Dom Schramm and the 20 year old No Objection - a horse from The Apple Isle competing in The Big Apple Photo courtesy RCPHS
Two US based Australian eventing riders, Ryan Wood and Dom Schramm, have won the U.S. Open $50,000 Arena Eventing presented by The Fite Group Luxury Homes at the 2017 Rolex Central Park Horse Show
Yes, that’s Central Park in New York and the competition of course featured an iconic Big Apple keyhole. If you’re surprised you haven’t heard much about it, don’t be, as it was a very recent addition to the Central Park show as, when plans went awry with the scheduled dressage class, the Arena Eventing took its place
“This event, in many ways, didn’t exist two and a half weeks ago” explained Mark Bellissimo, CEO of International Equestrian Group (IEG) “Obviously, we had some late cancellations with Dressage, and while trying to create a strategy, I called Michael Stone, our president, and asked what we could do. We work with a group of people who are always ready for a challenge. I think eventers are always fun to work with and they were all excited about this. We had eight of the top ten U.S. riders and nine Olympians. We were able to put this together in a way that I think was very interesting, and pull it together very, very quickly and with a high level of quality.”
Oliver Townend and William Fox-Pitt flew over from the UK to ride borrowed horses Indian Mill and Prince Renan, forming Team Chelsea to finish in third place.
“This was great fun” said William, although both he and Oliver’s biggest concern was remembering the course “I’m not a star at this Arena Eventing thing, but this was really well executed. I was very happy to remember the course, as I thought that jumping the same jump twice in a different direction was pushing it! But it all worked out and I’m glad that we had some nice horses.”
Twelve teams contested the class, each named after notable New York neighbourhoods, while the top six teams completing with the fastest overall cumulative time moved forward to the final phase of competition.
Australia’s Bill Levett also made the trans-Atlantic journey to partner with Marilyn Little on Team Tribeca, finishing in the money in fourth place and Boyd Martin teamed with Holly Payne on Team Time Square to finish second (175.12 penalties)
“I was over the moon when I saw that I was partnered with Holly, as Holly always has a crack at these things whenever she’s riding. I knew that it’d either go really well, or we’d bomb out,” laughed Boyd “We just decided to cruise around the first round and we came back and just really decided to have a crack. We had a bit of luck on our side in the second round, and it went very well.”
Ryan Wood and Alcatraz Photo courtesy RCPHS/SportFot
But it was the Australian team of Ryan Wood and Dom Schramm who topped the class on a score of 168.31
“Our first round we wanted to chance it but not be reckless. We didn’t want to dance with the devil in the first round. After we went back to the stables, we decided to switch up the order. Mine was a bit quicker. He was a slow starter, like a diesel, once we got started he gets quicker,” said Queensland born Dom “This is not what our sport looks like day in and day out, but rather than be negative about it, I like the fact that we get to come here and expose people to it. People get a bite of it, and then they’re hooked for life and that’s what we want.”
The New York City skyline captured Ryan Wood’s attention as he entered the ring and motivated him to impress the enthusiastic crowd that packed the stands.
“There was a moment in the second round when the crowd was amping us up and then I looked up at the lights from the sky rise buildings and I thought, ‘Bloody hell. We are in the middle of New York City!’ It’s pretty awesome. It’s a long way from home!”
The iconic location was one of the challenges of including Arena Eventing on the schedule at the last minute with Captain Mark Phillips as course designer and the RCPHS team pulling it all together in the Wollman Rink
“We brought all of the jumps in last night, after they were driven up from Tryon” said Michael Stone, President of IEG “We then had to set the hunter jumps up, and when the hunter competition was done today, we had to set these jumps back up,” he explained. ” We had no space to do that because we are pretty limited, so it is all like a Rubic’s Cube of sorts. We have a great team though, and everyone works really hard so it’s always a great event, and gets better every year.”
Eventing Nation was at the event and captured some great quotes from the Aussie boys (and we still include Boyd in that!) at the press conference
