Eventing in Aiken How It Started by Pam Gleason
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Eventing In Aiken How it Started By Pam Gleason iken’s winter season is ideal for eventers who want to do a lot Aof competing. This year, in the space of just eight weeks, there are eight recognized events (counting Pine Top in nearby Thompson, Ga.) and 15 unrecognized ones (counting two-phases and jumping derbies.) These events attract hundreds of horses and riders from up and down the Eastern seaboard. They come to train, to compete, and to be surrounded by some of the best in the business. Over the last fifteen years, Aiken has become a magnet for American event riders in the winter season. There are many reasons why Aiken is so popular every winter. The reason almost everyone mentions is the footing. Aiken’s sandy soil is easy on hooves, provides great traction and has exceptional drainage. It has drawn horsemen to this area since the late 1890s. Then there is the weather – warm sunny days, cool nights; the ground never freezes, and it always feels like spring by early February. Then there is the existence The Woods were the site of the Aiken Drag (now the Aiken Hounds), which was a fast and furious hunt over very large fences. In the 1920s and 1930s, many of these fences were five to five and half feet high. First flight, led by the master, Louise Hitchcock, was flat out. It included about a dozen steeplechase riders: Pete Bostwick, Temple Gwathmey, Rigan McKinney, Crompton Smith. Thomas Hitchcock (Louise Hitchcock’s husband) was the leading steeplechase trainer in the country in the 1920s and he used the Woods as his training ground. He exercised his horses all over the Woods, but especially on the Ridge Mile Track, which was set up as a steeplechasing course. After World War II, most people interested in steeplechasing began to winter in Camden rather than Aiken, but the tradition of fast riding and fearless jumping continued with the Aiken Hounds. Then came the era of the racehorse. Back in the days of the Winter Colony, there were racehorses in Aiken, but they were not a dominant force in equestrian culture. After World War II, many of the most important racehorse training operations were in Aiken Aiken's early amateur steeplechase riders were the predecessors of today's eventers. for the winter. The annual Aiken Trials, started in 1942, were once a much bigger and more glamorous affair than it is today. Now, there of the events themselves and the community of eventers here: like are four or five races for untried 2-year-olds, with one race for successful attracts like, and what aspiring or established rider wouldn’t want to be racehorses that might attract a handful of runners from small tracks. competing alongside the top names in the sport? The jockeys are generally Aiken’s exercise riders. From the 1940s into Eventing is firmly established here now, but it is actually a fairly late the 1960s, there might be a full day of racing, and some of the horses arrival in Aiken. The first combined test was held on the Powderhouse were already champions on their way to greater things – young 3-year- Polo Field in 1981. Then in 1987, there was a combined test called olds on the Kentucky Derby trail, for instance. The jockeys might be the Sporting Days in Aiken at the Ramblewood show grounds. After that, top riders in the nation, and scouts from the Daily Racing Form were eventing was on a slow roll forward, which accelerated rapidly after the always present to get an early look at top contenders for America’s most 1996 Olympics were awarded to Atlanta and the Australian Olympic prestigious contests. event team came to town to train. Although Aiken has been called “It was a Thoroughbred Mecca,” says Joannah Hall Glass, who first the Horse Capital of the South since the 1920s, eventing didn’t gain a started coming to Aiken in the 1960s. “All the famous trainers were foothold here until a good decade or two after the sport had become down here. Polo was also going on. On Sunday, there was nothing to do popular in other horsy parts of the country. besides watch polo, and so we all did.” Fertile Ground By the middle 1970s, there was a series of horse shows at the Although eventing didn’t make it to Aiken until the 1980s, there Ramblewood show ground, which was between Banks Mill and was a long equestrian tradition that paved the way for the sport. The Whiskey on Citadel Road. Ramblewood had A rated hunter shows, predecessors of today’s event riders were the amateur steeplechase which attracted riders from around the region. A little later, it also had jockeys who spent their winters here in the days of the Winter Colony. dressage shows. Aiken had a population of winter “tourists” starting in the 1860s, but Eventing Arrives the height of the sporting Winter Colony was from around 1916 until Joannah Glass was one of the organizers of Aiken’s first combined World War II. Over those decades, equestrian culture was the driving test, held on March 23, 1981. Joannah, who lived most of the year in force in the city and the Hitchcock Woods (then simply the Woods, Berwyn, Penn., was immersed in the eventing world of the mid-Atlantic. and much larger than it is today) was at its heart. She herself evented, taught eventing, trained and showed hunters, and 46 The Aiken Horse February-March 2012 organized horse trials in Radnor Hunt country. She made The Aiken Standard reported that more than 200 horses and riders regular trips to Aiken every winter, where she had a home took part in this first official three day event, which was a benefit for on Coker Spring Road. the U.S. Pony Club, the Aiken Pony Club and the Whiskey Road At that time, there were some other people in Aiken who Foxhounds. Competitors came from “as far away as Colorado and were very involved in eventing. One was Iris Winthrop Pennsylvania” according to the paper. The competition also included a Freeman, who, along with her siblings, was a major force mini-prix show jumping event with a $1,000 prize. The winner of that in American eventing, creating the Groton House Horse class was Lellie Ward. Trials in Massachusetts, among other things. Iris is married Aiken Training to Mike Freeman, who is a Hall of Fame racehorse trainer, For Lellie Ward, who is probably Aiken’s first home-grown eventing and was one of the prominent members of Aiken’s winter professional, the sport is a natural fit for Aiken, but, in some ways it Thoroughbred colony. Torrance Watkins rode for Iris and was a long time coming. Lellie grew up on Long Island and in Aiken, spent time in Aiken, where she schooled Iris’s famous horse coming down for winters with her family. Her grandfather was F. Red’s Door. Torrance represented the U.S. in three world Skiddy von Stade, a major player in the Aiken equestrian scene during championships in the 1970s and 1980s and won team gold the days of the Winter Colony and, according to his obituary in the at the Los Angeles Olympics. Suzie Howard, a pioneering New York Times, “one of the country’s best-known horsemen.” He was female event rider, horse show organizer and the owner of a polo player, a foxhunter, a steeplechase and flat race jockey, a member the great eventer Warrior was here too. She often brought of the Jockey Club and a trustee of the Saratoga race course. her friend, Jane Holderness Roddam, a British eventer who “He was very strict,” says Lellie, who remembers riding with him in the Hitchcock Woods. “He was an imposing figure and I was always in awe of him. But my growing up in horses and eventing was very influenced by him. For him, it was all about sportsmanship, and all about the horses and the training. People say that I’m strict, but that’s the way I was brought up. You didn’t fool around.” As a child, Lellie rode in the Woods in Aiken, hunting with the Aiken Hounds. When she was back on Long Island, she was involved in the Pony Club, which was focused exclusively on eventing. “I didn’t have a hunter jumper background,” she says. “I grew up hunting with the Meadowbrook Hounds, and I gravitated towards eventing because I liked galloping and I didn’t like the show ring.” On Long Island, Lellie rode with Charlie Plumb, an event rider himself and the father of Michael Plumb, who has represented the United States in the Olympics nine times. In Aiken, she met Torrance Watkins through Iris Freeman, and became her working student. By the time she was entering her 20s, she was a serious event rider with international aspirations. But At Aiken's first three-day at Ramblewood won Badminton and Burghley and was on the gold medal-winning British team in the 1968 Mexico Olympics. In the 1980s, Jane gave clinics in Aiken at Michael Laughlin’s Mill Race Farm. With the presence of all these people who were involved in horse trials, it was only a matter of time before the idea of holding some kind of eventing competition caught on. The first test in 1981 included dressage and show jumping, and the riders in it were generally people who participated in the hunt or in horse shows, rather than committed event riders. “We got the idea to do something, and we had a fun committee,” says Joannah.