Randi Muster (Isabelle Caccamise and her medium pony, Better Than Good, won the title in the Medal Finals. ) Lexington, KY - August 15, 2010 - A mist of Show Sheen, check. A dab of hoof polish, check. A last pat for good luck, check. On Sunday, the clock began to wind down on the six-days of excitement that was the 2010 USEF Pony Finals National Championships. Still, as riders gathered for the final contest, The Equisport Insurance/USEF Pony Medal, attention to detail was not lost. Over 190...

SusanJStickle.com (Young Rider Dressage Team Gold) Lexington, KY - July 28, 2010 - It was dueling dressage riders today in the gleaming parallel lines set on the field of the Kentucky Horse Park’s new Main Stadium. Junior competitors (ages 14-18) and Young Riders (ages 16-21) performed side-by-side to kick off the 2010 Adequan FEI North American Junior & Young Rider Championships presented by Gotham North. Today’s event, The Platinum Performance/USDF Dressage Championship Team Test represented...

The Interscholastic Equestrian Association (IEA) has officially announced that saddle seat is approved as an emerging discipline of the IEA, and teams are starting to form all over the United States. Hundreds of teams and thousands of members have enjoyed participating in IEA hunt seat and Western competitions for the past eight years, but this will be the first year for the saddle seat offerings. The mission of IEA is to introduce students in private and public middle and secondary schools...

K.C. Montgomery (Shawn Flarida RC Fancy Step) Oklahoma City, OK – The 2010 Adequan/USEF Open Reining Championships, which also served as the USEF Selection Trial for the Adequan US Reining Team for the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games, featured fierce competition with a national title and a ticket to the World Equestrian Games on the line. The Oklahoma State Fairgrounds main coliseum was rocking on Saturday night and when the dust settled Shawn Flarida held on to his lead and had the best two...

Photo by Flying Horse Photography (Michelle Parker and Socrates de Midos) In honor of the Fourth of July holiday weekend and to wrap up four weeks of competition managed by Blenheim EquiSports, the $25,000 Red, White & Blue Grand Prix presented by the St. Regis Monarch Beach, invited 19 horse-and-rider duos onto the Michel Vaillancourt-designed course at the Rancho Mission Viejo Riding Park. Vaillancourt remarked, “I think today’s course dimensions are very worthy of this class. It is...

Equestrians showing their support for the campaign. (l-r) Leigh Ann, USEF; Samantha Clark, 2010 Radio Show; Event Rider Cathy Wieschhoff; Dressage Rider Reese Koffler-Stanfield; Glenn Hebert, 2010 Radio Show, and Lyndsey White, Freedom Health. The riders4helmets campaign, operated by helmet advocate Jeri Bryant and supported by SUCCEED®, has organized a National Helmet Awareness Day endorsed by the United States Equestrian Federation, to be held on July 10, 2010. riders4helmets has teamed up...

Photo by Jon Kassel (Grand Prix Course at the sold out Alliant Energy Center Arena .) The 10,000 seat John Deere Coliseum at Madison's Alliant Energy Center was standing room only Saturday night as five of 38 entries passed the course's first test and were asked back for the tie-breaking round. Ultimately it was the feisty chestnut mare Happy Z and Ohio's Wilhelm Genn who laid down an unbeatable jump-off track for the win. Laura Linback and As di Villagana, competing last, also put in a...

GULFPORT, MS—Translated to English, “let the good times roll” easily sums up the series that Lebanon, OH-based, Wilhelm Genn continues to enjoy in Gulfport with two $25,000 Grand Prix victories this week. Riding the Laura Ryan-Barnaclo owned Chantal, on Friday, Genn celebrated victory in the $25,000 EMO Insurance sponsored Grand Prix and again on Sunday in the $25,000 Nutrena Grand Prix. 2008 Beijing Olympic co-course designer Steve Stephens arrived in Gulfport with one goal in mind – to test...

Photo Courtesy AHA/Conley Driediger (Conley Driediger with gelding, Winning Afire+//.) Alexis Starer Doughty of Cape Charles, VA, and Conley Driediger of Yarrow, BC, Canada, were named the Arabian Horse Association (AHA) Adult and Youth Amateurs of 2009, respectively. Doughty earned an impressive 646 points at 22 AHA-recognized shows in 2009, while Driediger earned a whopping 485.5 points from 17 shows. The AHA Amateur Achievement Award program began in 2002 and tracks the points of individual...

Photo by Robbi Meisel (Eirin Bruheim and NLF Trans Atlantic) Thermometers were up and down, weathermen forecasted gloom and doom with the supposed arrival of three inches or more of snow, and like all good businesses the managers of the Gulf Coast Winter Classics decided to aire on the side of caution by cancelling Friday classes. The good news was that aside from some nasty rain, it truly was a “non event” day as Bob Bell co-chairman had hoped. Saturday saw the return of warmer temperatures,...