May 2023 Issue

Page 18 May 2023 EAST COAST EQUESTRIAN Cross Polination: Many Top Riders Both Event and Race Over Fences junior, won two Olympic team gold medals and rode for the U.S. in seven games. Plumb rode Oliphant – sec- ond to the legendary Fort Devon in the 1976 Maryland Hunt Cup, falling with Koolabah in 1977. Plumb’s father, Charles Plumb, rode the 1929 Maryland Hunt Cup winner, Alligator. Jennie Brannigan Jennie Brannigan began working with steeplechase owners, thoroughbred breeders and longtime executive-level eventing supporters Tim and Nina Gardner while she was a young rider. Brannigan won team and individual gold in the 2008 North American Young Riders Champi- onship, then worked for Olympic champion Phillip Dutton at his True Prospect Farm, partnering with Dutton on many Gardner homebreds and young stock at their Welcome Here Farm in West Grove, Pennsylvania. She campaigned two-time horse of the year, Cambalda, and more recently notched a big 4* win at Bromont in June with three-generation Gardner home- bred, Twilightslastgleam. Brannigan won over timber at the Brandywine point-to-point in 2017 with Joshua G. for owner Armata Stable and trainer Kathy Neilson. Joshua G. and Bran- nigan fell at the sixth while going strongly in the 2017 Maryland Hunt Cup. She grew up near Chicago – nowhere near any steeplechasing, but Brannigan once said in an in- terview that “if I had known what this was when I was younger, I’d probably have become a jump jockey, not an event rider. People have said the time I’ve spent riding racehorses has helped me. I think I’ve gotten a lot better. “I’ve ridden a lot of (speed work for flat trainer Michael Matz and others) and feel very comfortable at speed now. “It’s cool to be part of (stee- plechasing), historically. The fact that Bruce Davidson and Mike Plumb did it back in the day? That’s something that appealed to me. So many kids now have been brought up to …. perform in an arena. Riding over big timber fences in a group is very different from that.” Elite eventer Will Coleman is another strong believer in the steeplechase-eventing link. One of his best horses, French-bred former steeplechas- er Tight Lines was the high- est-placed Thoroughbred, 13th, at Kentucky in 2019. Coleman and Tight Lines’ partnership began in 2014, when the horse was purchased by Cole- man’s connections through Cana- dian eventer Lindsay Traisnel and her husband Xavier. The rangy gray had competed previously through CCI2*-L, produced by French eventer Paul Gatien in the barn of Nicolas and Theirry Touzaint. “He’s an amazing galloper,” Coleman told reporters after cross-country in Kentucky in 2019. Tight Lines “tries so much. He’s as enthusiastic at Fence 1 as he is at Fence 31.” For all of his success of three-day eventing, three-time Olympic team silver medalist Kevin Freeman still calls steeple- chasing “the most thrilling thing I’ve ever done on a horse.” He’s long retired from the saddle though he stays involved in horses, still teaching a few lessons near his home in Oregon. “There’s nothing more exciting than riding down to a fence with horses on either side of you trying to be the first to the finish line.” The late Jimmy Wofford, who died Feb. 2, had praised Kevin Freeman as “one of the fastest and smoothest riders” American eventing ever produced. Freeman was asked to pen the definitive comparison of jump race riding and upper-level event- ing in author Bill Steinkraus’s 1976 volume, the U.S. Equestrian Team Book of Riding. He was born in Portland, Oregon, growing up on a farm in nearby Molalla. He’d learned to love horses and riding when he was young, starting the way many young boys start in equestrian. “I discovered that the riding academy my sister rode at had a lot of attractive young ladies,” Freeman says with a chuckle at the memory. "That's why I started." His equestrian education started on the show circuit, com- peting in hunters and equitation on the west coast, then east coast. He played polo while studying agri- cultural engineering at Cornell. Freeman pursued a grad de- gree at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Freeman’s short steeplechase career had him winning over hur- dles and over timber, his biggest win coming in the 1968 Iroquois with Bill Rochester’s Appollon. He won over the Pennsylvania Hunt Cup course with Jill Slater’s Stutter Start and finished third in the 1971 Maryland Hunt Cup with Morning Mac, behind timber leg- ends Landing Party and Haffaday. In his other world, Freeman was on three Olympic silver med- al three-day event squads – 1964, 1968 and 1972. He’s happy to reminisce about the good old days strad- dling the steeplechase and eventing worlds. There are com- parisons, but there are distinct differences. “For all their similarities, the two sports really are different,” Freeman says. “Eventing is tech- nically a more difficult jumping sequence than steeplechase, but you’re racing against the clock, not against other horses. (Continued from page 17) (Continued on page 34)