Horses

Jump race jockey Teddy Davies, a teenager, already a record holder, and having a breakout season in sanctioned racing. Here, Davies rides Brave Deacon in the second race at Blue Ridge, Amateur/Novice Rider Hurdles.  /   Joanne Maisano photo

Trainer Joseph Davies stood at the Entry desk on Sunday, April 17, 2022. It was at Woodley Farm near Berryville, Virginia, the traditional venue for the Blue Ridge Hunt Point-to-Point Races. Davies trains racehorses for steeplechasing but was in earlier days a winning steeplechase jockey himself. And a two-time winner of the Maryland Hunt Cup, the stiffest timber race in the world. Davies was paying for his race entries and picking up the numbered saddle cloths.

A few other trainers waited their turn. “Congratulations, Joe, on your wins yesterday. And here you are again today!”

Going to the Start  /   Douglas Lees photo

The Old Dominion Point-to-Point Races held on April 9, 2022, at Ben Venue drew the healthiest list of entries so far this season. No jump race went off with a field of less than five horses, and the second race, Maiden Hurdle, was split into three divisions of from seven to nine horses in each. There was fine weather and a number of close and exciting finishes, making it a good day for the spectators as well.

Maiden Timber Race: (l-r) Profiteer (Eric Poretz up) finishes third; Cracker Factory (Brett Owings) places second; Ya Boy Ya (McLane Hendriks) is first. / Douglas Lees photo

Piedmont ran seven races over the Salem Race Course in Upperville, Virginia on Saturday, March 26, 2022―four timber races and three on the flat.

McLane Hendriks rode two winners this day, book-ending the day’s races. His first came in the First Race, Maiden Timber, and his second in the Seventh Race, Virginia VHBPA Flat. In the Maiden Timber, Hendriks held Ya Boy Ya off the pace, content leading the middle runners in the six-horse field most of the way around. In the final quarter he asked his horse and won the race in the stretch by a length-plus. The Irish-bred Ya Boy Ya is owned by Bon Nouvel Chasers II and trained by Julie Gomena.

 First Race, Open Hurdle, (l-r) Decisive Triumph (#4), (Jamie Bargary up) is the winner. Gerard Galligan on Bet The Pot finishes third.  /   Douglas Lees photo

Spectators and horses enjoyed a comfortable day of racing over the Airlie racecourse at the Warrenton Hunt Point-to-Point on Saturday, March 19, 2022. Entries were strong, especially in the hurdle races. There were just two, Open and Maiden, but the latter was broken into three divisions of seven to eight entries in each, making the eight-race card more like a ten-race day.

Chewy, Will Slater up, wins the Small Pony Race. 

Rappahannock wisely and prominently promoted the rain date for their first-of-the-season race day, knowing all too well the vagaries of Virginia weather in early March. Fortunately, on March 5, 2022, the scheduled date was a highly pleasant day to spend outdoors at the new steeplechase course on Larry Levy’s Hill Farm just outside Culpeper, Virginia. A week later, as I sit filing this report, snow is still falling on three inches of the stuff already on the ground.

Seven races were carded: three pony races on the flat―Small, Medium, and Large―and two Timber Races followed by two flat races. Of a total of twenty-eight entries for all seven races, nearly half―sixteen entries―were ponies. I hope the strong showing of pony entries interests other race planners looking forward.

Field Hunter Champion Gabrina Von Schweez ridden by Lindsey Williamson.   /   Middleburg Photo

I watched for glimpses of red and gold in the forests along the highway as I headed North on Saturday, October 2, 2021. But, no, not a glimpse of any color but green. Virginia wasn’t far enough north of Georgia, where my horses and I foxhunt with Belle Meade Hunt, or South Carolina, where I live and work. Fall and cooler temperatures had yet to arrive in Virginia. It’s still hot.

My F250 and four-horse trailer were fully loaded, hauling three horses to Middleburg, where I would stay through the end of the coming week. Four days of foxhunting with four different hunts were in my plans as a judge in the Theodora A. Randolph Field Hunter Championships: hunting in the field every day with the competitors and then riding in the finals on Saturday, October 9, at Glenwood Park. The final tests and awards in the morning would lead up to the Virginia Fall Races in the afternoon.

Laura Sloan, a well-known foxhunter and trainer of field hunters, won the Field Hunter Division of the 2021 National Thoroughbred Makeover competition on Donna Verrilli’s off-the-track-Thoroughbred (OTTB), Forthegreatergood. But the story doesn’t end there.

On the final evening of competition, October 17, 2021, in the arena, Sloan and Forthegreatergood won a final recognition at the Kentucky Horse Park: Overall 2021 Thoroughbred Makeover Champion of all competing horses in all ten divisions. This was the first overall championship for a horse from the Field Hunter division.

US Capitol  /   Wikimedia Commons Image

Legislation to permanently ban horse slaughter in the United States has been introduced by a bipartisan group of U.S. senators. The proposed bill would also ban the transportation of horses for slaughter. Congress effectively ended all horse slaughter in the country about ten years ago, but the General Accounting Office (GAO) reported that horse welfare suffered as a result.

The new bill―Save America's Forgotten Equines (SAFE)―is sponsored by U.S. Senators Susan Collins, R-Maine, Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, Robert Menendez, D-New Jersey, and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-Rhode Island. Senator Whitehouse, for one, is certainly knowledgeable about equine issues. His father, Charles, a former ambassador, served as Master of the Orange County Hounds (VA) after retiring from foreign service.

While the bill is crafted to save horses' lives, the real question is will it solve the underlying problem of unwanted horses? Or will those horses’ lives become even more tragic because humane euthanasia is denied? Without funding as a part of this or any such bill, I'm afraid so.

Tommy Thompson and Jenny Camp

Foaled in 1926 at the United States Army Remount Depot in Front Royal, Virginia, Jenny Camp was named after the cavalry's horse shows known as "Jenny Camp" shows, open to enlisted soldiers, women, and children. Despite being the daughter of one of the Army's finest remount stallions, Gordon Russell, Jenny Camp did not come equipped with wonderful conformation below the knees, but she did come with a scrappy hardiness that would take her far. She was out of a half-bred mare and she stood sixteen hands high.

Maiden Hurdle Race, second division: Gostisbehere (Graham Watters up) leads the field over the last fence and is first at the wire. /  Douglas Lees photo

Old Dominion Hounds (VA) held their spring Point-to-Point races once again in springtime! What’s unusual about that?” one might ask. Last year, Old Dominion was the first of the Virginia hunts to stage their spring races in the autumn, after Covidstopped our lives in March. Warrenton’s point-to-point last year on March 14^th, its usual time, was the last of two spring races (Rappahannock on March 7^th) until Old Dominion gave horsemen a day of racing on September 12^th followed by Blue Ridge on September 19^th. Without spectators, however.

So this spring has been a welcomed return to semi-normalcy. We’re not completely there yet, but we’re close enough to consider this spring special...and to appreciate it as such. The turf was good and entries were healthy enough for the ten-race card of hurdle, timber, and flat racing.