Here and There at USEF Medal Finals

Article by Nancy Degutis

Maybe no one noticed but Hillary Dobbs was looking quite striking, both on and off a horse, at the two-day U.S. Equestrian Federation Show Jumping Talent Search finals. What was missing from the picture were about 45 extra pounds the New Jersey native shed in the past year, Dobbs acknowledged during a break in the riding at the Sept. 7-8 championship at the USET training center in Bedminster, NJ.

The 20-year-old twin daughter of CNN commentator Lu Dobbs did it all herself. She overcame the temptations from show circuit food and giving in to the cravings that result in the terrible “frosh 20,” those sneaky extra pounds incoming college students usually pack on from chowing down on junk food during their first few months away at a university.

Failure at Hampton Classic Spurs Change

The five-foot, inch-tall woman, whose svelte figure attracts looks from her male show jumping peers as well as the better half of the opposite sex, lost the weight after downing rails at the last three fences in the jumping derby at the 2005 Hampton (NY) Classic. She had a good round until that point but then “I just got too tired,” said Dobbs, now a freshman at Harvard University where she is majoring in economics. (Good to know she has a grasp of numbers, especially when it came time to calculate calories).

“Missy (Clark, her trainer) told me that I was an athlete and had to be in shape as athletes are,” said Dobbs said of the meeting with Clark after the derby. Dobbs, who admitted struggling with weight issues since she was young, knew she had to succeed, in fairness to her jumper and herself.

“I watched what I was eating and just counted calories,” she said simply. “And I took a nutrition course in school.” All that work pair dividends. She was to end the weekend, standing in ninth overall in a field of 71 finals entries.

Scholarship Introduces Californian to Showing in the East

Zazou Hoffman, 14, gets the “long distance award” for coming more than 3,000 miles from the sunny climes of her Los Angeles suburb environs to ride the brisk autumn coolness that was making trees change to their autumn colors at the championship.

The high school freshman had begun those treks from her sunny Santa Monica, Calif. home two years ago after she won the Ronnie Mutch working student scholarship. The payout from that award was a two-week stint with Clark who was on the Florida circuit at the time. Since then Zazou has been with Clark’s North Run contingent.

Zazou has been working at home under the eye of instructor Meredith Bullock “who is really great with working with Missy,” said Zazou who keeps a horse at home where she lives while going to school.

Scholarship Opens Way

It was the stay with Clark that convinced the then pre-teen Zazou the East Coast riders were more competitive and in greater numbers than she had faced at home. It was the answer to prepare her for bigger and better things.

After taste of the competitors here, “It taught me to be ready for whatever happens,” she said. So she wasn’t phased when she went to South America where she rode on the in the FEI Children’s Jumping Final in Bogotá (Columbia) and won the style award. It also smoothed the way for her earn her way to the Maclay championship after she won the Region One semi final two weeks before her Gladstone outing.