Hunter Derby

Admission to the Devon Horse Show and Country Fair will be free on Sunday, June 6.

On Sunday, the horse show will host the $25,000 The Chronicle of the Horse/USHJA International Hunter Derby Presented by Dietrich Insurance. The first round will begin at 10 a.m. EST.

The hunter derby will make its debut on the world stage at the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games at the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, Ky. The International Hunter Derby demonstrations will be held daily Oct. 4-10 at the dressage complex at the park.

Jennifer Alfano, 2009 USHJA International Hunter Derby Series champion, will participate in the demonstrations, as well as John French, 2009 USHJA International Hunter Derby Finals winner. Bobby Murphy will design the course.

A competitive field, spooky ring, evening class and giant course don’t usually add up to derby blue for a first year green horse who’d only jumped at eight horse shows.

But Taken isn’t just any horse. “I’ve sold a lot of very fancy, very expensive horses, but this one may be the best horse I’ve ever had in my entire life,” declared Larry Glefke.

A member of the USHJA High Performance Committee, occasional derby judge and regular competitor, Louise Serio knows plenty about hunter derbies. Since their inception she’d made a point to campaign in the classes, and she's regularly taken respectable ribbons back to Kennett Square, Pa. But before today, April 4, she’d never won one.

She picked a good time to reverse that trend.

The 2010-2011 USHJA International Hunter Derby series begins June 2, 2010, and ends June 2, 2011. The Devon Horse Show (Pa.) will count towards the 2009-2010 series.

The 2009-2010 The Chronicle of the Horse/USHJA International Hunter Derby is still under way, and will culminate at Lexington, Ky., in August with the 2009-2010 International Hunter Derby Finals.

The 2010-2011 schedule is as follows:

Catherine Rinehart admitted a fair amount of luck went into her win in the 2010 $10,000 The Chronicle Of The Horse/USHJA Hunter Derby, held March 5 during the Gulf Coast Magnolia Classic IV in Gulfport, Miss. It was lucky she got the ride on Primera at the beginning of the week, lucky she had an earlier ride in the hunter derby to figure out her plan for the course, and even a little lucky she rode Primera four years ago when he was just a first year green horse so she knew what to expect with him.