At 11 p.m. on a frigid December night, as far north in Germany as you can get without reaching the Danish border, Mary Gadek Bancroft and trainer Holly Payne Caravella found an exciting eventing prospect.
The conditions weren’t optimum for trying the eye-catching grey gelding. It was pitch black outside, where, inexplicably, someone was noisily banging on equipment, and there were only two fences, a vertical and an oxer, available in the indoor ring. Yet the Holsteiner they came to see had them at hello.
Holly and Charm King have rapport. (Photo © 2021 by Nancy Jaffer)
“He looked like a big pony. There was just something about him,” Mary observed.
“He was cool. He had a great jump. He had a great attitude and was super athletic,” recalled Holly, who was pointed toward the horse by Francesca Pollara, the same agent who works with eventer Will Faudree.
“We took a little bit of a gamble on him because obviously, it wasn’t like we could take him cross-country schooling,” Holly pointed out. She had decided on making the visit after watching a video of him show jumping and while she saw 10 other horses on that quick trip to Germany in 2016, he was the real reason she and Mary got on the plane.
Meanwhile, the horse had enchanted them with his “overgrown pony” looks and winsome expression. Not for nothing was he called Charm King.
“He bats his eyelids, and people do anything for him,” observed Holly, but the 10-year-old gelding has the ability to pay back for the attention and bananas he gets. Last weekend, for instance, he went wire-to-wire for his first Advanced horse trials victory, when the field at the Horse Park of New Jersey included Olympians Boyd Martin and Phillip Dutton, as well as several other big names. Also in the lineup was Lillian Heard, who had ridden Charm and done “an awesome job” when Holly took a pregnancy break before giving birth to her daughter, Harper, in January.
Holly and Harper. (Photo © 2021 by Nancy Jaffer)
As Holly pointed out about Charm King “He lived up to his name, the most appropriate name for a horse I’ve ever had.”
His breeding is classic. He is by Cassito, descended from Cassini I, and out of a mare by the thoroughbred Heraldik, known as a successful sire of eventing horses. Heraldik’s name also appears in the bloodlines of Michael Jung’s superhorse, La Bioesthetique Sam, among many others.
Holly brought Charm to Aiken, S.C., in 2017, signing up for a Training Level event before taking him for a cross-country school. But she wound up scratching from the event, because introducing him to cross-country revealed he wasn’t ready for that kind of test in competition.
“He was so spooky. He was just over-jumping; jumping everything four feet in the air,” she explained. Worried that he would scare himself, she waited a little longer to compete Charm, training him to jump across fences and keep galloping, helping him learn to brush through the brush jumps, for instance, rather than launching himself over them. In September of that year, he won a 1-star in Virginia and two years later, topped the 3-star Short at Plantation Field in Pennsylvania.
A couple of times, Mary noted, Charm shut down on cross-country, “and it turned out it was all about allergies. He couldn’t breathe. It took a lot to figure out,” she said, giving credit to his team, which includes Dr. Greg Staller and farrier Sudie Donatasky, as well as groom Elle de Recat.
Holly rode her veteran, Never Outfoxed, while she was pregnant, and after she and her husband, Eric Caravella, welcomed the baby, she waited only until the beginning of March to get back into her job in earnest. She had tried to remain as active as possible in order to stay in shape through her pregnancy, and that worked.
“I think my first day back, I rode five horses. I was just going to jump back into it,” she noted.
That’s typical of Holly, 38, who comes from an eventing family. Her brother, Doug, is the traveling alternate for the U.S. Olympic eventing team with Vandiver. Growing up in Tewksbury Township, the two pushed each other to achieve, and were members of the Somerset Hills Pony Club.
The Payne family in 2012: Doug, Richard, Marilyn and Holly.(Photo © 2012 by Nancy Jaffer)
Their mother, Marilyn Payne, has been a judge at two Olympics and still competes at the lower levels, as well.as running a training business. Holly likes to say Mary knew her before she was born. Mary rode with Marilyn and spent time with Holly and Doug as they were growing up.
After Holly graduated from college, she began teaching Mary. Eventually, Mary bought into the Never Outfoxed syndicate. When Holly flew to England to do the Burghley 5-star with Fox, she stayed in a house Mary and her husband, Ian, owned there, where a conversation began about buying another horse.
Mary, a former president of the Eastern States Dressage and Combined Training Association, says Holly “has an incredible talent for understanding a horse, and they know she understands them.
“She’s very effective in telling them what she wants and guiding them. They look for it. She’s so one with the horse.”
Mary has had a chance to ride Charm, remembering the time she took him to the Somerset County Park Commission’s Natirar in Peapack for a gallop.
“It was the fastest I’ve ever gone, it was so much fun,” she said.
Holly Payne Equestrian is based at Hart Farm in Tewksbury, located just a few minutes from Marilyn’s Applewood Farm, where she lives with her husband, Richard. It was the always-knowledgeable Marilyn who asked Holly whether she would compete in the Horse Park’s horse trials. Holly didn’t even know the facility was having a June event. She had planned to go to the Bromont, Quebec, event this month, but it was cancelled due to Canadian Covid restrictions. Since the Essex Horse Trials in July isn’t offering Advanced, Holly envisioned a long break from competition until Millbrook in August. But the June horse trials filled the bill, especially since she had finished fourth in the 4-star Short at the Horse Park’s Jersey Fresh in May, so it was familiar territory for Charm.
Holly and Charm at the Horse Park of New Jersey. (Photo © 2021 by Nancy Jaffer)
Although he was fit, there was no opportunity to school cross-country beforehand due to a variety of circumstances. So when Holly walked Morgan Rowsell’s course on Sunday she thought, “I don’t know if this is the best idea. I kind of thought it would be a lot softer. It was kind of a move-up course; it was hard enough.”
They had no problem with the fences. All of the 26 entries had time penalties on the route, but Charm collected just 6.8 to add to his winning dressage score of 26.81 penalties. With no show jumping errors, they ended on 33.6 penalties to stay ahead of Buck Davidson and Cooley Candyman (35.9).
Charm will do the American Eventing Championships in August at the Kentucky Horse Park, where he will goAdvanced.
“You don’t get many opportunities to run on that terrain until you show up for the 5-star,” said Holly, who may do that Land Rover competition next spring if Charm is ready. But first, she’ll be at the 4-star Long at Morven in the fall with her ever-improving mount.
“Eventually, I hope he’ll be a team horse. That’s the idea. We’re trying to bring him along slowly and make sure he has a really solid foundation,” she said.
Charm is easy in some ways, and not quite as simple in others.
Holly and Charm show jumping at Fair Hill. (Photo © 2019 by Lawrence J. Nagy)
“He has a cheeky factor,” Holly advised, so in preparing for a dressage test, she always he’s the first horse Harper rode. He is a pet at home and you can put him in your pocket.”
Working him, she noted, is what “brings out the attitude. If you keep him in first gear, he just stays there.”
Holly/s strategy is to “keep him happy and confident. I think he has a big future ahead of him. He’s a very special horse.”
Whatever destiny is in store for Charm, he will always be loved.
“He’s game for anything. He’s just the sweetest boy, a total cuddlebug and a total cookie monster,” chuckled his groom, Elle, who also noted that he has grown in his competing role, becoming “a lot more confident and knowledgeable and self-assured.”
The best part, though, she said, is watching him with baby Harper.
“He immediately goes so gentle and Harper loves him,” continued Elle, speculating that Charm is “going to be her unicorn when she gets older.”
