Wellington, Fla.—Jan. 29  

It’s hard to win one grand prix, especially one with a start list of more than 70 riders.

But Eric Lamaze has accomplished just that four consecutive times in the last month. He topped his fourth straight victory in the Ruby et Violette Challenge Cup Series at the Winter Equestrian Festival.

Lamaze won the first two classes of the series riding Rosana du Park and earned his third and now fourth victories aboard Fine Lady 5. He rides both horses for Artisan Farms LLC.

Fine Lady 5 is a 12-year-old Hanoverian mare (Forsyth x Drosselklang II). Lamaze paired up with the mare last spring, and together, they have won numerous classes around the world. This week’s Round 4 WEF Ruby et Violette class, with $127,000 in prize money, was run as a speed class and had 72 starters.

“She is my kind of horse. She knows why she is out there,” Lamaze said of Fine Lady. “She is competitive, she likes to fight, she is a blood horse and she was winning before I got her, so this is nothing new to her. I am just continuing what she was already doing. I’d love to take all the credit, but this is a great horse.”

Commenting on his incredible success early in the season, Lamaze stated, “I have some very good, well rested horses at the moment, and I take Florida seriously. That is why I stopped after Barcelona [in September] and let all of the horses rest, to try to come here and have them really fresh to compete. You don’t expect to win three in a row, you don’t expect to win four in a row, but when you have good, competitive horses, anything can happen. McLain [Ward] had a blistering round today. He was really, really fast and he just toed a fence off. Sometimes you just need a little luck. When you play the game at this level, and you are competitive, you need a little luck.

“I think the way you select your horses for these events is so important,” Lamaze added. “You have to pick the right horse out of the barn. If you have the luxury of having a few, you need to pick the right one for the right class, out of the box and the one that’s fresh. We are already planning for the last few weeks of the circuit which horses we are going to use. It is all about the right planning and sometimes you can easily make a mistake and put the wrong horse at the wrong time. This year I seem to have a plan that has worked with some very talented horses. That is the secret of a long circuit like this. You need to juggle things around in a way that is going to work for you. I guess we have the recipe for Thursday right, now we just have to get it for Saturday too.” 

Lamaze described Fine Lady’s performance as dependable. “You give her a fair chance to see where she is going and she is going to give you all she has. She is very quick across the ground and quick in the air.”

Even the world’s best horses and riders have their challenges every now and then, and Lamaze laughed when explaining that he almost fell off of Fine Lady in the warm-up ring this morning.

“She is laid back, but she is petrified of other horses coming towards her,” he stated. “When you are just walking on her you have to really be careful. This morning even in the FEI practice ring I almost fell off. She sees a horse coming towards her, and she is very shy about that. She has her own little way, but all the great horses all have their little quirks about them. She is a great horse.”

Lamaze and Fine Lady will now head on to contest Saturday night’s $372,000 FEI World Cup™ Grand Prix CSI-W 5*, presented by Fidelity Investments®. Lamaze hopes to continue their success with a Saturday night win.

In addition to Thursday’s winning portion of prize money, Lamaze was awarded the $3,000 SSG Gloves “Go Clean for the Green” bonus for the fourth week in a row. Each week of the WEF Challenge Cup Series, a $3,000 bonus will be awarded to the winning rider if they are wearing SSG ‘Digital’ Riding Gloves in all rounds of competition with the SSG logo clearly visible. Lamaze has now won all four bonuses, totaling $12,000 in additional money earned.