What a week of incredible competition. Princeton Show Jumpings first week of the Fall series came to a close yesterday after an amazing week of competition including the $50,000.00 Princeton Young Jumper Championships. In the $30,000.00 Princeton BMW Grand Prix we had thirty one starters and right from the start the excitement was underway from a top international class of riders and horses. The crowds came out as the weather all week was perfect with yesterday being the warmest day. There were pony rides, face painting, food and all sorts of other wonderful family entertainment for the crowds and at 2:15 we had the first horse and rider out on this incredible course built by top International Course Designer Alan Wade from Tipperary, Ireland. The youngest rider in the competition, sixteen year old Hunter Holloway on the first of her three horses, Any Given Sunday and gave us our first clear round of eight much to the delight of the crowd. The second clear came from show jumping great Peter Wylde and Hermine 44 which secured a jump off. At the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Peter won the gold medal as part of the United States Show Jumping Team, together with McLain Ward, Beezie Madden and Chris Kappler. Beezie was also one of our competitors here this week and had several wins. Our third clear came from Eliza Lehrman riding Fenom Van Klapschuet and the crowd was now truly into this amazing Grand Prix. Mario Gamboa gave us our fourth clear aboard Sheila Sosnows Uitteraard out of Piedmont, California and the heat was now building for a fantastic jump off for the Grand Prize. Fifth clear came from the great Laura Chapot, daughter of show jumping legends Frank and Mary Chapot out of Neshanic Station, New Jersey. She was aboard Umberto this being the first of two rides for Laura. Young rider gold medalist from Canada Kim Farlinger riding Caprice Van De Brouwershoever presented us with a super clear and we were now at six so far to go into the jump off. Laura comes back with her second horse Shooting Star and we now have seven clears with Laura having two through to the jump off. Our last clear round came from Paul OShea from Ireland riding Michael Haydens Primo De Revel and the excitement building throughout the crowd was electric. With such amazing show jumping talent, we knew that this was anybodys Grand Prix and as always, we did not know until the end who would be the eventual winner of this $30,000.00 event. The jump off did not let us down with all eight riders trying their best to cut the corners and cut seconds off the time. Out of the eight first round clears only three jumped double clear, Kim Farlinger with Caprice Van De Brouwershoeve, 42.985 Eliza Lehrman and Fenom Van Klapschuet, 48.700 and the eventual winner Laura Chapot riding Shooting Star in 41.921. An amazing week for Princeton Show Jumping and Andrew Philbrick with two more weeks to go of this end of season event. Good luck to everyone and this is a facility that will just keep growing in the equestrian calendar. An amazing venue, great hospitality, wonderful competition and the best show jumping riders in the country coming out and vying for wonderful prize money. This is definitely a facility to be reckoned with and riders should mark this on their calendars for next years competition. Here is Lauras winning round with Shooting Star. youtube/watch?v=XmxPRswlUL4
Posted on: Mon, 22 Sep 2014 14:08:55 +0000