Lisette Milner spent almost every afternoon last summer riding her 10-year-old, Dutch Warmblood stallion, Eminence, over Pennsylvania’s hilly terrain. And at the Great American/USDF Region 1 championships, Oct. 20-23 at the Virginia Horse Center in Lexington, the extra hind-end strength he’d gained paid off, with a win in the Grand Prix. “It’s not really about the tricks so much,” Milner said of her training philosophy. “It’s really all about the suppleness of the horse. And it’s about the elasticity and the building of the muscles.” Milner, of Wellington, Fla., bought Eminence in the Netherlands as a 6-year-old after spotting him on a video. “He wasn’t as strong in the gaits as some of the horses that I’ve looked at,” she said. “But he had the mind and the heart. You could just see it in his eyes. “I just fell in love with him; he was such a wonderful stallion,” Milner continued. “But he was a lot fresher then. I guess you could say he was an over achiever—he tried too hard to please. It’s taken a lot of time to relax him and let him know, ‘It’s OK, you don’t have to try so hard.’ ” Milner admitted to being particularly fond of working with stallions. She owns four, including another of her Grand Prix horses, Lorenzo’s Fire. “I love their cheekiness,” she said. “And a lot of stallions are extremely intelligent.” The pair spent two years in Germany studying with Ernst Hoyos. She headed back to the states this spring following a win at Hagen, Germany, and trained during the summer with Lars Petersen while in Pennsylvania. “My husband calls me MIA, missing in action,” she said, smiling. Milner was also happy with Eminence’s score of 68.95 percent in an open FEI test of choice class, earning her the FEI combined high-score award for the show. “Yesterday was brilliant,” Milner said of the open class. “But today was a good, solid test. I was really happy. Yesterday I think there was a little more lift in the passage and the piaffe was a little bit sharper. I think I was a little lighter in the seat today. “Sometimes he does tend to get a little nervous and then he will hold through his back,” she added. “So the key to him is keeping him really supple and swinging through his back but still underneath himself as well.” Following her win, Milner was finally headed back to her Morningside Farm in Florida, keeping her fingers crossed that Hurricane Wilma had left behind a minimum amount of damage. w A Birthday Celebration Ana DiGironimo, who just celebrated her 16th birthday, won both the junior high score and the fourth level high score with a 69.57 percent on her 13-year-oldDutch Warmblood, Cadanz. She also won the junior/young rider GAIG/USDF Region 1 fourth level and FEI Junior Team finals. The Turnersville, N.J., teenager travels three hours on weekends to train with Lendon Gray. “My goal for the past three years has been to go to the junior championships,” said DiGironimo, who was the team and individual silver medalist at the USEF Junior Dressage Team Championships in October at Devon (Pa.). “I really didn’t have a specific goal for this weekend, just to have clean tests,” DiGironimo said. “The ring in the coliseum can be pretty overwhelming at times. When I got in there yesterday, he was a little timid. So today, my goal was just to go in there and have him be obedient, and he was. I couldn’t ask for more.” Her next goal is to earn a place on her region’s North American Young Riders Championship team. “Young Riders is really a step up,” she reflected. “All the horses are good, all the riders are good, and you have to be really good to be one of them. So I am just trying now to work on polishing everything I do.” In November, DiGironimo will head to Mexico City for an international junior team competition. Like the rest of the competitors, she will be riding a borrowed horse for the event. “We also will be living with a host family while we are there,” she said. “It should be just a wonderful experience.” DiGironimo has been riding since she was 3 and admitted the sacrifices sometimes are difficult. “Riding does take a chunk out of my life,” she acknowledged. “It’s hard with friends and social activities. But I never ride on Friday. I just go out and be normal.” The rewards are also great, DiGironimo said. “I think what I love is the feeling that you get after you accomplish something, like when you teach a horse how to do a half pass or a flying change, and that you can feel that you have finished what you started. Dressage is really a thinking sport; you have to always be thinking as a rider because you are doing seven different things at once. It is so difficult to be precise and always try to have your horse with you. “He’s just one in a million,” DiGironimo added about Cadanz. “He tries his hardest. He knows his job, and his job is to win.” w Off The Market Grande Crimson, a 5-year-old, Canadian Warmblood mare ridden by Michelle Folden, created a buzz after winning the regional open training championship. “I just loved her the second I saw her,” Folden recalled, “particularly her canter and her walk. But she was a lot of young horse. She actually bucked me off during the first 10 days that I had her.” Owner Andrea Driscoll of Charleston, S.C., sent the mare to Folden last November to be sold, and Folden and Driscoll decided to campaign the mare. They were rewarded with scores ranging from 71 to 77 percent at their first show last July. The team suffered a slight setback later in the summer after Grande Crimson suffered a mild suspensory strain. However, she came back, earning a 79 percent at her next show. Then at the end of September, the mare once again bucked Folden off as they prepared to enter the ring in Pinehurst, N.C. “But I needed the score, so I got on and rode the test,” Folden said. “We won and earned the high score with a 72 percent. “I love her to death, with my whole heart. She and I bond,” Folden added. “But I also have learned to appreciate her power.” That power translates into a walk that earns Grande Crimson scores of 8 and 9, and a big, bouncy canter equally rewarded by the judges. “She has so much presence and is so powerfully built that most people think she is a stallion,” Folden said. The mare won both of her open classes on Thursday before her win in the championship class. “I knew she could win her championship, but I wasn’t sure that I could hold it together,” Folden admitted, adding that she had been laid up for nearly three weeks after her previous spill. “But she went in and did her job beautifully.” Following their win, Folden and Driscoll decided to take Grande Crimson off the market. “The win was great, but that is even better,” said Folden, of Oak Ridge, N.C. “We’re just going to see what she can do. But we’re definitely done with training level. I think we’ve mastered the 20-meter circle.” The Region 1 junior/young rider training level finals were something of a family affair for the Hanoverian mare Femme Fatale and owners Mary Smith and Gunnar Lund. Three Femme Fatale daughters—Wixen, Well To Do, and Winnetka—finished first, second and eighth, respectively, in the class. All were ridden by 20-year-old Sara Zofchak. Zofchak came to Smith and Lund one year ago after working with eventer Phyllis Dawson. She has done all of the training with Wixen, who is only 3. Zofchak said all of Femme Fatale’s babies have exceptional minds, noting that the three at the Lexington show were all under the age of 5. Zofchak enjoys working with the young horses. “It is very rewarding when they are successful, and you know it is the result of your work,” she said. One drawback is that the horses are almost always for sale. “Yes, it will be particularly disappointing when these three are sold, because I have worked with them so much. But I know they are not mine, so I try not to get attached,” said Zofchak, who trains with Mary Flood. Does this young rider who grew up in the suburbs near Pittsburgh miss the eventing? “Well, sometimes, but riding babies is the same sort of adrenaline rush,” she said with a grin. Since Smith and Lund obtained Femme Fatale, the mare has given them eight foals through embryo transplant. “Now,” Smith said, “if we could only figure out how to clone Sara.” w A Change Of Pace If there was a sentimental favorite at Lexington, it was Casper, a 21-year old, 15.1-hand Welsh-Thoroughbred ridden by Anne-Marie Halsey of Germantown, Md. The pair won the Region 1 second level amateurchampionship. Halsey, who squeezes riding in during the evenings after her day job at the Smithsonian Institute, got Casper when he was 6. Halsey was 15 at the time and bought him to event at novice level. The pair competed through the CCI** level, including a win at the one-star at Essex (N.J.) in 1997. Halsey retired Casper from his eventing career five years ago after their final start in the Morven Park CCI* (Va.). “I just didn’t want to take a chance on anything going wrong,” she said. However, Casper thrives on work, and the two have continued their partnership in the dressage ring. “It’s still hard work for him,” she said. “He’s basically not a dressage horse.” Their win at second level marked a high point in their dressage career, Halsey said. “He loves to come and show,” she said. “But he knows there used to be something else that happened after the dressage—besides more dressage. But right now, if I retired him, I think he would miss it.” Members of the Virginia Dressage Association established the Mary Beth McLean Memorial Perpetual Trophy this year in honor of McLean, 35, of Southern Pines, N.C. She died unexpectedly one week before the show from a brain aneurysm while schooling a horse. “Mary Beth was a long-time competitor at the VADA fall show and will be greatly missed,” show secretary Dianne Boyd said. The trophy will be awarded each year at the VADA fall competition that hosts either the regional or BLM finals to the highest combined score from the Prix St. Georges and Intermediaire I finals. This year’s winner was Mary Alice Malone and Kashmir.