Navigator’s toes just tapped the final fence in the $30,000 Manchester and the Mountains Grand Prix in East Dorset, Vt. The rail rocked in the cups as spectators gasped, but when it settled back, Navigator and Ian Silitch were guaranteed victory in the feature event of the Aug. 3-7 show.

Silitch and the Irish-bred Navigator clocked a 39.44-second trip against Bill Lowry’s 39.65-second round on Rio
Corde.

“This is my first time back in Manchester in 11 years, and it was a good way to come back,” said Silitch, of Ocala, Fla. “Navigator had a huge step and is very careful. And Bill was very kind to go a little slow.”

Lowry knew exactly where he lost the class. “I think I added one stride too many down the last line,” he said. “I think Ian did seven, and that’s where he probably beat me.”

Silitch’s horse had spooked at a yellow-and-white vertical in his first grand prix a week earlier. “Then, guess what. We had the same fence in today’s grand prix,” he said. “So I made sure we were going to do it. I pushed him, and he proved he was brave and careful.”

The 12-year-old horse was doing the children’s/adult jumpers when Silitch bought him 18 months ago for one of his students, Bethany Curtis of England. Her parents were in Vermont to visit her and to watch the show. “Bethany’s parents got a pretty good show today,” said Silitch.

Lowry had planned to tackle this jump-off with a little less pace. “In past jump-offs, I had been going too fast, trying to run with the pack and screwing it up. So I figured it would be better to be a little bit slower today and get [Rio Corde] relaxed and organized,” he said.

Lowry co-owns his mount with Ton Visseher of Holland.

Lowry spotted “Rio” in Holland three years ago. He bought the 17-hand, chestnut gelding, by Ramiro Z, as a 6-year-old schooling jumper.

“He’s has made a green mistake here or there, but he’s getting the pieces together. I think he is grand prix material,” said Lowry.

Doubling Up

Alexa Weeks had a careful strategy to bring Riane and Rowan home first and second in the Junior/ Amateur-Owner Jumper Classic.

“When I went on my first horse [Rowan], I went a little more conservatively because he is younger,” said Weeks, 21, of Southport, Conn. “I have ridden Riane faster more often, so my plan was to ride her faster. I did basically the same track with both horses.”

The Rollins College (Fla.) junior used to do the high amateurs with Madison but turned the bay mare over to her trainer, Kent Farrrington, who has won several grand prix classes with her. “I don’t think I will ever get her back, but I enjoy watching him compete,” she said.

Instead, Weeks rode her two Dutch-breds, both 16.2 hands. Riane, 8, is a bay, while Rowan, 7, is chestnut.

Despite taking a tumble, Julie Welles rode Willow to the large junior, 16-17, hunter championship. “I fell off at the trot jump in the handy hunter class. I leaned up his neck, and he kind of turned and I just flipped over his head,” said Welles, of Simsbury, Conn.

She does not own a horse of her own but rode Willow, Missy Clark’s 17-hand warmblood, during the indoor finals in 2004. Last year she won the New England finals and was reserve champion in the Tad Coffin Washington International Equitation Classic Finals at the Washington (D.C.) International Horse Show and in the ASPCA Maclay at the Metropolitan National (N.Y.).

“Equitation is really a good discipline. It helps me because I carry over my position in the jumpers and the hunters,” she said.

Welles is a working student of Clark’s and rides a variety of mounts from Clark’s barn. Julie also is with former Maclay winner, Linda Langmeier, and is on the interscholastic team at the Ethel Walker School.

Crocodile Rock

Heather Dobbs, 17, of Sussex (N.J.) took the small junior, 16-17, hunter honors with her Crocodile. The 15.3-hand bay won three of his classes and was second in the fourth.

“We got him last December after I rode him in Florida,” said the Blair Academy (N.J.) high school senior who rides with Clark. “He was imported from England where he was a jumper before becoming a hunter.”

The two are usually in the hunter division, but the gelding has also doubled as her equitation mount. Heather’s twin sister, Hillary, also competes. Their father, Lou Dobbs, is the anchor and managing editor of CNN’s “Lou Dobbs Tonight.”

Laura King Kaplan sewed up most of the hunter pony division, winning the medium title on Canada Dry and the larges on her Liseter Clever Star.

Canada Dry is better known as “Otto” in trainer Kate Oliver’s barn. Laura is leasing the 13.1-hand roan gelding from Oliver, who bought him last spring and wants to try to qualify him for indoors.

“When he came to us, we did not know his name,” said Oliver, who opened her facility in Bedford, N.Y., last spring. The only Canadian town name she could think of “was Ottawa, so we began calling him Otto at home.” Kaplan, 13, of Irvington, N.Y., teamed up with her chestnut crossbred gelding, Liseter Clever Star, last December.

Diminutive Ashley Foster and Lauren Hogan’s America are well on their way to qualifying for the small pony division at the fall indoor shows. Lauren’s parents had been looking for someone to ride America when their trainer, Bill Schaub, suggested Ashley, 9.

Ashley’s mother, Patty Foster, works as trainer at Rolling Acres Farm in Brookeville, Md. Ashley got the ride on America after Devon (Pa.) in May.

“I really feel good,” said Ashley, a fifth-grader. “I’d like to keep America because she is my type and goes the way I want to.”