Eventer Sara Kozumplik announced Monday on social media that her first five-star horse, the Thoroughbred As You Like It, has died at age 34. The gelding took her from U.S. Pony Club to the top of the sport, completing the Kentucky Three-Day Event multiple times, as well as the Badminton (England), Burghley (England) and Pau (France) five-stars, in the years they were still called CCI4* events. In memory of “Auggie,” this Throwback Thursday we’re resharing Kozumplik’s account of the first of her two trips around Burghley. A version of this article was first published Sept. 2, 2015.
Sara Kozumplik laughs softly as she recalls what went through her mind walking up to the Burghley Bounce Bank in 2002.
“You have to remember, I was really young then, so honestly, everything about Burghley was a bit overwhelming!” she said. “That fence was absolutely enormous, and to this day it’s the biggest thing I’ve ever seen on a cross-country course, and I have a lot more experience now.”
“I do remember Mark Phillips said, as we walked up [to it], that if we weren’t going to ride this one properly that we might as well just reserve our room in the hospital, which wasn’t very comforting!”
Sara Kozumplik and As You Like It tackling the Burghley Bounce Bank in 2002.
In 2002, Kozumplik was a 23-year-old competing at her very first Burghley CCI4* on as You Like It, an off-the-track Thoroughbred she’d ridden in her last years of Pony Club. “He was such a horse-of-a-lifetime for me. He was such a cool horse,” she said of “Auggie.”
Kozumplik remembers that there were six Americans competing at the 2002 Burghley CCI4*, including veterans Amy Tryon, Buck Davidson, Cathy Wieschhoff and Robert Costello. Phillips chose her to be the first U.S. rider out on course.
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“At the time, I thought, ‘Well, why the hell do I go first when there are so many experienced riders here?’ ” Kozumplik said. “But now I realize in hindsight why he did it; if I’d had to sit and watch the whole day, it would have been pretty terrifying! There were a lot of problems that year.” ”
In fact, 17 riders retired on cross-country and nine were eliminated. Kozumplik was the 10th rider to start, and when she came into the 10-minute box (Burghley was still run in long format in 2002), there were no horses cooling out post-cross-country. “Max Corcoran and Jim Wolf and a bunch of people were there in the 10-minute box to help. They all just lied to me and told me, ‘Oh, they’re just cooling off really fast,’ but it was really that nobody had jumped around the whole thing yet!” she recalled.
“Auggie was the first horse to finish the course that year, and I was always very proud of him for doing that. He was the first horse to jump that Burghley Bounce Bank. You came straight down a steep hill to Burghley Bank. There was a big ditch in front of the jump up, and it was meant to be bounce on the top and then dropping down off it. You just had to keep kicking, basically,” she remembered.
“I never really hear anything when I’m out on cross-country, but the other thing that I really remember about that jump is that when I landed, there was a little kid voice that said, ‘Well done, Sara!’ And I remember thinking to myself, ‘Yeah, no kidding! I can’t believe we got that done.’ ”
Kozumplik and Auggie finished in 46th at that Burghley with a stop elsewhere on the cross-country, what she terms “terrible dressage,” and six rails down in show jumping. But in a year when 44 horses didn’t finish the event, completion was a victory in and of itself.
Auggie, who retired in 2005, went on to jump around Burghley again for Kozumplik in 2003, as well as the Rolex Kentucky CCI4* and Badminton CCI4* (England). “He was the kind of horse that you don’t realize that riding at that level is hard,” she said. “You’re like, ‘Why is everyone making such a big deal out of this?’ and then you get on the next horse, and you’re like, ‘Holy moly!’ ”
