Mariah was “a great mover” with “perfect manners.” / Richard Clay photo
by Betsy Burke Parker
Farmington Hunt rider Carolyn Chapman and her paint-cross mare Mariah claimed the coveted title of Virginia Field Hunter Champion on Sunday, October 25, 2015. In victory, she bested seventeen competitors, the best of the best, according to organizers, sent by ten of Virginia’s marquis foxhunting clubs.
The Virginia Championship is widely considered the most competitive of a handful of hunter trial events offered around the nation each fall. The event was hosted at Old Whitewood Farm by the Orange County Hounds. Last year’s winner from Orange County, Neil Morris, MFH, said he began organizing this year’s competition soon after his victory in October of last year.
Chapman partnered her black and white eight-year-old to earn the nod from the judges after three phases. “We both picked her out as a contender in the hack phase,” said judge Norman Fine, editor of the online magazine, Foxhunting Life. Co-judge Tommy Lee Jones, huntsman of Fauquier’s Casanova Hunt, agreed. “She stood out. Great mover, perfect manners.”
Richard Clay photo
Phase two had the “field” follow Morris over a twenty-minute simulated “foxhunt” around the undulating OCH hunt territory surrounding the Old Whitewood estate. Morris led the group over a number of obstacles—coops, stone walls, railways—at the trot, canter and gallop. He held them up at a simulated “check,” and at one point invited the riders who’d been shuffled to the back of the pack to reposition themselves to the front of the field.
“Mariah stood out, again,” Fine said. “She looked like a horse that anybody, and I mean anybody, would enjoy riding in the hunt field. And that’s what I was looking for—the horse I’d most like to hunt.”
After the mock hunt, Fine and Jones conferred and selected six horses to complete a final test over a short hunter trial course set in front of an enthusiastic and swelling crowd. Riders jumped a stack of hay bales, then jogged over a cordwood pile. They then opened a gate, and were to call over their shoulder, “Gate, please,” as they would in the hunt field if they left an open gate to be shut by the last person through. They then jumped a coop, performed a short hand-gallop toward home, and ended with a sliding-stop and a stand on loose rein.
“This is the phase where the finalists separated themselves,” Fine said. “Mariah nailed it. Some of the horses—and they were all really good—knocked themselves down with minor mistakes. Some of the riders did, too, forgetting to call, ‘Gate, please,’ or not being able to get the trot-fence. But Carolyn was flawless.”
Chapman actually won this same championship fourteen years ago on another horse. She was thrilled with Mariah’s performance. “She’s a lovely mare,” said Chapman, who rides as an honorary whipper-in for Farmington. Mariah earned the Reserve Championship title in the Junior North American Field Hunter Championships in 2012 for a young friend of the Free Union owner-rider. “She events, too (at the novice level). She’s the horse of a lifetime.”
Reserve Champion Fifty Grand and owner/rider Mo Baptiste “performed brilliantly.” / Richard Clay photo
Reserve Champion of the day was Fifty Grand, an eight-year-old bay gelding, owned and ridden by Mo Baptiste. Representing the Piedmont Fox Hounds, this horse/rider combination also performed brilliantly. “A season under Mo, and this horse will be winning his share of championships,” Fine said.
Posted October 30, 2015
A similar article was first published in The Fauquier Times; republished with permission.