Darren Chiacchia Pilots Two Young Event Horses to Victory - Hanno Re-Claims His Title

The 2007 USEA/Spalding Labs Young Event Horse Championships took place last week on September 12 at Lamplight Equestrian Center in Wayne, IL the day before the opening of the Wellpride American Eventing Championships. The YEH competition was designed to identify the upper-level event horses of tomorrow, and Hanno (Windfall II x Hulta) has made his mark as a definite contender. Last year the Trakehner gelding, the first U.S.-bred offspring of Darren Chiacchia's Olympic partner Windfall, claimed the four-year-old championship and this year he came back to win top honors in the five-year-old division. Bred by Dr. Timothy and Cheryl Holekamp, he is ridden by Chiacchia, who shares time in the saddle with the horse's owner Jean Kopperud.

Chiacchia also won the YEH Championships for four-year-old horses riding his own Dibelius (E.H. Michelangelo x Donnata), a Trakehner gelding that he purchased in Germany. He has made a practice of importing a couple of young horses each year, buying young stallions that did not pass the stallion testings, gelding them and bringing them to the U.S. to train, show and sell. He hopes that the YEH championships will add to his young horse's resale value.

"I've been a big proponent of this program," he said. "Truly my passion is in young horses, finding them to bring along. Also because Hanno is Windfall's first offspring in America it is very emotional. Hanno has just been getting strong in the flat and carrying himself more and he kind of went to the next level today. He has been competing preliminary and won his first prelim at Genesee Valley last weekend, so the jumps could almost have been a bit more, but some five-year-olds aren't there yet. He's moved a bit quicker than most.”

Last year Chiacchia also rode his young Trakehner gelding Fantastik to the four-year-old reserve championship but an overreach injury at Millbrook Horse Trials a few weeks ago prevented him from competing in the five-year-old championship this year.

"I hope eventually you see more horses competing in these classes," said Chiacchia. "The goal for me from the marketing standpoint is that if a horse has done the Young Event Horse classes, it means something, it says something. For instance if a horse has competed at the Bundeschampionat [National Championships] in Germany, you know that it is a going horse. We need to create awareness to identify, recognize and reward good young horses in this country."

Hanno scored 28.1 points in the dressage phase, 41.38 in the jumping and 12.14 on his conformation for a total of 81.63 points. Leslie Law placed second with a 80.5 on the Dutch Warmblood gelding All The Buzz owned by Law Eventing and imported from Great Britain, and third with a 79.11 on Java, a German-imported Hanoverian gelding sired by Laptop. Canadian Hawley Bennett was fourth with a 78.56 on her Thoroughbred mare Gin Fizz (Valley Crossing—She’s a Party Girl) who was also highest placed mare.  Allison Springer followed with Kaiti Saunders’ Thoroughbred gelding Tiamo (A Fine Romance—Ping’s Skateboard) who finished with a 78.28.

Ulrich Schmitz, one of four who judged the class, said, "I thought the quality of four-year-olds was almost better than the five-year-olds today. The program is still in development; quite a few riders did a good job to show their horses to their potential, while some rode it like it was an easy novice test. We want to see the horse's potential, not submissiveness and quiet. You could see that some horses had more to give if the riders would have asked for it."

In the four-year-old championship Dibelius scored a 28.39 in dressage, had a jumping score of 41.70 and conformation score of 12.92 for a total of 83.01. Tera MacDonald and Cheryl Quick's Hanoverian/TB gelding La Tee Da (Judge Sefas x Miss Mikimoto) actually scored higher in dressage with 28.46 but finished second overall with a final score of 78.61. Lynne Partridge and her Oldenburg gelding El Cid (Contucci x Madrigal) finished third with a final score of 77.90.

Australian rider Boyd Martin, who is based at Phillip Dutton's True Prospect Farm in Pennsylvania, rode five horses in the YEH Championships, two five-year-olds and three four-year-olds. Four of the horses were owned by former chair of the YEH program, Nina Gardner, who is now a member of the task force (Kaiti Saunders is the new chair). Martin also rode a horse named DP Lipcombe, owned by Janet Mudge, who sent the horse over from Australia.

"The young horse program is just starting in Australia as well," commented Martin. "It's a fantastic opportunity to expose quality young horses to the excitement of competition. Nina has spent half her life breeding these horses and it would take eight or nine years to get them to Kentucky – this is a quicker reward. She's bred generations and they all placed in the top few."

Martin, who also has a long list of entries in the AEC, acknowledged, "I'm pretty lucky at the moment – I think these horses have a lot of quality about them."

Many of these talented young horses also showed their promise and versatility by competing in the Wellpride American Eventing Championships later that weekend, which was conveniently held at the same location – Lamplight Equestrian Center. All The Buzz, owned and ridden by reigning Olympic gold medallist Leslie Law, a horse Law brought over from his native England, won the Training Horse Championship on their dressage score of 23.7, amid a field of 44, after just days earlier placing second in the YEH Championships.

Jacqueline Naugler and her Thoroughbred gelding Amberjack (by Mark Todd’s Advanced level stallion Aberjack) placed 7th in the Training Horse Championships finishing on their dressage score of 30.0. Hawley Bennett and her lovely mare Gin Fizz dropped a rail in show jumping to finish 11th in the same division, with Allison Springer and Tiamo finishing 12th, and Boyd Martin and Nina Gardner’s Ginger Snap ending up  13th.

Anne Kaufman and her eye-catching palomino Thoroughbred stallion Pegasus Pure Gold finished 11th out of 52 in the Novice Horse division with a 33.5. Lauren Kieffer and Kevin Kieffer’s Take The Mick were 13th in the same division and Leslie Grant and Fab finished 17th.

Cheryl Quick’s gelding La Tee Da, the reserve champion four-year-old, technically won the Open Beginner Novice division, but then discovered they weren’t adequately qualified to compete and graciously handed over their award to the second place competitors.

The USEA/Spalding Labs Young Event Horse Series is made possible through the generous support of Title Sponsor, Spalding Labs; Legacy Sponsors Stackhouse Saddles and Fleeceworks; and Contributing Sponsor, Acorn Hill Farm.

Click on the YEH logo on the USEA homepage, www.useventing.com, to find out more about the Series. For complete results visit the YEH Championships results page, and be sure to check out the photo gallery as well!

Photos Courtesy of Emily Daily/USEA