Eric Lamaze and Telegraph Sprint to win
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.
This week is the Kilkenny/ICH International 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 International 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.
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 32.98 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.
For the main event on Sunday the Grand Prix, Lamaze will be aboard another one of his string of talented equines, the brilliant Hickstead.
Results
Class 1002 – 1.45m II, Sec 2(b)-
Kilkenny/ICH Internationale
1-1829-Eric Lamaze-Telegraph -0-0/32.109
2-984-Jeffery Welles-Sampras-0-0/32.818
3-2629-Rodrigo Pessoa-Cantate Z -0-0/32.987
4-1513-Laura Kraut-Panic-0-0/33.146
5 -766-Amy Momrow-Summer Storm-0-0/33.416
6-1265-Mclain Ward-Alias-0-0/34.257
7-1514-Laura Kraut- Tiffany Ls La Silla-0-0/34.641
8-1205-Norman Dello Joio-Malcolm-0-0/34.980
9-2329-Karen Cudmore-Southern Pride-0-0/35.188
10-20-Eric Hasbrouck-Lavaletta-0-0/35.241
11-819-Chris Pratt-Mustique-0-0/35.693
12-3076-Kimberly Prince-Cinnamon-0-0/35.700