The women and men shared victory in this year's $75,000 Battle of the Sexes (Sportfot)
Week one of the 2015 Winter Equestrian Festival concludes on Sunday, January 11, with the $30,000 WEF 1 Grand Prix. Held at the Palm Beach International Equestrian Center in Wellington, FL, WEF features 12 weeks of world-class competition through March 29, awarding over $8.2 million in prize money.
Eric Hasbrouck is the course designer in the International Arena at PBIEC for week one competition and set the tracks for Saturday's classes. In the highlight $75,000 Battle of the Sexes, the three-phase contest included speed rounds, match races, and a six-bar competition.
The women's team was captained by Candice King and also included riders Erynn Ballard, Nicole Bellissimo, Amanda Derbyshire, Margie Engle, Abigail McArdle, Catherine Pasmore, Alison Robitaille, Debbie Stephens, and Kelsey Thatcher.
Charlie Jayne led the men's team, which included riders David Beisel, David Blake, Daniel Bluman, Mark Bluman, Alex Granato, Angel Karolyi, Darragh Kenny, Samuel Parot, and Andrew Ramsay.
The first round of competition was the speed round, with a six to four win for the men. The match races followed, with the men and women competing side by side over identical courses and the faster rider winning a point for their team. The men were victorious again with a win, 6 points to 4, bringing the total to 12 to 8.
The final six-bar competition was the deciding factor of the evening. Four men and four women returned from each team with the opportunity to earn two points per clear round. The competition started at 1.60m (5'3") in height with two clear rounds for the women and three clear rounds for the men, taking the tally up to 12 and 18. A second round was held with the final jump at 1.70m, where the women's Alison Robitaille was the only rider to jump a clear round, taking her team's score up to 14 versus the men's 18.
Alison Robitaille and Cassinja cleared 1.80m in their final round (Sportfot)
A final tie-breaking round was held with one man and one woman from each team returning to jump the four bar one more time with the final jump set at a staggering 1.85m (6'). Alex Granato went first for the men riding Mullaghdrin Rado and Candice King returned for her team aboard Bugatti VDL, but both pairs had the top rail down at the final jump. The team captains conferred, and decided to remain tied and save their horses for another day.
Although both teams wanted to win, the riders were happy with their horses in the evening and agreed that the competition was a lot of fun. Alison Robitaille was competing in the class for the first time with her horse Cassinja and never thought she would end up jumping so many rounds for her team.
"I am really happy with my horse," Robitaille stated. "She is my grand prix horse, but I don't think that she has ever jumped that high. She has jumped one or two 1.60m rounds. She is just turning ten and she did a couple of bigger classes down here last year and then I broke my shoulder, so she had an easy rest of the year. I got her back in a couple of grand prix classes at the end of the year, but nothing of this caliber."
"I was definitely not expecting to jump that many rounds. I thought we would do maybe two or three rounds and see how things went, but she felt great and she was jumping so well," Robitaille said. "My competitiveness took over when it was just down to one more round to tie everything up."
Commenting on the end result, Robitaille remarked, "It ended in a tie, but that is much better than losing. We will take a tie over a loss any day. This was my first year, and it was really fun. It is a nice class and a great way to get the crowd into it. It was a nice way for things to go and will hopefully bring people back for the following weeks."
Along with jumping the final round for the men's team with Mullagdhrin Rado, Alex Granato had a great evening aboard Zenith Dance, with the fastest round in the speed phase and an equally blazing time in the match races.
"Zenith Dance is a super horse. He is a fun speed horse," Granato said of his speedy mount. "I ride for the owners, and they have been good supporters. I did that horse about a year and a half ago in some grand prixs as an up-and-coming horse and then he spent last year doing the junior jumpers with Maddy Darst on lease. Now we have him for sale and we just got him back, so this is my first week showing him again. He had only done regular speed classes and I don't think he has ever been under the lights in a venue like this, but he was game. You can always count on him to be fast and he is very careful, so he is a fun one to do."
Granato jumped in this class two years ago, but only did the first two phases, and he enjoyed taking part in the whole competition this year.
"I think it is a lot of fun," he acknowledged. "It is great to get the teams together. It maybe got a little heated coming down to a tie this year, but it is a fun venue and it is fun to have the crowd that involved. I think it is a good way to start the circuit with the crowd coming out."