By Nancy Jaffer
March 2, 2018
While suffering through a winter of gray skies, rain and way too much mud in the paddocks and pastures up North, you doubtless have a personal understanding of why so many horse owners flee to Florida during the bleak months.
Beautiful farms are part of the Wellington scene. (Photo by Nancy Jaffer)
If you’re in New Jersey today, or for that matter, much of the Northeast and mid-Atlantic area, just look out the window at the “wintry mix” from the nor’easter.
They don’t call Wellington, Fla., “The Winter Capital of the Equestrian World” for nothing. Although the municipality of more than 56,000 looks like an ordinary suburban town in many ways, with an abundance of development homes, it is the equestrian element that sets Wellington apart.
The Winter Equestrian Festival is its biggest claim to equine fame, with riders from all over the world and more than 5,000 horses coming for 12 weeks of show jumping, hunters and equitation from January through March. (Less glamorous shows are held at other times of year).
World-class riders such as Laura Graves with Verdades always draw a crowd at Global. (Photo by Nancy Jaffer)
WEF’s sibling down the street, the Adequan Global Dressage Festival, is the place to be for world class dressage riders from the U.S. and elsewhere. The “Friday Night Stars” freestyles under the lights always attract a packed house, in both the VIP area that runs along two sides of the arena, and the grandstands on the second long side.
Streets are named in an equestrian vein after shows such as Aachen and Hickstead. There’s also an Idle Dice Road, Gem Twist Court and other byways with names you’ll recognize, such as Calypso or Stroller.
Even the streets have horsey names in Wellington. (Photo by Nancy Jaffer)
If you’re a horse person, you’ll feel at home. The question is, can you afford to live there, or even rent for the season?
Realtors keep emailing me with their listings. My favorite was 80 acres for $25 million. There’s a nice barn with apartments upstairs, but no house. I’m a little short this month—can you lend me a few bucks for a downpayment?
Many properties are in gated communities, such as Palm Beach Polo and Palm Beach Point. Their often-artistic wrought iron gates are worth a look, but you’ll only be able to get inside if you know the passcode.
You can’t get in unless you know the code. (Photo by Nancy Jaffer)
It all adds up to quite a lifestyle that has flourished in less than a half-century. Long before the horse shows were conceived, Wellington was the world’s biggest strawberry patch, the Flying Cow Ranch, owned by C. Oliver Wellington.
It became a Planned Unit Development in 1972, 23 years before it would be incorporated as a municipality, but the turning point for equestrians came in 1977. Developer Bill Ylvisaker took horse show entrepreneur Gene Mische to see a rather desolate tract and outlined his plans for a polo club and hunter/jumper show facility on the site.
“It was dunes and palm trees and woods. I asked, `What are you smoking?'” Gene chuckled a few years later, recalling his skepticism at Bill’s presentation. But he went for it.
Soon enough, the property became very valuable real estate as the Palm Beach Polo Club. The gated community, which once hosted the type of polo matches that drew Prince Charles and Princess Diana, gave a venue to Stadium Jumping Inc.’s Winter Equestrian Festival. Prior to that, the Florida Sunshine Circuit had traipsed from showground to showground around the state; Wellington provided a home base not only for the shows, but as time went on, for the people involved with them, who built their estates in the area.
A few years later, the WEF moved from the Polo Club over to its own facility, the Palm Beach Polo Equestrian Club, a half-mile or so away. That facility changed ownership in 2007, when entrepreneur Mark Bellisimo, head of the Wellington Equestrian Partners group of investors, took over management under the mantle of Equestrian Sport Productions and started pumping millions of dollars into such badly needed improvements as all-weather footing in the tired grass International Arena at the venue, which was renamed the Palm Beach International Equestrian Center.
The big arena developed into a mini-stadium; restaurants and hospitality facilities sprouted and prize money increased to the $9 million being offered this year.
VIPs have a close-up view of the show jumping action at the Palm Beach International Equestrian Center. (Photo by Nancy Jaffer)
At dressage, the 2018 prize money is $600,000, a figure unheard for that discipline just a few years ago. In a moment reminiscent of that Ylvisaker/Mische meeting among the scrub palmetto several decades previously, Adequan’s Allyn Mann embraced Mark Bellisimo’s vision for Global from atop a mountain of dirt on the site of the old polo fields, where a stadium and three other dressage rings would soon spring up.
Kim Tudor, who got her start with Gene doing sponsorship, once observed, “Years ago, we used to say `Palm Beach’ and not Wellington, because no one knew where Wellington existed on the map. Now, most people within the equestrian industry know exactly where Wellington is, and they rarely say `Palm Beach.’ ”
One measure of Wellington’s equestrian well-being is that WEF is no longer the only game in town. The Jacobs family has a series of shows, including the prestigious Palm Beach Masters World Cup qualifier, at Deeridge Farm near Global. Nona Garson, who runs the Ridge show series in New Jersey with partner George D’Ambrosio, has a popular series of competitions in Wellington as well.
The VIP area at the Palm Beach Masters, the Jacobs family’s show at their Deeridge Farm. (Photo by Nancy Jaffer)
It’s a kick to see the big name riders, often still in their breeches and boots, wheeling shopping carts in the supermarket or visiting the sprawling Wellington Green mall. Despite the size of Wellington, among equestrians, it has a small town feel where everybody knows your name.
“Our community is a good community,” said grand prix show jumper Lauren Hough. “When you’re down and out or things are rough, there’s a lot of people you can count on to help you.”
Dressage rider/trainer Katherine Bateson Chandler agrees.
“You always feel very supported here in Wellington,” she observed.
“You’re surrounded by your peers and they understand the struggle is real, in show jumping, dressage, polo and the whole horse community.”
New Jersey dressage breeder/trainer Bridget Hay, who endured several weeks of cold misery riding at home in during January, was glad to bring her horses to rented quarters in Wellington at the end of that month.
Even with an indoor ring at her farm in Hunterdon County, she said, “I couldn’t get everyone ridden in a warm enough time of day where it was healthy for them.”
During the New Jersey winter, “There was no showing up there, and I need training,” said Bridget, who is able to ride with Olympian Adrienne Lyle in Wellington, where their stables are only a few minutes apart.
“We all need to work with people,” noted Bridget, who also benefits from watching some of the world’s greatest riders in the big competitions at Global. “I need to come down here to better myself.”
Iowa dressage professional Missy Fladland noted that in Wellington, “No matter where you go, there’s a horse person there. We all save up to get here, just to make it happen.”
She’s been coming for four years, at the urging of her former trainer. He told her, “When you’re ready, you’ve got to go to Florida. That’s where you get the most Europeans, that’s where you get the stiffest competition and the most number of shows in a small space in a 12-week period. That’s where it’s at.”
