Cross country through VIP tents seems to be the new thing to keep the punters happy. Here Elise Edwards-Smith and Quantico head through the VIP marquee ay the 2016 New Zealand Horse of the Year Show
There’s been a lot of fanfare lately about increased prize money at Badminton and Kentucky but, as so often happens in sport generally, the way to earn good money seems to be winning a ‘Showcase’.
The showcase in question this weekend is the $100,000 Land Rover Wellington Eventing Showcase at the Palm Beach International Equestrian Centre in Wellington, Florida that started on Friday with the dressage and concludes with show jumping and cross country on Saturday
The prize money and warm climes of Florida attract some big names in the sport and this year Sir Mark Todd has joined fellow Kiwis Dan Jocelyn, who is a regular visitor and placed third here last year, and Joe Meyer. While Joe is riding his own horses, the delightfully named Clip Clop and South Paw, Mark and Dan are on catch rides but, as Sir Mark has shown in the past, he can win quite easily on a catch ride. He is currently in 10th place after the dressage riding the 11 year old mare Anna Bella (whose dam sire funnily enough is Leonid but no relation to his Leonidas II) on a score of 29.9 and equal 25th on L'Alezane.
However it is Marilyn Little and RF Scandalous that lead the field on a score of 24.9 ahead of two Aussie boys, Ryan Wood and Boyd Martin (yes, we know but we still think of Boyd as being an Aussie ....). Ryan is riding Powell (currently second on 26.1) and Fernhill Classic (29th) while Boyd is third on Welcome Shadow, who Boyd took to Les Etoiles de Pau last year, and equal 14th on Long Island T.
William Fox-Pitt is another visitor with two rides on Steady Eddie (17th) and RF Quarterman (21st). In the video below he chats about what he has been doing during his 'semi-holiday' in America and we get to meet the slightly unsteady Steady Eddie
Clayton Fredericks, who is making a competition comeback this year as we discussed with him in our recent interview, is in 20th and 23rd place on Foreign Affair and Houdini
The show jumping gets underway on the course designed by Kentucky and Burghley course designer Richard Jeffery, at 10:30am followed by cross country in the afternoon. The cross country course designed by Captain Mark Phillips will this year not only gallop through the VIP tent but also jump an obstacle in there too. That should be worth watching on live stream .........
