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Posted February 8, 2006 Canadian Eric Lamaze and Telegraph Sprint to Wednesday Winter Equestrian Festival Win
This week is the Kilkenny/ICH Internationale which also features Round Three of the $25,000 WEF Challenge Cup Series tomorrow and the $60,000 Kilkenny/ICH Internationale Cup Grand Prix, CSI 3* (AGA) on Sunday. The Course Designer for the Internationale Arena is Great Britain’s Robert J. Ellis. The scoring for today’s 1.45m was USEF Table II, Sec 2 (b). Time First Jump-Off with an immediate jump-off. Of the sixty-eight starters that took the field on Wednesday, twenty-nine produced first round clears. Eighteen of those competitors went on to be double clear. Twenty-three others accumulated four faults while another fourteen duos had eight faults or more. Summer Storm, owned by Shaine Brooks and ridden by Amy Momrow, was the early morning pacesetter with a double clear go and a finish time of 34.416 seconds. Close to the halfway point of today’s large class, Jeffery Welles and Abigail Wexner’s Sampras took over the lead, shaving a razor thin 5/10ths of a second off of Momrow’s time, clocking in at 32.818 seconds. Welles held off a challenge by Brazil’s Rodrigo Pessoa, who just missed with Orlandi’s Cantate Z. Pessoa tripped the timers in 32.987 seconds, just 1/10th of a second shy of Welles’ top time. Laura Kraut and Panic, owned by the Panic Partnership, also came close, but slid into the eventual third spot, with a time of 33.146, just fractions faster than Momrow. Out of the sixty-third spot in today’s field, Steve Cohen’s Telegraph and Canadian rider Eric Lamaze were the ones that were finally able to knock Welles from his spot at the top of the leader board. The 1.45m class on opening day is always such a fast class. You have to just go as fast as your horse can handle the course, said Lamaze. There’s really no strategy involved in winning this class. You know what you’ve got to do, you go as fast as you can go, and hope to beat all the great riders and great horses in this class. Lamaze clocked in 7/10ths of a second faster than Welles and Sampras, breaking the beams in 32.109 seconds for his third victory of the 2006 WEF tour. Lamaze talked about his steady performing grey horse. Telegraph has already won three classes and picked up a fifth place ribbon in the five classes he’s shown in here during the first three weeks, he noted. He’s the one we’ve used the most, but he’s also been our most consistent horse so far. He’s a great horse, and he’s very fast. He’s a veteran, formerly ridden by Bruce Goodin of New Zealand, and it’s great to have him in the barn, Lamaze said. And what about this year’s Winter Equestrian Festival? It’s bigger and better, said a smiling Lamaze. The warm up ring is much improved with the very modern footing they’ve installed. WEF is bigger. There are a lot more horses but a lot less clear rounds. The Sunday class and the WEF Challenge have only yielded a few clear rounds, and a double clear on both Sundays won, he said. So the courses are getting harder, and the competition is getting better and it’s a large international field that we have now, as compared to the national level type competition. I think the course designers are using that to their advantage to build some very, very technical courses with light material which certainly makes it hard to clear, Lamaze admitted. For the main event on Sunday, Lamaze will be aboard another one of his string of talented equines, the brilliant Hickstead. My goal with Hickstead is the World Championships, Lamaze stated. He finished the year very strong in Calgary and in Toronto. He debuted this past Sunday after a couple of smaller classes. I think he should have a strong showing this coming Sunday, being his second week back. We’re very thrilled with how he’s come along, and I have great hopes for him. Lamaze talked about the strong Canadian squad in Florida this year. It’s great to have Mario (Deslauriers) back on top horses, he’s a world class rider, and having Ian (Millar) here for the whole circuit is great. I think every Canadian rider is here, and from what I’ve seen so far, it has been a real strong Canadian showing so far from everyone, he said. This week at the Winter Equestrian Festival will include the fifth and sixth qualifying events for the FTI Rider Challenge, a rider bonus pool for $200,000 in which the riders receive points based on the number of riders in the seven Thursday and seven Sunday Grand Prix events that are part of the WEF Wellington series. Sunday’s $60,000 Kilkenny/ICH Internationale Cup also marks the debut of the 2006 American Grand Prix Association (AGA) tour in South Florida. The tour’s first stop was in Jacksonville, Florida on January 21st. The AGA Grand Prix Series is the nation’s richest and longest running series of equestrian show jumping events. In its twenty eighth year of equestrian excellence, the AGA tour includes thirty two events in twenty two different equestrian markets and offers over $2.5 million dollars in prize money. Results of Class 1002 - 1.45m II, Sec 2(b)-Kilkenny/ICH Internationale-2/8/06
PHOTO CREDIT: Telegraph and Eric Lamaze win 1.45m Wednesday at WEF. Photo by Kenneth Kraus/PhelpsSports.com |
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Wellington,
FL – February 8, 2006 – The third week of action at the
2006 Winter Equestrian Festival kicked off Wednesday morning and the
brilliant sunny South Florida sky more than made up for the chilly temperatures
that greeted the competitors for the early morning 1.45m feature. Brilliant
too was the winning ride by Canadian Eric Lamaze to earn the hard fought
win over sixty-seven fellow show jumping competitors. 
