Bridgehampton, NY - Samantha Schaefer captured top honors in the $10,000 Sam Edelman Equitation Championship at the Hampton Classic Horse Show on Thursday. The 17-year-old student from Westminster, MD, received the highest score of 182 points riding Pioneer, owned by Heritage Farm. "It's a big deal to win here," said Schaefer. "I rode in the class last year on a young horse and made it into the Top 10, but this is really great." Schaefer has only shown Pioneer three times at the suggestion of...

USEF Archive/Geoff Oliver Bugbee (USEF President David O'Connor presented the inaugural EQUUS Foundation Humanitarian Award to Nancy Koch of CANTER.) The United States Equestrian Federation and The EQUUS Foundation will once again honor the hard work and dedication of equestrians with the presentation of the Second Annual EQUUS Foundation Humanitarian Award to be presented during the Pegasus Awards at the USEF Annual Meeting in January 2011. In 2009, the USEF and the EQUUS Foundation joined...

SINGAPORE - At the conclusion of round two, Eirin Bruheim (Houston, TX) and her teammates ended the Team Jumping competition in sixth place at the 2010 Youth Olympic Games in Singapore. The group, comprised of five riders from North and Central America as well as the Caribbean Islands, finished with 32 penalties for the two-round event at the Singapore Turf Club Riding Centre. “The only problem today was that my horse is a little shy of crowds, so he gets really nervous and he didn’t really...

Photo by Carole Dwinell (F.A.C.E.) El Sueño Equestrian Center near Camarillo, CA, was the site for the the fourth of five USEF Selection Trials on the road to this year’s 2010 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games (WEG) for American vaulters. Translated from Spanish, El Sueño means "dream." This new facility represents four years of hard work and upgrading efforts at the recently purchased property. Owner Gina Atton-Thomas has now hosted upper-level dressage clinics, a hunter/jumper series, and...

Riders4helmets website aims to encourage more equestrians to wear helmets Leading equine digestive health product Succeed® has teamed up with helmet advocate Jeri Bryant to launch an online helmet awareness campaign— www.riders4helmets.com . The campaign is designed to educate equestrians on the benefits of wearing helmets. The Equestrian Medical Safety Association (EMSA) states that head injuries account for approximately 60% of deaths resulting from equestrian accidents. Approximately...

Phillip Dutton and Woodburn (Shannon Brinkman) Lexington, KY - William Fox-Pitt put in a foot-perfect show jumping round to complete a weekend during which Cool Mountain exceed expectation and made his first CCI4* a winning one at the Rolex Kentucky Three-Day Event presented by Bridgestone. Riding for Great Britain, Fox-Pitt was the man to catch all weekend and finished on his dressage score of 42.8. But Rolex Kentucky had always eluded him so his flawless round in the Johnson Stadium at the...

The 2010 Kentucky International Equine Summit, a biennial event to be held on Monday and Tuesday, April 26 and 27, in Lexington, KY, and sponsored by the University of Louisville Equine Industry Program in cooperation with the University of Kentucky Equine Initiative, will feature more than 70 speakers and panelists dealing with a range of future challenges facing segments of the international and domestic horse industry. Dr. Veronique Julliand of AgroSup, Dijon, France, responsible for a...

Michelle Parker made the most of her two weeks at the 2010 HITS Arizona Desert Circuit. Parker finished with three in the money in the $25,000 HITS Grand Prix during week V and followed that performance with a victory aboard Tula Pinnella's Reina in the $25,000 Strongid® C 2X Grand Prix, presented by Pfizer Animal Health, on Sunday, March 14, to close out the 2010 season during the Arizona Desert Finals in Tucson, AZ. Canadian Danny Foster designed the course for the featured class, which...

Photo by Robbi Meisel (Aaron Vale and Platinum) The $25,000 Jacksonville A-Z Grand Prix sponsored by North Florida Hunter Jumper Association on January 30 closed out Week IV of competition with one of the most successful riders in show jumping, Aaron Vale, adding another win to his illustrious career. After a week of observation, course designer Allen Rheinheimer put all he learned about the starting field into a lengthy and technical 13 obstacle-16 effort test with a time allowance of 96 tight...

The 2010 FTI Winter Equestrian Festival (WEF) continued a strong circuit this year in the second week of competition held January 20-24. The week featured the $50,000 Purina Mills Grand Prix, CSI** along with a full schedule of hunter, jumper, and equitation classes. The week two title sponsor was Purina Mills, and through Land O'Lakes Purina Feed, they are the exclusive horse feed sponsor of the 2010 FTI Winter Equestrian Festival. Land O'Lakes Purina Feed, LLC (www.landolakesinc.com), is a...