Darren Chiacchia didn’t have the spring that he’d hoped for with Windfall II–stops at the Rolex Kentucky CCI**** and Jersey Fresh CCI*** (N.J.) kept them off the team for the World Equestrian Games in Aachen, Germany, in August.

But Chiacchia still has international plans for Windfall–he’s got the FEI World Cup Final–held in M�lmo, Sweden in September–in his sights. And winning the CIC** at the Stuart Horse Trials in Victor, N.Y., on July 20-23 helped them prepare for the trip.

They emerged on top of a strong field of 32 competitors, including Phillip Dutton and Tru Luck, against whom they finished second at Groton House (Mass.), and last year’s Stuart winners Corinne Ashton and Dobbin.

Torrential downpours caused the ground jury to flip the order of the phases and run show jumping on Saturday with cross-country on Sunday. There was some sun on dressage day, but the heavy rain never let up on Saturday as the stadium crew kept up a triage on the arena throughout the divisions.

At that point in the competition, Chiacchia was chasing Mara Dean on Nicki Henley, who had won the dressage. This position was unusual for Windfall, who typically wins the first phase and often posts the lowest dressage score in his competitions. But Chiacchia noted that, “He wasn’t himself in dressage this weekend–he was a little rough. But the other two phases were great!”

Despite the sticky going, Windfall left all the fences up, as did Nicki Henley. According to Dean, “Stadium was slippery, but it made my horse more careful. You did need to have some experience in that kind of footing, though, to get around.”

The grounds crew worked tirelessly in the rain on Saturday to improve the footing on the cross-country course and were rewarded by a mostly sunny day for that phase. “For July, this is some of the best ground we’ve had,” Chiacchia said. “There were a few chewed-up areas [in the galloping lanes], but the grounds crew did a really, really good job with the footing around the jumps.”

Officials added 20 seconds to the optimum time and omitted three fences–the second corner in a combination, a log on a hill, and the water complex, which could not be drained low enough to be safe. Eight riders were able to get around inside the new time, including Ashton who ultimately finished third (.3 points behind Dean) but briefly thought she had won for the second year in a row when the adjusted time threw off someone’s math in the scoring.

Dean’s mount, an English Thoroughbred which has a following in Henley, England–the town he was named after–did not want to leave the start box and added 8.4 time penalties.

“My horse is very, very strong and it’s taken a while to channel that. He is just now coming into his own, and we’re starting to form a real partnership. But I’m a little mad at him right now because he could have won,” Dean said.

Windfall added just 1.2 cross-country time penalties to his dressage score to take the blue.

Among the top 15 places awarded in the CIC** Chiacchia also took eighth place with his relatively new ride, Better I Do It. Dutton had three in the placings–ninth with Tru Love who had a rail in show jumping, 13th with Amazing Odyssey, and 14th with Connaught. Jessica Kiener and Sharon White also had multiple successes–Kiener on My Boy Bobby (fourth) and ColorMeBrite (10th); White on Ronaldo (fifth) and The King’s Spirit (seventh).

Dutton won the open intermediate division on Loose ‘N Cool, an unusually-bred horse for eventing. The 16-hand chestnut is an Australian Stock Horse, “like an American cutting horse but with a bit more blood,” said Dutton. “My wife Evie and Audrey Evans own him. We got him from the same guy where we got Dusky Moon.”

This was the 6-year-old’s first intermediate outing, and he finished on his dressage score. Dutton said he wasn’t going to run him cross-country because of the wet ground, but “after I rode a couple [other horses], I decided it wouldn’t be that taxing for him.”

Erin Renfroe had to hire a truck to bring her from Massachusetts as her own vehicle had broken down, but it was worth it to finish second with DeCordova in her third intermediate outing. She purchased the 10-year-old Paint-Thoroughbred cross from Mark Weiss-becker, spent a year at preliminary with him, and has placed third at Groton House and fourth at Plantation Horse Trials (Pa.) so far this season.


Stuart Features High Tech Communication And Experimentation
For years, Stuart Horse Trials has had a particularly fast-loading and informative website, but this year, they ramped it up another notch with direct-to-web scoring.

Rather than posting scores for each phase at the end of the day, or even after each division has completed, a staff member from Stuart’s web design firm sat next to the scorers and entered scores to the web for each competitor as they received them.

“I know what it’s like to be waiting at home for the phone call [from a competitor] and maybe the rider forgets to call, so you’re left wondering if everything is OK,” said Kyra Stuart the original organizer for the event. “This way, a parent or grandparent or an owner who can’t be on the grounds knows right away how their child or their horse did and that they are safe.”

As a sponsor of this new feature, Verizon Wireless was very helpful in giving us whatever we needed to get the scores on the web right away,” added Stuart.

Stuart’s website also featured live audio commentary by Jo Whitehouse and Bobby Costello during show jumping. This commentary was very professional and brought the “play by play” of this phase to listeners who were home drying out or staying dry this particular day.

Stuart, who is currently serving as President of the U.S. Eventing Association, explained the connection between this high-tech experimentation and the goals of the national organization: “One of the first things I did as USEA President was to bring in a consultant to help us develop a strategic plan,” she said.

“So we now have a plan, and one of its priorities is to be the ‘go to’ place for eventing,” added Stuart. “In order for this to work, we have to offer people reasons to go to the USEA website. So when we try out these new technological advances at Stuart and find that they work well, we write up ‘how-to’ instructions on the organizer’s page of the USEA website. This brings people to the site and helps to improve the sport.”