept her behind both Spooner and Salick.

Porter, a professional from Encinitas, Calif., was philosophical in defeat. “[The World Cup] would have been earlier than I would have assumed for the two of us together,” said Porter, who shows the 10-year-old Belgian-bred mare Summer for owner Barbara Ellison. “She doesn’t have that much experience in the bigger classes.”

Spooner wasn’t the only rider to win without a jump-off on Sunday. Gabby Applegate, 14, turned in the only clear round in the $25,000 junior/amateur-owner jumper classic on the grand prix field. Applegate’s trainers, Stephanie Simmonds-Wohr and John Wohr, made sure she knew every step of the demanding course. The teenager from Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., was very concerned about one demanding line.

“The hardest part was a quadruple bar to a very long one [stride] to a big, square oxer,” she said. The most important instruction from her trainers was to watch her speed, “to keep my mind slow, because I’ve been going a little too fast recently.”

Applegate couldn’t say what she was thinking during her winning trip, though. “I don’t remember anything,” she said, laughing. “I go blank.”

Pony Sweep

Clear rounds over big jumps are exciting, but the single most impressive performance in Indio came in the pony ring. Olivia Esse, 11, was circuit champion in all three sections of the pony hunters. She took the small honors with Miss Australia, medium honors with Longacre Hats Off, and large honors aboard Newsworthy.

She also earned the grand championship with Newsworthy, and, of course, she was named best pony rider.

Esse, who trains with Randy Durand near her Beverly Hills, Calif., home, was introduced to riding by her mother.

“My mom rode, and I used to go to the barn and visit all the horses,” she said. “I decided I wanted to start riding.”

Her mother still hacks a horse occasionally, but for the most part she “she’s focused on watching me in the shows,” Esse said. “She gets really nervous.”

Nicoletta von Heidegger earned the Willowbrook second-half small junior hunter, 15 and under, championship and the Antares circuit reserve with Breckenridge. “We looked around at so many, and there were so many nice ones, but I tried Breckenridge, and it was no comparison,” said von Heidegger, who trains with Keri Kampsen and Joe Thorpe. “When he jumps, it feels like you’re flying.”

Mary Ann Weissberg-Perry had previously shown both Breckenridge and the circuit 15-and-under champion, Petrus. And this year the Los Angeles amateur was herself a circuit champion, taking Country Grammer to the top of the 36 and over amateur-owner hunters.

Weissberg-Perry, who trains at Karen Healey Stables, walked away from the sport for several years. And she enjoys riding and horses more now than ever since her return.

“I turned 50, and I think you start looking at life a little differently,” she said. “I don’t put the pressure on myself. I just go in and enjoy each beautiful day. I think that comes with age.”

Ballari and Caerry Robinson earned the Antares amateur-owner 18-35 circuit championship, edging out last year’s winners, La Cara and Leah Schwendeman. Schwendeman, who guided La Cara to USEF Horse of the Year honors in 2004, enjoys every minute she spends on the wonderful mare’s back. La Cara doesn’t like to be messed with and prefers to go on a loose rein.

“It’s amazing for a horse to jump like that with so little help,” Schwendeman said. “I just tell her when we’re going to jump and get out of the way.”

La Cara will get a month’s rest after Indio, something her owner is sure she’ll enjoy. “She likes to get turned out, run around, eat some grass,” said Schwendeman, who rode at Indio with Heidi Austin-Fish. “She’s big on eating, as I’m sure you can tell by looking at her.”

The Right Time

Erin Duffy rode Georgia Spogli’s ‘Round Midnight to the circuit championship in second year green hunters because Georgia is still riding in the pony ring, not quite ready for a horse. But Duffy, her trainer, urged the family not to wait. She knew such a superb horse might not be available when it came time for Spogli to graduate from the ponies.

“He has such a great brain and he’s so forgiving,” Duffy said of ‘Round Midnight. “They’re hard to find like that, and that’s why we wanted to purchase him now.”

But Spogli might have trouble getting the horse away from her mom. “She’s had lessons on him and has just started to jump him,” Duffy said. “He’s being absolutely perfect with her.”

Duffy trains at Newmarket in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif. Another Newmarket customer, Cathy Hayes, was the circuit champion in the adult amateur hunters, 36-45, with her Enchanted.

“I didn’t know her that well,” said Hayes of Enchanted, her new ride. “I had only shown her once before the circuit started, so I wasn’t sure how it was going to go.”

Hayes, who didn’t show for nine years, is falling in love with it all over again. “You get that feeling of putting in a great trip, and it’s addicting,” she said.

It’s not the competition or even the riding itself that she missed the most. “I just missed being around the horses,” she said.

Stephanie Danhakl finished her last Indio as a junior with her usual stellar performance. She rode Galatea and Callaway to the champion and reserve titles in the small junior hunter, 16-17, and Bellingham Bay and In Sync to the champion and reserve titles in the large junior hunter, 16-17. She also won the championship during week 1 in the large junior, 16-17, with Lifetime.

“All my horses went so well the past six weeks,” said the California teenager. “It’s fun to end this way.”

Danhakl, who trains with Archie Cox and Peter Lombardo, also tied for the second-half equitation championship with her good friend Rebecca Bruce. Bruce was circuit champion in the 16-17 equitation, a goal of hers before the Desert Circuit started.

“It was definitely something I wanted to do at the beginning of the circuit,” said Bruce, from Santa Barbara, Calif. Bruce, who trains with Mary Gatti and Patrick Spanton, did well with her own horse the first three weeks in the desert. “But then he got sick, so I kind of borrowed whatever horse I could,” she said.

It was a third-placed ribbon in the last class with yet another loaner that earned her the circuit award. “Sierra Gonzales was nice enough to let me borrow her children’s hunter,” said Bruce, who’s in her last junior year. “He went right around.”