Kevin Babington is back in the Garden State

After nearly a quarter-century in Pennsylvania, Kevin Babington has set up shop in New Jersey again.

The Irish show jumper is now based at Hayley and Toby Carlson’s Ketcham Farm at Cream Ridge in Monmouth County, where he received a hero’s welcome last night with a surprise party. It was a celebration for his sweep of top placings in Sunday’s $100,000 Great American Insurance Group Grand Prix presented by Aon, as the Lake Placid, N.Y., horse shows ended their two-week run.

Kevin won with Shorapur (the runner-up in the previous Sunday’s $100,000 grand prix), was second on Debra Wycoff’s Super Chilled and third with his own veteran campaigner, Mark Q. He was the only rider to go fault-free in the seven-horse jump-off on the turf, his favorite type of footing.

“I love the grass, so I think the horses sort of feed off that a little bit. Everything was aligned and it worked out. I’m still in a bit of shock,” Kevin acknowledged, but adding about his trifecta, “I never would have called it.”

His record at the show earned him the Richard and Diana Feldman Perpetual Challenge Trophy for Excellence and $2,000 as the rider winning the most prize money in the two grands prix.

Not surprisingly, he’s a fan of competing at Lake Placid (For more on the show, see the first On the Rail item on this website)

“I love it. It’s such a good atmosphere. I find it different than any other show in the country. People who have been going there have been going there forever,” he noted. “They go to make a holiday out of it.”

The youngest of 11 children and the grandson of a horse trainer, Kevin started riding at the age of nine at his home in Tipperary, inspired by the show jumping he watched on television. His heroes were the famous Irish international riders Eddie Macken and Paul Darragh, but he also had an eventing and dressage background. Kevin trained with Iris Kellett, an Irish horsewoman known around the world before coming to America.

He worked briefly for Beezie and John Madden before getting a job at Frank and Mary Chapot’s Chado Farms in Neshanic Station in 1989. His job was to ride the young horses. Logging time at local show gave him the advantage of getting mileage in the ring that he lacked with a background in dressage and eventing.

Kevin learned from Frank (who had been the U.S. Equestrian Team’s show jumping squad captain) to “let the horses think for themselves. They can either jump or they can’t jump.”

While he was at the Chapots’ farm, he went to a local show where he met his wife, Dianna, who lived a mile down the road. Since Kevin only worked until noon every day at Chado, he was able to start a freelance business in the afternoons.

After 2 and ½ years with the Chapots, he opened his own operations in Quakertown and Stockton. In 1996, he moved to Pennsylvania, where he worked with Saly Glassman who partnered with him on his most successful horse, Carling King.

It was aboard the Irishbred chestnut that he jumped a 4/0 in his first Nations Cup (at Aachen, no less!), won Great Britain’s King George V Gold Cup, finished fourth in the 2004 Olympics and wound up eighth in the 2002 World Equestrian Games.

In recent years, Kevin and Saly had been doing different circuits, so when the Carsons offered him a spot at their place, he was ready to move back to New Jersey.

“The time was right,” he explained.

In addition to finding the farm’s central location convenient to highways in horsey area near a lot of shows (expect to see him at Princeton Show Jumping competitions in the next few weeks) he has found the perfect setting for training.

“The facility (a former standardbred farm) is a horseman’s dream,” said Kevin. It has a half-mile grass track and an all-weather track (good for a warm-up to get horses “a little in their own balance”), as well as a seven-acre grand prix field, and big indoor and outdoor arenas.

Kevin also operates a Florida farm, but he likes having a northern base. Dianna, who formerly practiced law, helps with the teaching. Their daughters Gwyneth, 16, and Marielle, 13, are also successful riders.

In addition to his three grand prix horses, he has a group of up-and-coming mounts: Call Me Ruth; also Carrick, named after the town Kevin came from  in Ireland, and a mare nicknamed Chip. They are owned by Diane Thomas and Vivian Day. Diane is also part of the group that owns Shorapur.

Kevin no longer travels to Europe to compete as often as he once did. “I’m not overly focused on that because I have a nice group of horses but I don’t have a championship horse,” he pointed out.

Staying abroad to compete, “you sacrifice a lot,” he noted, then quickly added, “I don’t regret a minute of it, it put me on the map, but it does put a lot of strain on your business and your family.

“There are so many good riders with good horses on the Irish team at the moment that I need to be a realist about it,” he observed. At the same time, Kevin pointed out, “Now that we have so many nice FEI shows in the U.S. I don’t feel the urge to go to Europe.”