Victoria Colvin became the only rider ever to win the Platinum Performance/USHJA International Hunter Derby Championship four times on four different horses, as she rode through pain to take the title Saturday at the Kentucky Horse Park.
Tori and the Ingram family’s Dicoblue PS, winner of the Classic round the previous day, were able to top the event’s finale, the Handy round to earn the tri-color. Jennifer Hannan and Cellestino finished second, ahead of John French and Milagro.
Tori Colvin and Dicoblue PS (USHJA photo)
Tori had a fall in the warm-up early in the class on another horse. She scratched that mount, but although her ribs were hurting as a result, she persevered to define what makes a champion.
“It was a bit of a fluke accident,” she observed after the class.
“Everything is all right – it was a little painful at first, but it’s okay now. Dicoblue PS took me around beautifully and he’s an incredible horse, so I give it all to him.”
She called the horse, “super-special. I’ve been riding him for a couple of years, and I’ve done mainly derbies with him, but he’s still a little green,” said Colvin, though you couldn’t tell it from watching his style of floating over the fences.
“He has shown once under lights, but he’s not quite used to this atmosphere. I wasn’t completely sure what to expect, but he went out there and was amazing. He didn’t even bat an eye.”
On the challenging 14-obstacle course set by Ken Krome and Meghan Rawlins, there were four high options, with the tallest fence set at 4 feet, 6 inches, while other highlights included a bounce double and a multi-faceted horseshoe, where riders could jump the three sections in any order and any direction.
“It was a difficult course – I felt like I was back to my equitation days,” Tori said.
“There were a lot of unique options, which was super fun and everybody could take their own route.”
Dicoblue earned scores of 92, 95 and 96. Adding in all four high options as well as their leading score from the Classic round, he and Tori had a two-round total of 608. Jennifer’s total was 597, while John finished on 583.5.
Two favorites ran into trouble along the route. Amanda Steege, who was on track to win last year until applause startled Lafitte de Muze at the end of his round, this time lost out when he ticked one of the tiny pieces of wood perched on top of the straw bale jump.
Hunt Tosh, another four-time winner of the class (but not on four different horses!) had a block at the stone wall and chipped in at the out of the in-and-out with Cannon Creek.