Well, the Longines League of Nations landed on
the US shores and brought thrilling action to Ocala this week. The Winter Equestrian Festival
in Wellington reached its penultimate week with another 4* and the Sunshine Tour closed out their
winter season with the 4* finale week. This week we’re going to give you a little rundown of the
top Elo movers of the season so far and preview some of the horses as they prepare for the biggest
event of the week…and the only 5*…the Finale in Wellington!
Plus, we’ll hear from inspiring US
showjumper Lillie Keenan about what it takes to be at the top of her game! But first, let’s
take a look at this past week’s, big winners: Biggest action of the week took place in Ocala at
the Longines League of Nations that saw Ireland victorious in the Nations Cup with an impressive
total of only 5 penalties faults over two rounds, to take the win over Switzerland and the
USA. Martin Fuchs and Leone Jei also won the Grand Prix in what proved to be an incr
edibly
challenging course! The 4* in Wellington went to Lillie Keenan and Agana van het Gerendal
where they made it a double winning both the qualifier and Grand Prix! And the Sunshine Tour
in Spain concluded with a home win for Jesus Garmendia and Callias in the invitational
Grand Prix to beat out 7 other combinations across upcoming Olympic course designer
Gregory Bobo’s track. And don't forget.... Welcome to Showstopper, powered by Equiratings.
As many of the winter tours come to a clos
e, we are going to take a look at the most significant.
Elo climbers of 2024 so far. With many younger horses stepping up to the higher levels and
exposing themselves to the 4 and 5* competitions, we start to see a lot of 9 and 10 year old years
build their Elo ranking as they perform against their older counterparts. Two big climbers for
the young Lars Kersten mark a significant shift in this man’s career: Funky Fred Marienshof improved
his Elo by 181 points since the start of the year, cl
imbing to enter the Top 15 highest-rated
10-year-olds of the moment. A total of 6 Top 10 finishes at 4*/5* level 150+ this year alone
with a 60% clear rate! He sits on a current Elo of 694. Hallilea (a homebred) was his surprise
winner in the World Cup of Gothenburg and helped boost their Elo up a 115 points to 679 since the
start of the year. Denver and Michael Greeve sit 2nd on the list as they’ve been doing good
business at the Sunshine Tour. This makes him one of the Top 3 highest-rated
9-year-olds of
the year so far. The young Sophie Hinners and Iron Dames Singclair won the 4* World Cup in Abu
Dhabi in January as a newly turned 9-year-old, which helped the Cannes Stars win the first GCL
leg of the season. Singclair has moved up 111 Elo points to 686 but highlights an interesting
fact about our list—it’s not only the younger horses making a splash on the season so far
but also the younger up-and-coming riders who we could be seeing more from in the following
years, espec
ially with such promising horses. A few more on our list have spent most of the
winter in Wellington and have made huge strides in terms of increasing their Elos as they head into
the WEF Finale this week. A few notable mentions include: Kyle Timm and Casino Calvin who have
jumped 2 of the 5*s clear with time faults in some very difficult classes…they’ve moved up 96 points.
Nathalie Dean and her fabulous tiny mare Acota M have shown great performances and moved up 68 Elo
points. Kendra Clar
icia Brinkop and two of her mounts, Do It Easy and In Time have both had big
jumps with increases of 64 and 49 respectively. While Darragh Kenny’s Eddy Blue has jumped up to
forth on our list with an Elo boost of 113. Eddy is yet to make his 160m debut but has already
picked up some great placings at WEF this year, including a clear round in round 1 to help Team
Ireland win the Nations Cup during week 8. It’s sure to be a thrilling week as many of the top
European horses and riders who comp
eted at the Longines League of Nations last week in Ocala make
the hop down to Wellington to try and swoop in and steal the spotlight from some of the tour’s
top stars…I have a feeling the locals aren’t going down without a fight, however! Horse Bytes
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Planet and Offbeat Safaris to stay up to-date on details about the c
ontest. This week’s Weekly
Wonder, we got a behind-the-scenes look at US superstar showjumping talent, 27 year old Lillie
Keenan as she gears up for a huge year. She is ranked 38th in the world currently with over 37
international wins to her name, represented the US at the World Championships in Herning in
2022, and she is already shortlisted for the Paris Olympics this summer. Lillie won just about
everything there was to win as a junior rider and has since made a tremendous name for hers
elf as
one of the US squad’s primary athletes. She holds a bachelor's degree from Harvard, has started
her own equestrian apparel brand and manages to do it all with grace, poise and grit that only the
best in our sport are capable of. It’s an honor to have her with us today!! So you come from the most
extraordinary family brother is a professional hockey player sister's professional ballerina
how did you end up at the top of the sport in show jumping? I uh definitely am from an ambitious
family uh and since I can remember uh my siblings they were very passionate about their different
sports so it just I was lucky that I found horses and it just was natural to really commit to what
I was passionate about. Did someone in the family give you like the horsey bug? Definitely my mom
she rode as a junior and she actually stopped when she was 18 and she had nothing to do with
horses uh for the beginning of my life and I got her back into it but she definitely gave
me the bug. Flori
da season is winding down, how important is we to your sort of yearly
plan especially building up for this year? So Wellington has really become my home uh this time
of year for us to be competing and being able to work at home at the same time makes it a little
bit difficult but it's also a huge privilege yeah and I really try to balance kind of my goals
throughout the year starting from where we start in we and uh try not to over jump the horses which
is hard here because there's so many
classes and so much opportunity but uh yeah I think to have
this like one epicenter where everyone is you can always bring like Young Horses bring them up as
you're jumping to five start the same week that makes it a pretty special place what's your like
favorite part of the Season down here oh gosh uh my favorite part of the season honestly is in
April when it's ending and most people leave and uh I feel like I've accomplished something
and and get ready for for the summer well the finale
Grand Prix is coming up next week and
there's like a whole host of European riders coming down from Ocala. Does that affect strategy?
I mean how do you feel about them kind of swooping in like this? Yeah I mean in previous years
we remember when you had to qualify for w 12 and uh really the whole season was aiming towards
that Ground Prix and now obviously the rules have changed people can show up with Fresh Horses
so in some ways maybe they have an advantage I tried to not over jump my hor
se uh that's why I
skipped Ocala this week because I really wanted to aim towards W 12 so I think that it's going
to be an exciting Grand Prix always when the competitors are their best it just pushes you to
be better I try to take that perspective and uh yeah hopefully can come home with a big win yeah
for sure all right you are already shortlisted for the Olympic Games what does that mean and
how does it sort of affect your strategy and how you're preparing for this big Summer? Yeah so
o
bviously the observation events uh we don't know yet which ones that I'm doing but I kind of shape
the rest of my shows around that and uh of course the goal is the Olympics but just jumping for Team
USA is something that I love to do and right now I have a fantastic horse for that with Oregon so
really uh going through Wellington and trying to Peak just enough but not over jump them and really
save for the big CSI that are going to come June, July lots of big jumping to be done yes yeah um
lastly tell us how do you balance it all right you have businesses you ride you're getting
ready for hopefully the Olympics how do you find focus and sort of mental strength throughout
throughout it all? So as a kid obviously I went to school full-time and I rode and I actually found
that doing multiple things I was better at my individual uh Pursuit uh when I was at school I
was focused on school when I rode I was focused on horses so actually being busy I think is a
strength for me and u
h something that I'm well practiced in so uh yeah I just try to really be in
the moment and I'm lucky that when things go wrong I know that I have another chance and you're going
to lose a lot more than you win so to really focus on kind of the next goal and not get stuck in
maybe the moments that feel like a step backwards yeah sort of be prepared for it not going well
exactly just know that it's not going to go well sometimes but it will go well again what would be
your top three tips for
sort of focusing in order to keep on your goal of the Olympics I think uh
number one is planning uh having a strategy and uh trying to stick to it number two is being flexible
with that strategy and uh even the season some of my best horses I had some injuries that I had to
rework my plan so being able to adapt to kind of the moment that you're in without just throwing
the plan out the window uh and then the third thing would be surrounding yourself with people
that believe in you and are
very organized I think that's made a big difference for me those
are awesome tips. What wonderful insight from one of our sport’s shining stars. It’s a tough
game out there but Lillie is an inspiration to so many for her perseverance, determination
and pursuit of excellence…it’s a pleasure to watch her and hear her expertise on what it
takes to be at the top. After feeling inspired let's not forget to be humble and take a look
at some of the Wyld Things from the past week. All right what do
we got up first okay she's Trot
to this line gymnastics whoo she got no hands that's really impressive pretty good and pretty
big jumps oh look at this never again can you say a horse can't jump from a chip look how giant this
jump is and he's just standing still unbelievable that was pretty impressive and what do we got here
fashion these days I tell you are those boots that look like horse hubs oh that's kind of creepy but
funny if these bloopers made you chuckle be sure to hit the Subsc
ribe buttons for more and if you
have one you'd like to share please send it along and get an opportunity to be featured on the show.
That’s a wrap on this week’s top highlights. Stay tuned to all of our socials…like, comment,
subscribe and follow along, all the action, as it unfolds, here on Horse Bytes, your go to
source for keeping up with the show jumping world!
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