by Nancy Jaffer | Apr 24, 2016
By Nancy Jaffer
April 24, 2016
Gladstone will offer a chance once again for combined drivers to test their skills at a venue with a long history in the sport
The Gladstone Driving Event, once the most important sporting competition of its kind in the country, is making a comeback next month at Hamilton Farm, home of the U.S. Equestrian Team Foundation.
The event, admired all over the world in its heyday, has been held on and off over the last decade or so. It was not staged in 2015 due to a lack of entries.
With a later spot on the calendar this year, there is more enthusiasm from drivers as they have additional time to get their horses fit. Even so, organizers wisely are keeping it on a manageable small scale.
On Saturday, May 21, competition in the Pine Meadow section of the property will include dressage and cones for exhibitors in both the combined test division and the driving trials section. Competition that day should run from approximately 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. or a little later. For the trials division, the Sunday will be devoted to the marathon, running from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. through the hazards (complex obstacles) that have proven a compelling challenge over the years. The horse-and driver-friendly route has been laid out by well-known course designer Marc Johnson.
Tricia Haertlein, president of Gladstone Driving, noted that 17 enthusiastic volunteers cleared the hazards of sticks and brush.
“The hazards are pretty well ready to go,” she said, adding trails through the area are still being cleaned up.
Pine Meadow was the scene of the World Pair Driving Championship in 1993, the culmination of years of building up the sport in this country. Under the direction and sponsorship of the late Finn Caspersen, European competitors were brought to Gladstone to give American drivers experience in facing the world’s best drivers and their horses. When the U.S. earned a team gold medal in the World Pairs Driving Championship in 1991, it offered an opportunity for the country to host the event two years later.
That was a fabulous show, with a record 23 countries participating. Everything after that was an anti-climax, however. As New Jersey drivers retired, died or moved south, the base of the sport in this area diminished and Gladstone downsized.
“We used to be a hotbed of local people driving,” said Tricia.
“Now we need to count on more people coming from a distance,” she explained.
“There’s people out there driving; we just have to get them interested in combined driving.”
Heather Walker, who ran driving events–including Gladstone–for years, noted the entire sport isn’t what it was in this country.
She said selectors who are picking squads for the world championships this year in four-in-hands and singles had only four of the former and six of the latter from which to choose.
In 2010, when the four-in-hand world championship was held as part of the World Equestrian Games in Kentucky, 14 fours tried out. And she recalled that in 1995, “there were 15 singles–there might have even been 20”–vying for slots on the U.S. world championships team.
13-time national four-in-hand champion Chester Weber, seen here in 2003, was a regular at Gladstone, where he got his start in competition. (Photo by Nancy Jaffer)
While show jumping, eventing and dressage are thriving, driving has drawbacks those other disciplines do not.
Heather, chairman of the U.S. Equestrian Federation Driving Technical Committee, said “the culture has changed so much” and for kids, “that kind of activity is not what they do. Driving is not something you can do by yourself. When something goes wrong with a carriage, it goes crazily wrong. You need someone there with you.
“When you’re going to a show, you need transport of the carriage as well as the horse. It’s a more complicated sport.” It can be expensive, too. And she pointed out, “the economy is a huge drain on people’s time as well as their money” especially when few people’s work week is limited to 40 hours.
So how to rebuild?
“We need events that are competitor-friendly and that people can start at, on a lower level, a casual level, where you don’t need two sets of harness and can get people interested,” she commented.
The four-in-hands that once were the stars of Gladstone but have become scarce in the U.S. these days aren’t on the program next month. It is limited to Training, Preliminary and Intermediate levels for singles and pair ponies and horses, as well as Very Small Equines (miniature horses).
“We’re hopeful. We’ve got a decent entry in each class,” Tricia said, saying organizers would like to have between 30 and 40 competitors who are looking to get started in the sport or move up to another division.
“Looking at who’s around here right now, this is the level of show we need to be doing. You have to build your own constituency.”
“Once they get here, we’re going to take really good care of them,” she continued, explaining an anonymous donor is providing breakfast and lunch daily for the competitors.
Tricia emphasized that it’s a competitor-friendly competition but while spectators are welcome at no charge, they should be aware that there won’t be food on the grounds for them.
The event, chaired by longtime volunteer Gayle Stinson, will be judged by internationally known drivers and longtime Gladstone competitors Sem Groenewoud and Lisa Singer, as well as pleasure driving judge Mary Harrison in cones. That segment will be staged against a backdrop of trees on the historic Main Drive lawn.
by Nancy Jaffer | Dec 17, 2021
With the major competitions of 2021 now behind us, how do you get your eventing fix until the season starts again in earnest?
Here’s an easy answer that offers an opportunity for entertainment and education while relaxing by the fireplace. Sip that mulled cider and read Jim Wofford’s, “Still Horse Crazy After All These Years.” It’s a book that is as much a history of the sport during the Olympic medalist’s lifetime (with a glance at .the key years before) as it is a biography.
If you’ve ever attended a dinner where Jim was the speaker, you’re familiar with his clever blend of charm and wit. That’s reflected in his conversational writing style, which makes this an easy and most enjoyable read. At the center of his manuscript is his conviction “that horses are wonderful, life-changing creatures.”
Carawich and Jim in the water at Badminton.
For those behind in their Christmas shopping, Jim’s book is an easy choice for the equestrians on your list. It’s available both in print and as an e-book from www.horseandriderbooks.com. You don’t have to be an eventer to appreciate the horse world from his special vantagepoint. As he puts it, “I literally grew up with horse sports in the United States.”
The son of an army officer who rode in the 1932 Olympics and became the first president of the U.S. Equestrian Team, Jim spent his youth on the family farm next to Fort Riley Kansas, the home of the U.S. cavalry until 1949. (Did you know that during the cavalry era, the Army bred its own horses–and very successfully, too.) Sadly, Jim’s father, who taught him to ride, died of cancer in 1955. Because the grief-stricken 10-year-old boy associated horses with his father, Jim did not ride for three years after that.
But he soon came around; horses were in his blood. At the time Jim started eventing seriously during the early 1960s, the sport was small in the U.S., what his mother called a poor stepchild of the popular show jumping discipline. And dressage? It barely existed.
“Event riders all knew each other,” Jim recalls. That was easy, there were so few of them. Selected for training at the USET’s Gladstone, N.J., headquarters to prep him for international competition, he interacted with more experienced competitors such as Mike Plumb, Michael Page and Kevin Freeman, among others.
He also had an acquaintance with so many of the big names during that time, from Gen. Fuddy Wing, who was running the USET in the early 1960s, to Philip Hofmann, first president of the U.S. Combined Training Association (now the U.S. Eventing Association) and others who, sadly, likely will be recognized by few in this era. Further afield, Jim even met Queen Elizabeth after finishing in the ribbons at Badminton.
Jim met Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phllip at Badminton.
The great horses he knew are also a major part of the narrative, of course. You’ll meet Castlewellan, The Optimist, Carawich and so many more that galloped through Jim’s life and are seen among the many photos in the book.
The author knows how to tell a story, and the book is filled with scores of intriguing tales, many of which will make the reader feel like an insider. One I particularly liked involved how Jim and Kevin turned the tables on a practical joke perpetrated by a young Robert Ridland (now the U.S. show jumping coach many decades later).
Jim’s heyday in the sport was at a moment when endurance and guts, as much as talent, were the keys to victory. The big players and their mounts were a different breed in those days; in the case of the horses, they were literally a different breed. The successful ones were thoroughbreds, or mostly so.
Jim and I had a conversation about that, and why the eventing of yesteryear (which you can read about in detail in his book) is only a distant relation to today’s competitions.
Jim on Kilkenny at Badminton in 1968.
“Since 2004, we’ve been doing a different sport,” he told me. That, of course, was when the long format with its steeplechase and roads and tracks was abandoned in favor of the current more compact version.
“The only common theme is the fact that we do it with horses,” Jim said.
“Obviously, how you determine your winners is very different now. The old ratio of difficulty was 3 (dressage) to 12 (cross-country) and 2 (stadium jumping). Those were guidelines. If you were a cross-country star, chances are you were going to be a star regardless of the dressage or show jumping.
“And now, after they changed the scoring slightly a few years ago, you have a sport that is judged 1/1/1, with all three disciplines being equally important.”
When the element of endurance is eliminated, he noted, you’re going to get different riders and different horses wearing the ribbons. Horses that won a gold medal in the 1960s and ‘70s would not be successful today, Jim believes. Conversely, he thinks, only a few of today’s 5-star horses would be successful in a classic 22-mile Olympic three day event.
Carawich was one of Jim’s most successful partners.
He recalled that when he was on the rules committee of the FEI (international equestrian federation), in the late 1970s and early ’80s, “the Germans already were haranguing they wanted to change it.”
Why? They wanted conditions more favorable to the warmbloods they bred, sold and competed. The change was entirely German and financially driven, said Jim, explaining that “as long as you had to go 22 miles, the German verbands (breeders) were not going to be successful.”
Not unexpectedly, if Jim had a choice of riding either format, he would pick the classic version, “the thrill of the steeplechase, the difficulty of getting a horse that fit and retaining the soundness.’
He has watched riders looking worried at the Kentucky 5-star, six or eight minutes into a 10-minute course, that the horse is going to hit the wall, “meaning you’re starting to get to the limits of its physical capability.”
He pointed out that in 1978 at the Kentucky Horse Park, the steeplechase was in the infield and we galloped at 690 meters per minute for five minutes–half the length of the (current) 5-star cross-country. And that was just the warm-up.”
Today’s warmbloods are wonderful, he commented, but added, “if I had to choose the era and I were young and fit these days, I would still choose the classic era because of the difference in the horses and the difference in my skill set and the difference in the nature of the scoring. It was skewed toward someone with the skill set I had at the time.”
Jim is a popular emcee for awards ceremonies. (Photo © by Nancy Jaffer)
He added, “Riders these days are better riders in terms of pure riding capability. They are so far ahead of our era. Having said that, I’m not sure these people would learn how to ride a tired horse, or learn (to ride them) in such a way that they did not get tired. I don’t know how many people today, with all of their technical polish, would have the nerve to go down to the coffin (jump) with a horse that’s starting to get a little heavy in the shoulders.”
Eventing’s roots are in the cavalry, as were Jim’s through his father.
The sport “was designed by the military for the military, to satisfy to satisfy the military’s concerns and goals,” said Jim.
“It was a tough life these horses led. They broke them when they were four and expected them to still be in service when they were 14.”
It took horsemanship as well as riding ability to make that happen.
Part of his mission writing the book is to educate people and memorialize that classic era, while highlighting the incredible changes through which he has lived.
Jim has trained horses and riders at competition all over the world. (Photo © by Nancy Jaffer)
And his perspective goes beyond being a remarkable rider. He has been a successful coach and played an important role in governance, serving as president of the American Horse Shows Association (a predecessor of the U.S. Equestrian Federation), secretary of the USCTA and a member of committees for other horse sport entities that as a group he and his family referred to (not always fondly) as “the alphabets.”
Jim wrote the book for his four grandsons (all four know how to ride, but none are involved with horses), “so they won’t have the same vacuum that I have about my father,” he explained.
“That was a serious driving force. In another 10 or 15 years, they will get serious. They will keep looking forward and then they will start looking back over their shoulders. I didn’t write this as some earthshaking thing for posterity. I really wrote it as a memorial to my father and as a guideline for my grandsons.”
(Photos from Still Horse Crazy After All These Years by Jim Wofford reprinted with permission from Trafalgar Square Books (www.horseandriderbooks.com)
by Nancy Jaffer | Nov 25, 2021
Back to normal, and it feels so good. Seeing the hundreds of people who came out this morning to watch the Essex Foxhounds gather for their annual Thanksgiving meet was quite a contrast to the scene in 2020.
Last year, the front field of the Ellistan estate in Peapack was empty, with a sign on the fence saying spectators would not be allowed because of Covid.
The hunt happened, but it took off unobtrusively from the back of Ellistan and no one was there to cheer on the riders.
The mood in the sunshine today was such a welcome contrast; all smiles, people happy to be out, greeting friends and enjoying the magic of the countryside en masse.
“It’s really nice to be able to gather again,” Karen Murphy, who is the joint master of Essex, told the crowd.
“Thank you so much to all of our landowners for allowing us to celebrate this great sport. We couldn’t do it without you,” added Jazz Merton, the other joint master.
“Saving traditions like this is so much fun and important to all of us.”
The field takes off over the first fence. (Photo © 2021 by Lawrence J. Nagy)
“This is a tradition we must continue,” agreed Pia Hamlin, a hairdresser in Peapack, who comes every year.
“We need to be outdoors with friends and family and then go eat a good turkey later on.”
Jack Chesson sports holiday-appropriate headgear. (Photo © 2021 )Nancy Jaffer)
“Todo hermosa, beautiful,” said her friend Guido Enrique, a visitor from South America who was seeing the Thanksgiving meet for the first time.
Pia introduced him to another tradition, the hot toddy, served graciously by the Slack family, Ellistan’s owners, who provide it for those 21 and over. The younger set, on horseback and on foot wasn’t forgotten; they enjoyed hot cocoa.
For those who wanted something more substantial, the occasion offered an opportunity for tailgating, reminiscent of the scene at the Far Hills Race Meeting that was held down the road from Ellistan last month. Indeed, Lexi and Dana Sendro of Pittstown set out a candelabra and tablecloths they used to display at the races for their spread, complete with sparkling wines.
How did it happen that so many people, even those without an equestrian connection, make the meet a must stop on Thanksgiving? It goes back to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who was a member of Essex and often rode with her daughter, Caroline and son John. They always drew a crowd, and even after the family no longer came out on the holiday, people who had learned to enjoy watching horses and hounds continued coming out.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis at Ellistan in the days when she rode with Essex. (Photo © by Nancy Jaffer)
I was reminded of the day I met Mrs. Onassis at the Essex Foxhounds hunter pace in 1984. My editor at The Star-Ledger, where I was the equestrian columnist, read somewhere that the former First Lady would be riding in the pace and wanted a story. I happened to be riding in it as well, so I nervously juggled the two priorities.
Knowing Mrs. Onassis didn’t give interviews, I approached her somewhat hesitantly and told her I was from the newspaper.
“Oh, am I in trouble?” she asked me with a charming smile.
I said no, we were just going to take some photos of her riding. She was very nice about it and we got a lot of good shots of her galloping along with Emil Spadone. I can’t find a copy of the story (I have literally thousands of clippings scattered hither and yon), but I did find a letter she wrote me very graciously after I mailed her the photos taken by the paper’s photographer (Sorry, I don’t remember who it was.)
And as you can see, she wished me a happy Thanksgiving, and I also wish all of my readers the same.
Enjoy some other photos from today.
Huntsman Bart Poole and the hounds. (Photo © 2021 by Lawrence J. Nagy)
Essex Joint Master Jazz Merton leads the way. (Photo © 2021 by Lawrence J. Nagy)
Essex Joint Master Karen Murphy gives Adeline and Margo Swartz a lift on George Clooney during a break in the action. (Photo © 2021 by Nancy Jaffer)
Why is this hound wearing a number? In memory of his father, auto racing enthusiast Peter Chesson, James Chesson donated radio collars for the hounds. And 76 was the number of his dad’s race car. (Photo © 2021 by Lawrenc J. Nagy)
The late Lou Piancone always drove a four-in-hand at the Thanksgiving meet. The Johnson family has picked up the tradition with its pair and carriage. (Photo © 2021 by Nancy Jaffer)
The Brienza and Juntilla families collaborated on a spread that included the makings for mimosas. (Photo © 2021 by Nancy Jaffer)
