United States Eventing Association

Riders and eventing fans from every level at the USEA American Eventing Championships (AEC) presented by Nutrena Feeds gathered in the Rolex Stadium at the Kentucky Horse Park this evening under the lights to watch the feature division, the $60,000 Adequan USEA Advanced Final, come to its exciting conclusion.

The U.S. Equestrian Federation has announced a change to the U.S. Olympic Eventing Team prior to the start of competition at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Traveling reserve combination Liz Halliday and Nutcracker will move into the three-member team, replacing Will Coleman and Diabolo.

U.S. Eventing Team Chef d’Equipe Bobby Costello has confirmed U.S. Eventing Team athlete Will Coleman will now compete direct reserve selection, Diabolo, a 12-year-old Holsteiner gelding (Diarado x Aljano 2) owned by the Diabolo Group and cared for by Hailey Burlock and Erin Jarboe.

As a child growing up in Virginia’s hunt country, William “Will” Coleman III developed a lifelong passion for horses. “I was lucky to grow up in a ‘horsey’ family,” Will said. “Both of my parents rode, and we always had knowledgeable horse people visiting our farm. They instilled in me a deep love of the animals, right from the beginning.”

Will Coleman gets cold calls for horse sales all the time. So when he got an email from agent Sharon Ridgeway who was representing a horse in Australia, it almost went in the bin with the rest of them.

Lexington, Ky.—April 28—A year ago, Yasmin Ingham had never run a five-star event, but she impressed in her debut at the Land Rover Kentucky Three-Day Event with Banzai du Loir, finishing in second place.

What followed that fall was something she could hardly have imagined. Ingham headed to the FEI World Eventing Championship in Italy as an individual for Great Britain and came home World Champion with “Banzai.”

Aiken, S.C.—April 8—Liz Halliday-Sharp’s been on a hot streak this spring with her group of FEI horses—she’s won four international events from two-star to four-star, including last weekend at The Event At TerraNova CCI4*-S (Myakka City, Florida) on Cooley Be Cool.

Today at the Stable View CCI4*-S, she extended that winning streak with Cooley Quicksilver, maintaining her overnight lead and jumping clear over Mark Phillips’ cross-country course to win the division.

The top of the leaderboards from last weekend’s events were filled with riders preparing for the CCI5*-L at the Land Rover Kentucky Three-Day Event. The two CCI4*-S at the Galway Downs International H.T. (Temecula, California) and The Event at TerraNova (Myakka City, Florida) are prestigious competitions in their own right and served as stepping stones for the first American five-star on the 2023 calendar. Also, the CCI4*-S at the Eventing Spring Carnival at Thoresby Park in the United Kingdom helped prepare some of the international entrants for Kentucky.

When Will Coleman first sat on Chin Tonic HS as a 3-year-old, he knew the horse oozed talent on the flat and over jumps, but his future as a top-level eventing horse wasn’t so certain.

“He was a pretty stunning horse,” he said. “You watched him trot up and you were just kind of drooling over him, even at that stage. I rode him in this very small indoor [in Europe], and you couldn’t believe that you were riding a 3-year-old horse. Just the presence and the way that he sort of just connected into the bridle was just a very incredible, athletic feeling but he was not really a galloping horse. He was more of dressage and show jumping breeding, so I think it’s taken him a little while to develop a step on cross-country.”

Sometimes you just have to be a goldfish, as Ted Lasso says to his team on the Apple TV series of the same name—forget what happened quickly and move on.

Will Coleman came into the CCI4*-S show jumping today at the Setters’ Run Farm Carolina International on top of the class with Chin Tonic HS and in third with Off The Record, but by the end of the class he was ready to forget his wild day.