Syracuse, NY - November 9, 2010 - The 127th National Horse Show was a great success this year with top hunter and equitation competition. The hunters ran their classes on Tuesday through Thursday. The highlight event, the ASPCA Maclay National Championship, was held on Sunday, November 7. The 127th National Horse Show is featured at the Syracuse Invitational Sporthorse Tournament in the War Memorial at the Oncenter Complex in Syracuse, NY. Riders worked all year to qualify for the ASPCA Maclay...

Keeping your horse happy and healthy pays off! All week, U.S. reiner Tom McCutcheon has been trying to keep his mount, Gunners Special Nite, fresh and happy. Thursday afternoon, the 6-year-old American Quarter Horse stallion returned the favor by turning in a score of 228 in the individual finals at the FEI World Reining Championship presented by John Deere, held as part of the 2010 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games. It was enough to earn the gold medal by a margin of five points. “I...

On my list of things I find to be riveting I usually would not rank watching dressage among the top, but in the last two days I have really gotten into it. I found myself glued to the monitors that had the live feed playing all day yesterday, watching intently and calculating scores trying to determine what teams were in medal contention. Over the two days of the team competition, it seemed as though each rider that went down centerline set a new standard of excellence. In any sporting event it...

Photo by Randi Muster (Daisy Farish aboard Ballou in the Small Pony Hunters.) The 2010 FTI Winter Equestrian Festival (WEF) Week Nine, held March 10-14, 2010, featured many winners in the equitation, hunters, and jumpers, including the leader in the $200,000 FEI World Cup Grand Prix, CSI***, presented by CN. The week nine title sponsor was CN. Double H Farm's Night Train sped to the win with Olympic Gold medalist Rodrigo Pessoa of Brazil in the $200,000 FEI World Cup Grand Prix, CSI***,...

The 2010 FTI Winter Equestrian Festival (WEF) had a fantastic sixth week of competition on February 17-21. The week featured the AHJF Hunter Classic Spectacular of Palm Beach and the $50,000 CN Palm Beach Jumping Derby along with a full schedule of hunter, jumper, and equitation classes. The week six title sponsor was Bainbridge. Charles Jacobs of Boston, MA, captured the top prize in the $50,000 CN Palm Beach Jumping Derby on Quidditch II, owned by Deeridge Farm of Wellington, FL. They sped to...

World class show jumpers vied for $75,000 in prize money, thousands of fans packed into the stands, flags from many countries hanging overhead, and a JumboTron showed highlights and tracked the results. Is it Las Vegas or Los Angeles? Neither; it is Sacramento, and it is the only show jumping competition of this caliber in Northern California: The Sacramento International Horse Show at Murieta Equestrian Complex in Rancho Murieta, CA, which was held November 3-8. Rudy Leone started the show in...

When I'm at home, I generally have a pretty good sense of direction. Even when I don't know where I'm going, I can apply logic based on where the mountains are, what direction the freeway is, etc., and keep from getting lost. My husband gets lost often, but I probably shouldn't tell you that because he's reading this. Anyhoo...something about flying to Kentucky has thrown me completely off kilter. I can't tell which way is north or south, in what direction our hotel...

Kecskemét, Hungary – Team USA was in fifth position of the Team standings after dressage and marathon at the 2009 FEI World Pair Driving Championship in Kecskemét, but had a dramatic Final. Best placed US driver Larry Poulin, who was lying in 10th place, missed a gate at the final obstacle driving competition and was eliminated. Keady Cadwell, Best for the US in Hungary (Rinaldo de Craen ) Because of his elimination, Poulin’s dressage and marathon scores in the Team...

Gladstone, NJ – The first leg of the 2009 Collecting Gaits Farm/USEF National Grand Prix Dressage Championship, which was rescheduled to Friday morning after Thursday’s deluge, showcased some of the top horse/rider combinations in the US. But it wasn’t until the final ride of the class that anyone could break 70%. Veteran Olympic rider Leslie Morse and her classy 15-year-old stallion, Tip Top 962, put in a very focused and expressive effort to take a commanding lead with a...

The dressage justice in the world continued last night. In a fiercely difficult freestyle, Ravel and Steffen delivered a World Cup Championship performance. It was one of those nights where the planets aligned. How lucky are we to have been a part of it? Ravel got better, and better, and better throughout the Freestyle and they brought down the house for the US. To the music of the Rolling Stones' Sympathy for the Devil, Ravel, who had an introduction to the world in Hong Kong last summer,...