Meet The 2008 Champions
by Joshua Walker
As the saying goes, you win some, you lose some, and the rest get rained out. But regardless of any competition’s result, eventers know as well as anyone that you bring your best to the game every time. No excuses.
This year’s Wellpride USEA American Eventing Championships, held at the Lamplight Equestrian Center in Wayne, Illinois, from September 9-14, truly tested that unique quality which makes eventing the great sport it is. While nearly ten inches of rain dumped on the Chicago area during the fifth annual AEC, the show went on safely and enthusiastically, and with a deluge of good riding, horsemanship, and sportsmanship.
The Beginner Novice through Training divisions snuck all three phases in before the worst of the heavy rain forced organizers and officials to call off the cross-country phases for Preliminary through Advanced riders.
It began Thursday afternoon as the Beginner Novice divisions wrapped up their final trips over Jon Wells’ cross-country track. The skies wouldn’t clear until four days later. The three Training divisions would be the last to gallop through the mud on Friday afternoon and Ritch Temple’s beautiful upper-level cross-country tracks unfortunately flooded by that evening and were deemed unsafe for Saturday’s competition.
The upper three divisions ran as combined tests. As puddles around the show grounds filled deeper and deeper, the footing in Lamplight’s rings remained steadily intact for Saturday’s newly scheduled 400-plus stadium rounds.
“I don’t think they could have done it any differently because of the fact that everyone was there from all over the country,” explained Olympic rider Leslie Law who won this year’s Advanced Championship division and Four-Year-Old Spalding Labs USEA Young Event Horse Series Championship division. With competitors hailing from all corners of the nation and no sign of a break in the clouds, trying to reschedule cross-country seemed pointless.
Still, Leslie, like most every competitor clad in soaking breeches and boots full of water, remained in good humor, went with the flow, and seemed genuinely grateful to “the organizers and volunteers, and the USEA and all the sponsors of the event for persisting through the horrid weather and getting us through it all,” Law added.
Despite ceaseless rain, all champions in every division smiled in the center ring for their photo ops and received prizes and gifts from Amerigo saddles, gift certificates from Bit of Britain, Charles Owen, Adequan, SSG Gloves, Nutrena Feeds, UlcerGard, and Saratoga Horseworks, and received Championship and Reserve Championship sheets, and Wellpride Omega-3 for horses.
As the following accounts from each of this year’s Champions elucidate, while the 2008 Wellpride USEA American Eventing Championships, affectionately known as the “AE ‘Seas’,” ended a day short, there was no shortage of good riding, enthusiastic attitudes, positive experiences, prizes, and smiles.
Kate Aldrich and William Don't Tell
Training Junior Champions
She is inspiring yet modest; 118 enthusiastic e-mails spoke to that. But beyond balancing academics, riding, volunteering, and family, Kate Aldrich balances natural talent with genuine horsemanship and old fashioned elbow grease.
Aside from winning the Junior Training division at this year’s Wellpride USEA American Eventing Championships, held at the Lamplight Equestrian Center in Wayne, Illinois, she is an honors student in her senior year at Foxcroft Acadamy in Middleburg, Virginia, a veteran on the equitation and eventing teams there, and captain of the equestrian team.
While earning top ribbons at horse trials like Southern Pines, Plantation, Fair Hill, and winning the Loudoun Hunt Spring Horse Trials last spring, she also received the Harvard Book Prize, College of William and Mary Leadership Award, Good Hands Award, and was the Dean’s Whip, all prestigious titles and awards requiring excellent academics, personal qualities, leadership abilities, and horsemanship.
“Kate is a wonderful student and person as well as an outstanding rider. She’s the kind of young woman one would love to have as a role model for girls all over the U.S.,” said Catherine Wolf, Director of Communications at Foxcroft.
Aldrich grew up riding show hunters and also competes in local dressage shows now. In fact, she catch rode a medium pony hunter at the Upperville Horse Show in Upperville, Virginia, this summer, one of the oldest and most prestigious hunter shows in the nation.
She Understands Him Well
Aldrich started in the tack 11 years ago and has evented for four years, a passion that sparked after taking some dressage lessons with Kim Keppick.
After qualifying for last year’s AEC with her own horse, Kermit V, that trip ended before it started. The young Thoroughbred gelding suffered an injury that would keep him on the sidelines and unable to prepare for this year’s Championships as well.
But she had also started riding William Don’t Tell that summer, a Virginia-bred nine-year-old Thoroughbred gelding owned by Virginia Coulter. With Kermit on stall rest, Coulter gave Aldrich the go ahead to campaign “Will” for the year and aim for the 2008 AEC.
“I’ve never met anyone until Kate who I would let compete a horse of mine,” said Coulter. “She works harder than anyone I’ve ever seen ride. When she rides, she really rides and she does it everyday. She would be out there at six in the morning to ride Willie and get him cleaned up before she went to volunteer at the Thoroughbred Rescue. She’s such a good rider, she really does deserve to have two or three great horses to compete.”
When Coulter bought Will, his eventing career started with Tom Mansmann. The redheaded gelding’s previous careers as a flat racer and steeplechase horse were checkered at best with little time spent in either field.
But Coulter knew, “When I sat on him for the first time, he was special. He had it,” she remembered.
Aldrich, who previously rode with Mansmann, got on Will occasionally then and felt the same brilliance Coulter had.
“Will is always fired up and ready to go,” Aldrich said. “His dressage gets more and more incredible—very smooth and steady. Plus, he’s a big jumper with a lot of scope.
“It did take me a couple months to get used to him though,” she went on. “It was hard to get a good connection with him on the flat and he over-jumped everything.”
While no horse is perfect, the chemistry between Will and Aldrich has become remarkable with some help from experienced eyes.
“He’s not an easy horse,” said Olympic rider Mara Dean, with whom Aldrich trains now. “But I think she communicates with him and understands him well. She’s picked up on his weaknesses as well as his strengths and has been very good at focusing on his strengths and developing those.”
I Never Dreamed of Winning
Even through the squall at this year’s AEC, a storm the likes of which many riders, Beginner Novice through Advanced, say they’ve never before ridden through, Kate and Will inspired ovations from diehard poncho-clad spectators around the cross-country course.
“People who didn’t even know who she was were really cheering for her because she rode that course so well, despite the rain, mud, and footing,” Coulter said. “She has ice water in her veins and I mean that as a compliment. She has the greatest focus. She really has the ability to ride ‘out of her mind.’ It’s an idea from the book Psycho-Cybernetics [Maltz, 1960]—if you do something enough with enough dedication, you don’t have think about things like, in riding, having to sit up or count strides. You’re just able to feel it. Kate has that natural subconscious ability.”
When Aldrich and Will began this year’s AEC in the lead with a 24.7, she had already achieved more than she hoped.
“I don’t usually like to see what place I’m in until the end, but I like to see my dressage score,” Aldrich explained. “I accidentally saw my place, which was exciting but made me more nervous. It really hit me when I came off cross-country and heard the announcement that I would be the overnight leader coming into show jumping. When we cleared that last fence in the stadium it was unbelievable. I never dreamed of winning.”
Dean, who had just won her own division aboard Casino, cheered during Aldrich and Will’s victory gallop in the rain.
“Obviously it’s wonderful to win a division myself,” Dean said, “but it means even more to watch a student I respect so much do so well. It was a really exciting weekend for all of us.”
“The Alriches are all great people and we are a team,” Coulter said sincerely. “We’re polishing boots, helping tack and untack, wiping off bits—it’s always wonderful to have all of that in my life and I am so thrilled Kate has done so well with Will.”
