Horses

Brett Jackson, MFH leads the Junior Field Master's Chase. Erin Swope keeps in touch.

The Thornton Hill Fort Valley Hounds (VA) is the result of a recent merger between the Thornton Hill Hounds (previously unregistered) and the Fort Valley Hunt (registered with the MFHA in 1992). The hunt’s point-to-point races were run for the first time on Saturday, March 3, 2012 at the beautiful Thornton Hill Racecourse near Sperryville, Virginia in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Masters are Jim Kincheloe, Brett Jackson, and the father and son team of Larry and Jeff Lehew.

At the end of the day, Jeff Murphy was top jockey, bringing home two winners—Orebanks in the Open Hurdle Race and Dealer Beware in the Novice Timber.

Fifteen Cleveland Bays convened for a celebration of the breed at a special meeting of the Blue Ridge foxhounds at Farnley. / Matthew Klein photo

How fitting that a large contingent of Cleveland Bay horses should convene at Farnley Farm for a special foxhunt with the Blue Ridge Hunt on Saturday, November 19, 2011.

The late Alexander Mackay-Smith, a past Master of the Blue Ridge, and his wife Joan purchased Farnley, near White Post, Virginia, in the 1930s. During Mackay-Smith’s travels in England over that decade he decided that the Cleveland Bay horse made the ideal field hunter. He imported and bred Cleveland Bays and introduced the breed to foxhunters and to other horsemen in this country.

Today the breed is dangerously rare, with only about five hundred purebreds in the world and less than two hundred in North America.

Karyn Wilson and Chase from the Fairfax Hunt won the 2011 Virginia Field Hunter Championship. Last year's winner Marilyn Jarvis, representing the Piedmont Fox Hounds, presents the trophy. Piedmont hosted the event at Salem Farm.

Emily Digney and Mr. Goodbar, Farmington Hunt, were Champion, 13 and Over.With more than two hundred entries, organizers Douglas Wise, MFH Old Dominion Hounds (VA), and Iona Pillion, Blue Ridge Hunt (VA), were thrilled to observe that the 2011 Junior North American Field Hunter Championship drew the biggest fields to date in the nine years of this unique trial. The program listed twenty-one finalists in Hilltoppers, twenty-two in First Field 12 & Under, and twenty-one in First Field 13 & Over. On November 6, 2011, trailers from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia gathered in the heart of the Warrenton Hunt country for what is turning into a huge event that bodes well for the future of foxhunting.

Blythe Miller-Davies on Private Attack is congratulated by husband Joe Davies after winning the Maryland Hunt Cup. Michael Wharton leads the winner.First the Grand National on April 23, then the Maryland Hunt Cup on April 30. Two winning performances for Blythe Miller-Davies and Private Attack. Yet the circumstances made it all the more dramatic.

Miller-Davies—former champion jump jock, mother, and trainer—had retired from riding races more than eight years ago. Mark Beecher was to ride Sportsmans Hall’s Private Attack in the Grand National for trainer Alicia Murphy, but was having visa problems in Ireland. Murphy turned to Miller-Davies, and the pair won by a neck.

Meanwhile, Miller-Davies had been training her husband’s horse Fort Henry which she had intended to ride in the Maryland Hunt Cup one week later. The Grand National win changed those plans, and husband Joe Davies, a former three-time winner of the Maryland Hunt Cup, graciously scratched his horse so his wife could ride Private Attack in that race.

Despite threatening weather, the Second Annual Maury River Hunter Trials were held April 2 and enjoyed by more than seventy competitors, numerous tail-gaters, sponsors, spectators, volunteers, and judges on the rolling cross country fields of the Virginia Horse Center in Lexington, Virginia.

Cheryl Microutsicos and her handsome bay, WoW! Graphic Design’s Up & Coming (a.k.a. Uzi), accumulated the most points in the First Flight Open division to win the Melvin Poe Cup, sponsored by Brooks Cushman of Winbrooke Farm and awarded by the legendary Melvin himself, in attendance with his wife Peggy. Here, Cheryl is congratulated by Melvin and by Brian Ross, co-head of the Virginia Horse Trials.

Lake Placid and Matthew McCarron hold off Fantastic Foeand Jeff Murphy for the Open Hurdle win.Trainer Neil Morris scored a hat trick at the Old Dominion Point-to-Point races on Saturday, April 9, 2011 at Ben Venue Farm. Morris saddled three winners: Maiden Hurdle, Open Hurdle, and Open Timber.

Morris’s first two wins were the easy ones. In the Maiden Hurdle, Last Noble with Jacob Roberts aboard led the field all the way and won easily. In the Open Hurdle, Lake Placid with Matthew McCarron in the irons raced around the course on the lead, turned back a challenge by second place finisher Fantastic Foe, and won by four-and-a-half lengths.

Jeff Murphy brought two winners home—one over timber, the other over hurdles—at the Orange County Point-to-Point on Sunday, April 3, at Locust Hill Farm in Middleburg, Virginia.

Murphy’s win on Aero (photo) in the Novice Timber race was a repeat performance of the pair’s previous win at Warrenton this spring. This time, Aero stalked fifth-place finisher Thynnus twice around the course. Five fences from the finish Aero went to the front, was overtaken by third-place finisher I’m A Hokie, regained the lead with two fences remaining, and drew away in the stretch to win by seven lengths. Aero is trained by Doug Fout and owned by Alfred C. Griffin, Jr.

Trainer Richard Valentine continued his winning ways by saddling winners in the first two timber races at the Piedmont Fox Hounds Point-to-Point on Saturday, March 26, 2011 near Upperville, Virginia. Valentine-trained horses won two races at Warrenton the previous week.

Gus Brown was first at the wire with Beech Cay in the Maiden Timber for Augustin Stables, and George Hundt, Jr., pictured here, won the Owner-Rider Timber on Westbound Road. This was the second win in two weeks for Hundt, who won the Owner-Rider Timber at Warrenton on Justpourit.

Julie Gomena owned the hurdle races, and Richard Valentine made his statement in the timber races, as both trainers brought home two winners each in the Warrenton Hunt Point-to-Point on Saturday March 19.

In this photo, Pizarro (left) with Natalie Wales up and Justpourit with George Hundt, Jr. aboard fight for first in the Owner-Rider Timber Race.