Quiet Hampton Classic Showgrounds Soon to Be Jumping

The Hampton Classic’s 60-acre Snake Hollow Road showgrounds in Bridgehampton were quiet Friday afternoon, a little more than a week before the weeklong hunter-jumper show, one of the top ones in North America, is to begin with Sunday morning’s leadline classes judged by Joe Fargis, an Olympic gold-medal winner.

“The calm before the storm,” said this writer, who probably could have used a better word. 

“Knock on wood,” Shanette Barth Cohen, the popular event’s executive director, said, after being asked if she’d looked at the forecast for the last week in August and the first weekend of September.

The Classic, which draws about 1,600 horses, and about as many riders, to its large tents and broad grass and synthetic-surfaced rings, has over the years weathered a lot of storms, in fact, the last one descending in 2011, “when we took the tents down, let the storm go through, and rebuilt everything. We started on Wednesday that year, and got in everything but one competition. Hopefully, we’ve checked that off the list and will never have to do it again.”

Barth Cohen’s on a firm footing, having been on the job, which she still loves, for 13 years, and the hunter and jumper and warm-up rings are too. “You know, long, long ago this was a potato field, and we’re still continuing with drainage upgrades and upgrades to the irrigation system. . . . The footing in all the rings is so much better than it was 15, even five years ago, and I think the riders would for the most part agree.” 

“We’re looking to do an even bigger drainage upgrade,” she added, “but not until after next year. It depends on the funding, it’s a significant investment.”

The long list of top riders who will compete for thousands of dollars in prize money is headed by McLain Ward, a six-time Hampton Classic grand prix champion, Devin Ryan, Adrienne Sternlicht, and Beezie Madden, members (Madden is an alternate) of the United States’ five-rider team that’s to compete in the FEI World Equestrian Games in Tryon, N.C., next month. 

“We’ll have other World Equestrian Games riders here too — Daniel Bluman, who won last year’s grand prix, will represent Israel, and Shane Sweetnam, who won the Longines rider challenge award recently, will represent Ireland, and there probably will be others. . . .”

Sunday’s main event, the $30,000 Boar’s Head jumper challenge, at 2 p.m., will end — as the final day’s grand prix does — with a jump-off contested by riders who have gone clear within the allotted time limit in the first round.

The show has a new grand prix course designer in Michel Vaillancourt, a Quebec native now based in Aiken, S.C., who was the course designer for the 2015 Pan American Games in Toronto, “where,” according to a Classic release, “his courses received rave reviews from the competitors.”

Vaillancourt is not new to the show. “He’s done our Jumper Ring 2 in the past, and also, in the last two years, he’s done opening day,” said Barth Cohen. “He’s very experienced.”

Vaillancourt is one of the very few grand prix course designers the show’s had since 1977 — Conrad Homfeld, Guilherme Jorge, and Alan Wade being others.

“Vaillancourt made history when, at just 22 years of age,” the Classic’s release says, “he became the youngest rider, and the first Canadian rider, to win an individual Olympic medal (silver) — at Montreal in 1976.” 

“He went on to win, with Canadian teams, bronze and silver medals in the 1975 and ’79 Pan American Games, and a gold medal at the Alternate Olympics in Rotterdam in 1980. He was inducted into Jump Canada’s Hall of Fame in 2009, and was honored as its official of the year in 2016.”

Sunday’s competitions will be for local, which is to say Long Island, riders primarily. The Long Island Horse Show Series for Riders With Disabilities finals, beginning at 10 a.m., are to be held Monday, an otherwise quiet day at the Classic insofar as hunter and jumper competitions go. Monday is also Adoption Day.

“Adoptable cats and dogs will be in the Kids’ area from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.,” a Classic release says. “And adoptable horses, curated by the EQUUS Foundation, will be showcased in Hunter Ring 2 from 1 to 2.”

Featured events on Tuesday will include the $10,000 open jumper class and $10,000 Brown Harris Stevens 7-and-under jumper class. Wednesday’s featured events are to include the $10,000 Wolffer Estate open jumper class, the $10,000 Palm Beach masters open jumper class, and the $10,000 Bruno Delgrange 7-and-under jumpers.

Jumping competitions with purses ranging from $10,000 up to $300,000 will continue through Grand Prix Sunday, Sept. 2.