Kenny Wheeler and the 2-year-old gelding end their winning season with a bang.

Decades of breeding Thoroughbred race horses has given Mary Jane Hunt a practiced eye for evaluating young horses. It takes a lot to impress her, but she regarded Holden as exceptional from the moment he first stood up.

But even Hunt could not have predicted how much the horse would win over the course of his 2-year-old year.

On Sept. 5, in Warrenton, Va., Holden, handled by hunter breeding legend Kenny Wheeler, swept not only the Sallie B. Wheeler/USEF National Hunter Breeding Championships East Coast Phase but also the national title. This triumph comes on top of winning best young horse titles at the Devon Horse Show (Pa.), the Upperville Horse Show (Va.) and the Keswick Horse Show (Va.) earlier in the season.

Judges Richard Taylor, Montpelier Station, Va., and Carleton Brooks, Encinitas, Calif., traveled to the Warrenton Horse Show from California after judging the West Coast phase on Aug. 29 at the Showpark All Seasons Summer Tournament in Del Mar. They compared the East and West Coast winners and named an overall champion.

“I think picking the winner is easy. A horse is a horse, a horse show is a horse show, and you’d like to think that at the end of the day the horse judges itself,” Taylor said. “The competition varies from year to year, but every year there is a nice group of horses, whether on the East or the West Coast.”

Holden, a Jockey Club-registered Thoroughbred (Indian Ocean—Hold The Dream, Hold Your Peace) is part of his sire’s first crop of foals. Hunt, Reddick, Fla., originally planned to race Holden (whose Jockey Club name is Hold On To Dreams), but after she saw the effects of a dwindling economy on the Thoroughbred industry, she decided a more secure future for the handsome bay gelding might be found in the show ring.

“I bred and raised and raced the mare, and she was a wonderful mare for me,” Hunt said. “She produced consistently beautiful foals who were wonderful race horses. I felt like he would sell well, but I didn’t think he would really break through and sell extraordinarily well, and so I decided to do this with him since it was the mare’s last foal.”

Early in the year, Hunt sent photos of the horse to her longtime friend Wheeler, who agreed the horse had potential.

“He’s a beautiful colt and a beautiful sized horse,” said Wheeler.

The judges certainly agreed with Wheeler, and Wheeler and Hunt were pleased with the aplomb the young horse demonstrated throughout the event.

“We didn’t geld him until a year ago, and so he was a colt for a little while,” Hunt said. “He was a little mouthy but otherwise just had a lovely temperament. I thought he had the temperament to do this.”

Winning the championship is always sentimental for Wheeler as it is named after his late wife, Sallie B. Wheeler.

“I’ve won it a couple times before,” he said. “It always feels great to win.”

Though most of her time is devoted to her Thoroughbred breeding operation, Hunt made the trip to Virginia for the Upperville and Warrenton shows and is enjoying being back in the horse show world after many years away. Hunt showed in the amateur-owner hunters throughout the ’70s and ’80s, winning a championship at the Washington International Horse Show (D.C.) in 1980, and also judged for several years.

“It’s been fun for me to come up,” she said. “It’s been a great experience.”

Wheeler and Hunt are aiming Holden for the 3-year-old International Hunter Futurity classes next year.

“He’s my horse, so, of course, I’m prejudiced, but they just don’t come around like that very often,” Hunt said. “It would be a shame not to carry on. Kenny only planned to do these four horse shows with him, and now he’ll start to ride and see what he can do, see if he can jump. That’ll be the hope.”

Foxy’s Magic Gift Is The Real Deal

While many young horses come unglued in the occasionally chaotic environment of a horse show, Foxy’s Magic Gift had always tolerated the atmosphere particularly well, and the Sallie B. Wheeler/USEF National Hunter Breeding Championship was no exception.

The 2-year-old stood quietly surveying his surroundings at the Warrenton Horse Show on his way to winning the reserve champion best young horse for the East Coast division and the reserve champion overall best young horse in addition to the IHF best young horse championship he won the day before.

“He’s got one of the best dispositions of any young horse I’ve seen,” said Oliver Brown, Reva, Va. “Very seldom do we get looks and brains in the same package, but he comes with the total package.”

Foxy’s Magic Gift (Absolute—Autumn’s Magic Fox, Castle Magic), or “Jeter,” was bred by John W. Kelly, Middleburg, Va., and is co-owned by Evelyn and Kimberly Maloomian, Needham, Mass. Brown has handled the Thoroughbred gelding since he was a foal and has always found him exceptionally easy. Jeter also won the amateur handler class with Kimberly at the reins after winning the Virginia-bred young hunter under saddle class with her two days before.

“He’s like an old horse that has been doing it for years,” said Brown. “He’s wise beyond his years. Even when he’s playing, he’s not playing around. He gets along with whoever we turn him out with; he’s like a babysitter. Then he just does his job.”

Despite his young age, the elegant chestnut gelding already has an impressive string of victories under his belt. Last year, he won the East Coast phase of the Sallie B. Wheeler/USEF National Hunter Breeding Championships and the overall title. He was reserve champion best young horse at Devon as a yearling and has picked up numerous best young horse titles this year and last.

“We elected not to go after many titles this year and to just do the major shows. He naturally has it, and we’ve got him at the right stage. He’s by the far the best colt I’ve ever touched, without a doubt. He’s on top in terms of looks and movement,” said Brown.

Brown believes Jeter exemplifies all the qualities a young hunter should, combining a quiet mind with impeccable conformation.

“I could throw the reins over his neck, and he’d trot beside me,” said Brown. “One thing about hunter breeding we don’t look at enough, if you analyze the term, we should be breeding hunters. You should look at one and be able to picture a saddle on him. I think you can picture the saddle on him.”

Though Brown believes warmbloods are trendier in the hunter ring today, he is quick to say a quality Thoroughbred like Jeter will always have a place in the ribbons.

“This horse has so much natural spring,” he added. “Big hindquarters, good shoulder, and he naturally has push from behind. He has so much extension, a little head, a chiseled nose. He’s just so well balanced. I think he can compete with the warmbloods that seem to be the fashion of today’s horse show world.”

Jeter will likely travel to Florida this winter for more under saddle training, though Brown will show him on the line as a 3-year-old too.

“He’s one of the few I’m going to miss as he progresses out of my realm,” said Brown. “I’m very fortunate to have a lot of nice horses, but this one is special. This one is the real deal.”

Outstanding Lives Up To Her Name

A week before the East Coast horses battled for the best young horse title, Outstanding faced her own tough competition on the opposite side of the country.

Handled by John Ducharme, Walnut Creek, Calif., the 2-year-old warmblood filly beat a herd of quality young horses to take the Sallie B. Wheeler/USEF National Hunter Breeding Championships West Coast Phase on Aug. 29 at the Showpark All Seasons Summer Tournament in Del Mar, Calif. Ducharme was particularly pleased with how well Outstanding, or “Lola,” tolerated a long, hot day of showing.

“That day was a pretty tough day on all those babies,” said Ducharme. “You have the regular horse show, the futurity breeding, and then the Sallie B. Wheeler competition on top of that. It’s quite a day for those youngsters to go through. She was a very good star doing all that.”

Outstanding (Popeye K—Delilah, Coriano), owned by Krishna Buyalos, Santa Barbara, Calif., and bred by Leslie Nelson, Santa Barbara, Calif., is already a seasoned campaigner. She spent much of her yearling year on the show circuit and earned the Farnam Platform/USEF National Yearling Hunter Breeding Championship in 2008.

Ducharme said the bay filly’s charisma is the main reason she’s such a favorite with the judges.
“When you’re doing hunter breeding and model horses, not only do you want the conformation, which needs to be as close to perfect as possible, but you want the horse to have presence,” Ducharme said. “You want to know that it’s come to the show, and it is a show horse. That spark or presence, she has it.”

Outstanding will likely be a contender in International Hunter Futurity classes next year.

“She’s a nice filly,” Ducharme said. “In this game, if you’re going to walk into that ring, you better make sure you’re walking in with something you can win with. She’s definitely a winner.”