United States Eventing Association

Paso Robles, CA- The weather refused to cooperate for the past few days at Twin Rivers, making for a very wet and soggy weekend. Friday was a bit of a tease throughout the day, as sun pushed through the clouds and made an appearance. However, the organizers and ground jury seemed to be smarter than the weather as they checked weather reports throughout the morning and decided to have Advanced and Intermediate riders run late Friday afternoon, due to the large amounts of rain that were expected to wreak havoc on footing for Saturday.

The Twin Rivers crew did an amazing job getting footing ready in time to run a day earlier then expected. In the Advanced division, Hawley Bennet-Awad had a flawless ride aboard the fourteen-year-old Thoroughbred gelding SplendoroftheSun, owned by herself and Pamela and John Hudson, to add only 12 time penalties to their score and maintain their lead from dressage (they earned an impressive 29.4 from the judges). “He is really straight forward and honest cross-country. He gives me the same ride every time, and I’ve learned to ride him a little better so we have a good give-and-take relationship now,” said Bennet-Awad. The two will go into the final phase with one rail to spare, but Hawley admitted that stadium has been their toughest part of competition in the past: “Show Jumping is his hardest phase so we’re going to say a prayer to the show jumping gods tonight!”

Tiana Coudray aboard the dashing grey nine-year-old Irish Sport Horse Ringwood Magister sits behind Hawley in second place following cross-country after a somewhat green first run of the season, but a successful one. “He was really good--much more rideable than last year, but we had a few green beginning-of-the-season moments where he was taking a look at stuff. All in all though, I had a really great ride,” said Tiana. The pair is traditionally known for being a very good stadium duo, and with the sloppy conditions that are expected for tomorrow’s show jumping, it should make for quite an exciting finish.

Buenos Aires put in a beautiful test for Canadian Sandra Donnelly on Friday morning, settling them in second behind SplendoroftheSun. They added a total of 16.8 time penalties, dropping them just one place after a smooth cross-country Friday afternoon, and will be rounding out the top three spots heading into Sunday.

Less than five points separate the top three riders in the division going into Sunday’s scheduled stadium rounds, and riders are hoping the weather will let up enough to allow footing to dry out a bit.

The Open Intermediate riders were also lucky enough to run cross-country Friday before the hard rain rolled in, but the rest of the remaining competitors did not fare as well with the elements. Pam Fisher aboard Sea Lion leads the Intermediate following cross-country, after posting the fastest time of the day and adding only 2.8 time penalties to her dressage score to move up from third to the top spot ahead of James Alliston and Jumbo’s Jake (2nd) and Beth Temkin and Jude’s Law (3rd).

Cross-country was cancelled for Saturday with an unlikely possibility that it will be rescheduled because of the excessive rainfall. Many people hitched up their rigs and headed home once the weather began to get fierce on Saturday morning, however footing in the show jumping arena held up well, and the Baxter family (organizer of the competition) did a fantastic job making sure footing was up to par for the lower level riders who stayed to brave the downpour and compete in their stadium rides as scheduled.

Weather permitting, competition begins tomorrow with the Young Rider Open Preliminary division which has been turned into a Combined Test format, along with all levels other than Advanced and Intermediate, which are scheduled to finish up their competition with show jumping tomorrow beginning at 12:55pm.

Check out the live scores from Twin Rivers!

(Editor’s Note: Congratulations to reporter Frankie Thieriot and her horse Fric Frac Berence who put forth a clean cross-country trip with the fastest ride of the division in the Advanced!)