Lexington, Ky.—July 16
It all came down to the last rider, and then, the final fence. When Tori Colvin entered the ring for the Young Rider team competition aboard Lumiere as the anchor rider for the combined team from Zones 4/8, there were three different things that could happen. If she went clear, she guaranteed her team the gold at the Adequan/FEI North American Junior and Young Rider Championships. If she dropped one rail, Colvin’s team would have to jump off against the combined Zone 3/5 team. If she lowered two fences, her team was dropping to bronze.
Colvin began clocking around the course, managing the feisty liver chestnut (with who she just recently paired up) well. A tick of the rail at the FEI vertical early in the course sent it to the dirt with a plunk, and the crowd groaned slightly. But one rail was OK—one meant a jump-off.
On Colvin went, through the double and triple combinations, no problem. She turned right to the final jump, a white oxer with vertical striped rails built to look like a steamboat. Clear over the front rail, no luck with the back—Lumiere’s back feet rubbed it out of the cups, and this time the crowd split between groans and cheers as Zone 3/5 learned they had the win.
“I want to burn the last jump!” Colvin said with a laugh at the press conference. The team didn’t take the loss too hard—after all, they still walked away with bronze medals, and they still have the individual final to compete in.
The gold medal team from Zones 3/5 included a young rider first-timer, 20-year-old Jacob Pope, who won the 2012 ASPCA Maclay Finals (Ky.). It hasn’t all been smooth sailing for him and his mount Zilvana. Pope has only been riding the mare since April of this year, and had a rather rough opening round on Wednesday and a few scary spots in the first round of the team competition (the team competition is run like a Nations Cup—each team has four riders; they each jump the exact same course twice, and the highest score from each round is dropped).
But coming back for the second round in the team competition, Pope and Zilvana were a completely different team, riding confident and forward to most every fence, and finishing clear when the afternoon heat and long second round made fault-free rounds hard to come by.
“I really think that I just told myself that I need to get it done,” Pope said. “I went in yesterday kind of nervous; it was my first time here, and I really wanted to do well, and yesterday was just individual so it was OK that I didn’t do so well.
“But today I was really wanting the team to do well,” he continued. “So I thought this morning it went better than it did yesterday, and my second round I did better than the both that I’d previously done, so I was happy with that.”
Also riding on the gold medal winning young rider team from Zone 3/5 with Pope were Kalvin Dobbs, Noel Fauntleroy, and Meredith Darst (Darst won the opening round on Wednesday in the Young Rider division, so will be sitting in an excellent spot going into the individual final on Saturday).
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Taking the silver medal was the team from Zone 2, with riders Katherine Strauss, Sima Morgello, Kira Kerkorian, and Lucy Deslauriers. A cast couldn’t hold Strauss back from helping her team to the medal—a fall off a young horse at Spruce Meadows (Calgary) gave her a concussion and a broken thumb. The head injury was all healed up before NAJYRC, but the thumb is still on the mend—Strauss had to cut the thumb off her riding glove to fit it under the brace.
“The doctor put a cast on that sort of immobilized my thumb but allowed me to move the rest of my fingers as I normally would,” Strauss explained. “So it doesn’t really cause too many problems when I’m riding, and I don’t really think about it too much.” (Check out the gallery for a cute team picture featuring the broken digit—Strauss was a great sport about the whole thing!)
Zone 4 takes top podium spot (in spite of the podium)
The very podium Zone 4 stood atop at the end of the junior show jumping team competition almost ruined their gold medal finish at the Adequan/FEI North American Junior and Young Rider Championships today.
By the time anchor rider Sophie Simpson trotted in the ring for her second and final trip for Zone 4, her team was sitting on a score of 9—1 time fault carried over from the first round, 8 jumping faults from Louise Grave’s second round.
If the team was going to drop their 8 score, Simpson would have to best it. As she began clocking around the course, it seemed she would do just that. A triple combination that was tripping many of the juniors up she sailed through, no problem. Simpson flew over the open water, nowhere near the tape (another problem area for the juniors).
Simpson was almost done with the course—four jumps left. Then, she had to canter past the podium.
You wouldn’t think passing by a couple of white wooden platforms would bother a horse who leaps over meter 1.40m oxers without question, but Simpson’s mount Why Not shied badly, drifting further and further away from the boxes, and further away from the one stride line that happened to be situated right next to them.
“She’s always been a little funny about the podium, and every year there’s always a jump by it!” Simpson said with an exasperated laugh. “Last year I think I trotted an oxer because of it, and cleared it, but things like that can’t really happen.”
Both the juniors and young riders had the opportunity to flat in the Rolex Stadium the evening before the team competition, and Simpson focused on the podium.
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“I made sure I really cantered around it a lot last night, and the first round she was actually pretty good, and then she knew where it was,” Simpson, 17, said.
And there she was in the second round, sitting on a side passing chestnut mare heading into a meter 1.40-meter one-stride combination. Most would have panicked, but not Simpson. That’s why she’s the anchor rider—she’s cool under pressure. She simply encouraged the mare to keep moving forward, sliced her way into the combination, and made it out clean.
“I was ready for it, but if that distance hadn’t shown up, it would not have gone as well,” Simpson said with a smile. “She’s an awesome horse; she gives everything she can. She’s a real fighter.”
Why Not’s feisty chestnut mare spirit helped Zone 4 secure the top spot in the junior team competition—Sophie Michaels, Louise Graves, Mackenzie McGehee and Brett Burlington are all going home with some shiny gold medals.
“It hasn’t sunk in yet,” Graves said. “I think that I can speak for all of us and say that this has been a huge dream for all of us, and to have it finally come true—everything was aligned for us today, and we had a great day.”
Taking the silver medal was the combined Zone 5/9 team, with riders Daisy Farish, Emma Wujek, Annika Faught and Vivian Yowan.
The bronze went to the team representing northern Mexico, with riders Juan Pablo Gaspar Albanez (Albanez won the opening faults converted show jumping round on Wednesday, and had just one rail down in Thursday’s team competition, so he is well-placed for the individual final), Alfonso Diaz, Carlos Hank Guerreiro and Fernanda Rodriguez De Haene.
