March 20, Ocala, Fla.

The odds were pretty good that Kent Farrington was going to win the $100,000 Deluca Toyota Tundra Grand Prix at HITS Ocala.

Six qualified for the jump-off, and Farrington rode three of them. And the end of the day found him leading the victory gallop on Top Gun, placing second on Uceko and fifth on Valhalla. Farrington set the standard on the powerful gray Top Gun as second to go, notching an effortless clean round in 40.80 seconds.

“I have to stay within his comfort zone of speed. He can go fast, but he’s not a screamer. I just tried to put in what I thought was a really neat clear round and make everybody else have to try a little bit,” said Farrington. Farrington took over the ride on Top Gun from Canadian Beth Underhill last summer.

“He’s super easy to ride. He’s like riding a Disney pony—he’s cute and gray and jumps in perfect style,” Farrington said. “He’s just a nice horse. He was a really good horse before I got the ride, and I think it’s a testament to his quality that he goes well for whoever rides him.”

Matthias Hollberg, a German rider based in North Carolina, had been the pathfinder in the jump-off, riding Wadisson and having just the skinny vertical at 10 down in a time of 44.48 seconds. He ended up fourth. Farrington and Top Gun got really lucky at the same skinny vertical that Hollberg had down—Top Gun nudged the rail onto the very edge of the cup, but it didn’t fall, and Farrington set the time to beat. The teenage grand prix phenom David Tromp made a bid for the lead on Casey, but he had rails in what was 9B and C of the triple combination in round 1, leaving him in sixth.

Farrington then went again on Valhalla, a typey black mare with a huge jump. She tipped the rails off 9C and the skinny vertical at 10 for 8 faults, though she had a fast time in 41.35 seconds. German rider Andre Thieme, who is based in Pennsylvania, looked to be right on target to beat Farrington as he raced around the jump-off on Coco 135. Coco 135 is a small but mighty horse who explodes off the ground. But on a tight rollback late in the course, Coco 135 tripped badly, almost unseating Thieme. The seconds he took to recover were costly, as they stopped the timers with a clean round in 42.26 seconds—good enough for third.

Farrington rounded out the field on Uceko, a young horse. He went at a brisk pace but didn’t take any big chances, bringing Uceko home clean in 42.14 seconds for second place.

Olaf Petersen Jr. set a testing track for the $100,000 class that concluded the HITS Ocala Winter Circuit. “I thought it was an intelligently built course today. For him to get six clear out of about 40 was probably exactly what he wanted,” Farrington said.

The real meat of Petersen’s test was at fences 8, 9ABC and 10. Riders had to ride a white plank vertical across the ring, then five forward strides to the triple combination. The triple was an oxer-vertical-oxer combination of one stride to two strides. Riders then turned right to a narrow, wiry white vertical set at the end of the ring. Many horses didn’t collect themselves after the big efforts of the triple and punched through the top rail of the skinny vertical.

For more photo galleries of HITS Ocala action, see photos from Friday and Saturday.

For results, please see the HITS website.