What a great weekend to start off the 2014 show season in Kentucky! We took 23 horses and clients this weekend to event from Starter through Preliminary, making for a very, very busy weekend. I am so proud of everyone… Even after a crazy winter, everyone had a fantastic weekend! 22 of 23 horses jumped clean xc, with four wins and two seconds and more ribbons than I could count!
Master Mind (Guinness) and I had our first training level event this weekend, and all I can say is that I am elated with him! Most importantly, he was excellent in all three phases, and made it all seem easy and left me wanting bigger fences! The icing on the cake was that he won his division, leading start to finish on 25.7, FODS. (Thanks to Nancy Kowalski for this photo).
Master Mind and Megan Moore, 1st in Open Training. PC Nancy Kowalski.
I had the pleasure of catch riding a lovely RPSI gelding for a client, and he too was excellent, leading the Open Novice from start to finish with a 27 dressage score. This fantastic guy is coming up for sale so watch out for that one!
Megan Moore and Promisemethemoon. PC Howard Moore.
Promisemethemoon made his comeback event a great one, after having some time off last year for a bone bruise. He ran the Preliminary this weekend, scoring 38 in dressage and having a fantastic show jumping round. We took it slow and safe on XC, adding 17 time penalties to take care of him a bit in his first outing back, but man it is good to have my favorite little redhead out and about again!!
As for our fabulous students, Nikki Kowalski and Ballinagore Knight had yet another fantastic win in the Training Rider division, leading start to finish to finish on their dressage score of 28. We were very excited to see them be so bored at Training this weekend, and a moveup is definitely in their future! She was also 5th on her young horse CR Dynasty in BN this weekend! (Thanks to Kristen Janicki for this photo).
Nikki Kowalski and Ballinagore Knight, 1st in TR. PC Kristen Janicki.
Team CEO’s barn manager and head groom extraordinaire Andrea Johnson was wildly busy this weekend, grooming for all of Megan’s rides as well as riding two herself. She rode Wapentake in the prelim for yet another fantastic weekend for them… 30’s in dressage, just 1 rail in show jumping at the first fence, and double clean XC. They have become quite the preliminary machine! Andrea also rode our homebred Widespread Chaos in this 5yo mare’s first training. I just loved having another trainer come up to me and compliment Andrea’s SJ round—that meant so much to us! They were fantastic, making the training look easy, and placing 4th. This young mare is a serious upper level contender… We are so excited about her!!!
Andrea Johnson and Wapentake, 9th in Open Preliminary. PC Emily Roepke and Howard Moore.
Also incredibly excited for Kelly Rover’s win in the Novice Rider division this weekend! Kelly recently moved to Lexington KY to train with us, after training long-distance from Missouri for a couple of years. Her hard work paid off with a WIN this weekend! Even better than a ribbon, she put together her best show jumping round and best xc round of her career (I’m afraid I didn’t see the dressage test to comment on that, but I heard it was great too!).
Kelly Rover and Wilder Than Syn, 1st in Novice Rider
Emma Tilghman and Widespread Panic had a great weekend, with an absolutely gorgeous show jumping round and finishing in 3rd place to FODS of 31. Lots of smiles this weekend with a great outing! Emma also catch rode Rachel Sowinski’s darling young horse in his first event and finished 7th…. What a great start to his eventing career!
Emma Tilghman and Widespread Panic, 3rd in TR. PC Nancy Kowalski
Other exciting top placings include: Lindsey Long and General Countdown, 2nd in BNR-A. Nicole Wozniak and Curiosity, 2nd in BNR-B. Those two definitely earned upgrades to Novice in their next outings! Elissa Martin and Gracelyn Kephart were 6th and 4th respectively in their first USEA Beginner Novice HT’s with their new horses… Very excited for them!
I can’t thank the organizers, volunteers, and officials of this event enough for this weekend. We had lots of rides so I think we got to see just about every inch of this event! The quality and selection of the officials was fantastic, the organization was second to none, and the scheduling was so brilliant that every phase ran on time or early. We are so lucky to have this exceptional team of organizers in Area 8!
Also thank you to Andrea Johnson, Howard Moore, Gracie and Tara Elliott, Emily Roepke, and Kelly Rover for helping tack, groom, and switch horses so I could make it to all of the clients’ rides!
So proud of everyone! These are just a couple results off the top of my head… The USEA scores aren’t posted yet for me to be able to find the entire list! But I am so proud of everyone. And big thanks to Howard Moore, Elissa Martin, Kristen Janicki, Katie Knowles, Le Tilghman, Liz Moyer, and Lesley Ward, and Nancy Kowalski for taking photos of the Team CEO Eventing riders this weekend! How incredibly sweet of you!!!!
Jan Reynolds and Sunny in their first Novice. PC Lesley Ward
Kathryn Krische and Welliengton at Training. PC Nancy Kowalski
The Team CEO Eventing Blog 
And BIG THANKS to the team including Gracie, NIcole, Emily, et.al. who moved horses around like Brownian motion so Megan could not only teach but ride – she would show up at warmup and VOILA! magically her horse appeared, tacked and ready to ride! (and I’m sure more of you participated, my apologies if I missed anyone – it seemed like MAGIC to me!).