With six rings of dressage running all day at Lamplight Equestrian Center today, Sept. 13, there was never a dull moment at the Wellpride American Eventing Championships, especially for riders like Amanda Teague.

The Hickory, N.C. rider was in tears this after learning of her dressage score, but they were undoubtedly the good kind. When she discovered that she and her Arabian/Trakehner mare Princess Grayce were tied for first place in the amateur training division, the 50-year-old rider was positively blown away.

“I just can’t believe it,” Teague choked. “I’ve got to be the happiest person in the world right now. I just wish my father could be here to see me.”

Formerly from Missouri, Teague moved to North Carolina a few years ago to care for her father, who passed away last year. But today another family member, her daughter Melanie, was on hand to share in her mother’s triumph and chide her for her disbelief.

“I told you it was good!” Melanie said in reference to the test that Amanda, 50, had believed to have been somewhat mediocre. But with a score of 29.5, she and her mare tied for first with James Meister and Lesson’s Learned.

Meister, a local veterinarian, is enjoying his first time at the AECs with a horse he helped breed himself for a client. When Lesson’s Learned was only three weeks old, Meister purchased the Appendix Quarter Horse/Dutch Warmblood foal, and has trained him from the ground up.

Amanda and Grayce placed 12th at least year’s AECs and were on the winning training level teams at the Chronicle of the Horse Midwest Adult Team Challenge the past two years.

“My second figure-eight didn’t feel good,” Amanda said of today’s test. “And I thought to myself, ‘You’ve got to buck up Mandy, and ride every step.”

Amanda said she had already walked the cross-country course five times, but after learning of her score, “I am definitely going to go back over and walk it a couple more times, until I know it in my sleep.”

In the Jr./Young Rider novice division, Virginian Nina Ligon topped the charts with the 17-hand bay gelding Chai Thai. Their score of 25.8 puts them a full two points ahead of the runners-up in the division of 53 horses.

In the training horse division, the only group which carries some of its dressage rides over into tomorrow morning, Leslie Law currently leads the pack with a score of 23.7. His mount, All The Buzz, won the reserve champion 5-year-old young event horse title yesterday.

Mary McKeon of Cleveland, Ohio sits in first place in the amateur novice division with IdleHour McHenry, the horse who topped the inaugural beginner novice division at last year’s AECs. The 12-year-old Cleveland Bay gelding is owned by Cindy Bank.

McKeon and McHenry were the very first pair to ride in their division of more than 60 horses, but their score of 23.2 held throughout the day, and bested the second-place pair by more than 5 points.

“It was a pretty nice test,” McKeon acknowledged. “It wasn’t as good as my warm-up yesterday, but it felt very forward. He’s a special horse and he’s fine with all this [atmosphere]. He went right in there and was trotting really forward and soft.”

As for tomorrow’s novice cross-country course, McKeon is confident in her horse’s abilities. The pair started competing at training level in July, so they’ll be ready to tackle this novice championship course. “It looks good and I’m not too concerned about anything,” McKeon said. “The footing looks perfect. I’ll just sit up, kick on and go, and tell him what a good boy he is!”
 
In the novice horse division, another former champion emerged on top of the standings. Emily Beshear, Somerset, Va., won last year’s intermediate championship with Woodburn, and rode her homebred Phinneus to an impressive 22.6 in today’s dressage. The 6-year-old just did his first novice event at the beginning of August, where he placed second, and finished in the same position at one other event before heading to the AECs.

“We’ve kept running into road blocks with this horse, because every time we’d start jumping him he would develop splints,” Beshear said. But thanks to special corrective shoeing, “Finn” is back on track and sound. “We kind of kept putting him on the backburner, but I’ve been so adamant that we get him over this issue because he has the greatest temperament, and he’s the type of horse that can have three months off and when he comes back, he’s still just perfect.”

In other novice level action, Taylor Foote topped the Jr./Young Rider novice division with the diminutive 15-hand Andalusian cross Lazerbeam. The Michigan rider logged a score of 27.4 to best a field of more than 50 competitors.

Yesterday’s 4-year-old Young Event Horse championship served as an excellent warm-up for Wisconsin rider Tera MacDonald and La Tee Dah. The Hanoverian/Thoroughbred gelding was reserve champion yesterday, and emerged the leader after today’s dressage test in the open beginner novice division. With a score of 19.0, the pair has a four-point lead over the competition.

Riders will be getting an early start tomorrow morning, as the lower levels kick off with cross-country beginning at 7:30 a.m. Dressage for preliminary through advanced is set to start at 8:00.