Lexington, Ky.—April 28

Will Coleman made an emphatic case for a ticket to the Paris Olympics today, taking both first and third places in the Cosequin Lexington CCI4*-S, a competition multiple U.S. Olympic hopefuls chose to make their case for this year’s Games.

Delivering double-clear rounds on both Diabolo and Off The Record, he ended up with scores just a point apart, taking first place on his rising star “Dabs” (29.9) and third on his veteran campaigner “Timmy” (30.9). Dabs, a 12-year-old Holsteiner owned by the Diabolo Group, LLC, was the only among 61 horses to start the competition to finish on his dressage score.

“I was pleasantly surprised, but not totally shocked,” Coleman said of Dabs coming out ahead of Timmy, his five-star veteran who won the 2021 CHIO Aachen (Germany). “I think the horse, even at home, was starting to give me the feeling that he was on the verge of doing something competitive at a big event. We obviously have a lot of belief in this horse’s talent, and we’ve patiently biding our time until he was ready to show it to the rest of the world. He still has a long way to go, but I’m really keen on him and excited about his future.”

Coleman bought Diabolo from Australia, where he was developed through the four-star level by Gemma Tinney. He first heard about the horse through an email from dealer in Australia who was representing him for sale. Coleman is inundated with that sort of email from strangers and didn’t look closely at it. He credited his wife, Katie, for drawing his attention back to the gelding.

“Katie, actually, was looking through some of the videos she sent, and said, ‘I think this horse is kind interesting, you might need to go to Australia,’ ” he recalled. “Really, it was her who said, ‘Will, why don’t you sit down and look at this with me?’ ”

A whirlwind three-day trip to Australia later, they acquired the horse.

“His transition to the Northern Hemisphere was really difficult for him, so for most of last year, he honestly just struggled to feel like he was his normal self,” Coleman said. “He just had various issues adjusting to life in a different hemisphere. So we were just really patient and didn’t really do a lot with him last year. We just waited for him to tell us when he was feeling like he was ready to go and start competing again.”

He’s been “quietly getting better since,” as he proved with his breakout victory today.

“It’s never an easy thing,” Coleman said of purchasing a horse developed by another rider. “It may sound like a shortcut, but it’s usually a much more difficult road than when you can bring them along from the beginning.”

Now, however, Coleman is in the enviable position of having two top four-star finishers with Paris Olympic selection looming on the horizon, but he would not predict how that might play out.

“Diabolo is definitely a newer horse for me; Timmy’s a little more tried and tested, but he’s also getting a little bit older,” he said. “I’m really not thinking too much about Paris at the moment. I really just want to regroup after this event, see where the horses are at, and then whatever happens in terms of selection, that’s sort of out of my hands.”

Sitting between Coleman’s two rides in the top three is Boyd Martin on Yankee Creek Ranch LLC’s 11-year-old Hoslteiner Commando 3, who also show jumped clean today to finish second on a score of 30.1. Apparently following the same playbook as Coleman, Martin led with his newer horse and had his more experienced partner, Fedarman B, close behind in fourth place (32.5)

As to which of the two would he’d pick now as a potential partner for the Paris Olympics, Martin was diplomatic.

“I’m very blessed with the two horses who finished in the top group here,” he said. “They’re pretty hard to split; I think they’re about as good as each other. They’re very strong in all three phases. It’s a wonderful position to be in to have a couple of hopefuls, and like your children, you should never favor one more than the other.”

The first finisher outside the Coleman-Martin show was Caroline Pamukcu, who took fifth place on her 2023 Pan American Games (Chile) individual gold and team silver medalist HSH Blake, a 9-year-old Irish Sport Horse owned by the rider, Mollie Hoff, Sherrie Martin and Deniz Pamukcu.

Pamukcu was more direct about her Olympic possibilities: At 9 years old, Blake is the oldest horse in her string. She’s taking several others to Europe for the U.S. Eventing Development Tour, and like many other horses in the Cosequin Lexington field, is going from here to the Tryon International CCI4*-L (North Carolina) with Blake.

“Hopefully, if that goes well, we’ll hopefully be looking forward to the Olympics,” she said.

Liz Halliday, who was leading after cross-country on a 0.7-penalty margin, had a single rail down late in the show jumping course to drop to seventh place in the tightly packed division.

See complete results here.

The Chronicle is on-site at the Kentucky Horse Park with two reporters to bring you everything you need to know at coth.com, so you don’t have to miss a minute of the action. You can find all of our coverage from the week here. You can also follow along on Instagram and Facebook. Be sure to read our May 20 issue for more in-depth coverage and analysis of the event.