Trainer Teddy Mulligan Returns, Wins at Blue Ridge
Trainer Teddy Mulligan marked his return to the racecourse with a win in the first race. / Nancy Kleck photoThe sixty-sixth running of the Blue Ridge Hunt Point-to-Point Races were held at Woodley Farm on Sunday, March 22, 2015. This was the second year in a row that the Blue Ridge race meet had to be postponed due to the weather.
Trainer Teddy Mulligan returned to the racecourse after a year’s absence, saddling his first horse for the first race since his leave-taking and scoring his first win. Bedizen and Zol Zayne, the one-two horses, pulled away from the field of four in the Maiden Hurdle Race with less than a quarter mile to run. Turning for home, Bedizen with Jeff Murphy up took the lead and drew away for a convincing win.
In the remaining two hurdle races—Amateur/Novice Rider and Open Races—trainer Jimmy Day and his rider Brendan Brooks dominated the Winner’s Circle with Controlled Neglect, owned by Ann Braxton Jones-Lynch, and Manacor, owned by a Daybreak Stables syndicate.
Dakota Slew Retires Rokeby Bowl at Piedmont
At the finish of the Open Timber Race it’s Dakota Slew (Robbie Walsh up) 1st, Dr. Alex (Teddy Zimmerman up) 2nd. / Douglas Lees photo
Dakota Slew and Dr. Alex battled for the lead throughout most of the Open Timber race, even jumping the last fence abreast, but at the wire it was Dakota Slew by a length. It was Dakota Slew’s third win in this race under rider Robbie Walsh, thus retiring the Rokeby Bowl for owner Maggie Bryant. Trained by Richard Valentine, Dakota Slew is one of six horses that tied for Leading Timber Horse in Virginia in 2014.
The Valentine-Walsh team scored their second win of the day in the Open Flat Race with Clark Ohrstrom’s Kisser N Run taking the lead from Preachers Pulpit with less than a half-mile to run and winning easily. Kisser N Run was the 2013 Life’s Illusion Filly and Mare champion, and last season’s winner of the Atlanta Steeplechase’s Georgia Cup.
Summer Movies, Concerts at National Sporting Library and Museum
The National Sporting Library & Museum (NSLM) in Middleburg, Virginia has announced a summer program of free movies and concerts, with Museum galleries remaining open during the events. Movies are shown on Saturday afternoons from March to December 12. Concerts will take place every fourth Friday from April through September. The summer series features popular […]
Country Pursuits: The Mellon Collections
Country Pursuits: British, American and French Sporting Art from the Mellon Collections in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, by Malcolm Cormack, Published by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in association with the University of Virginia Press, 2007, 474 pages, illustrated, $62.00What a debt we all owe the late philanthropist Paul Mellon, whose love of horses and horse sports was expressed through the fabulous art collections that he so generously shared with us.
The Eclipse Award-winning breeder saddled legendary Thoroughbreds Sea Hero, Arts and Letters, and Mill Reef, just to name a few. His first British art purchase, in 1936, was a painting of a racehorse, “Pumpkin with a Stable-lad” by George Stubbs, said to be his favorite painting by one of his favorite artists. Pumpkin won sixteen out of his twenty-four races at Newmarket turf in the late 1770s and was described as an excellent runner.
“It was my very first purchase of a painting,” Mellon recalled later, “and could be said to be the impetus toward my later, some might say gluttonous, forays into the sporting art field.”
That Stubbs painting was donated to his alma mater, Yale, but the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts was another lucky recipient of Mellon’s “gluttonous” obsession with sporting art. Mellon’s donations are explored in Country Pursuits: British, American and French Sporting Art from the Mellon Collections in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts by Malcom Cormack. Cormack was the Paul Mellon Curator at the VMFA in 1991 until his retirement in 2004. He also once served as the Curator of Paintings at the Yale Center of British Art established by Mellon.
Virginia Horses Confirmed Positive for EHM
A horse in Albemarle County, northwest of Charlottesville, Virginia, that displayed neurologic abnormality was confirmed positive for Equine Herpesvirus Myeloencephalopathy (EHM) on February 5, 2015. The boarding stable at which the affected horse is located, along with fourteen other horses, has been placed under quarantine. No horses may leave or enter the premises until the […]
Cuban Exports: Rum, Cigars, and…Fancy Show Jumpers
The Associated Press reports that Cuba has added another luxury product to its traditional export list of fine rum and fancy cigars—Dutch Warmblood show jumpers. Colts and fillies are purchased as yearlings from the Netherlands, trained at government-sponsored equine enterprises, and auctioned off to buyers mostly from Latin-America. Fidel Castro’s communist government banned horse racing, […]
What Foxhunters Can Learn from Eventers
In the last issue of FHL WEEK, Kate Samuels wrote about what eventing horses can learn by going foxhunting. Your editor was reminded of an article we published back in 2010 that turned that question on its head somewhat. We had asked Olympic three-day medalist James Wofford what foxhunters can learn from eventers. As we are now in that part of the hunting season when a traveling fox may take us for the longest and most arduous run of the season, we thought it would be worthwhile republishing Wofford’s advice.
James Wofford on Carawich, 1978 / Gamecock photo
For most of us field members, perhaps one of the greatest single factors influencing the joy we experience in a day’s hunting is our riding ability. The more competently we are able to cross the country on our horse, the closer we come to a totally fulfilling experience.
Since eventers know just a bit about crossing the country, we asked instructor, team coach, author, and Olympic medalist James Wofford to discuss some of the principles of his particular discipline and how they might be applied to the hunting field.
How Domestication Has Changed the Horse’s Genes
The course of civilization was profoundly altered by the domestication of the horse on the steppes of Eurasia some 5,500 years ago. Merchants, soldiers, explorers, and adventurers of all stripes—newly empowered by the horse to gallop rather than walk—expanded trade, warfare, migration of populations, and the transmission of ideas. To understand the genetic changes wrought […]
NYC Horse Carriages a Campaign Issue in the State
Republican Congressman Michael Grimm—notwithstanding his endorsement by HSUS’s Humane Society Legislative Fund—doesn’t support Mayor de Blasio’s pledge to ban horse-drawn carriages in New York City. “I don’t think we should ban the carriages. The only thing we should mandate is that the horses are treated well and treated humanely,” Grimm told the New York Observer. […]
Hedge-Hopping in England
My top moment of any Blackthorn & Brook holiday comes as our guests pull up after a run having encountered their first hedge. They make a fuss of their horse, turn to me and grin.
“I see what you mean about sitting up!” is a recurring comment.
Hedge-hopping is a much discussed feature of our holidays. The subject is met with excitement, trepidation, anticipation, fear, bravado, and everything in between, as it really is an unknown quantity for the majority of our American guests.
With this in mind, we have put together a short video and accompanying blog below, explaining a little of how we prepare ourselves and our horses for popping the hedges in style. What follows is a collection of basic principles that work for us. If anyone has questions or comments—challenges, improvements, ideas—we’d love to hear from you.