Winner is Clever... and more action shots

The winner of the Seahorse Jumper Classic... and the $3,000 first prize.... was a horse named "Clever". Now I'm sure, between trainer fees, board & feed, farrier & vet, and the list goes on.... it probably costs $3,000 a month to maintain a national level show jumper, so they aren't doing this for the prize money alone, but it has to help a little.

There's quite a crowd for this event:

There were 19 horses entered in the contest.... each horse that had a clean round (no rails or fences down) then entered the final round... where they jumped higher fences... and it is dangerous...

We saw one rider take a bad fall. She was thrown during a jump and she stayed in the dirt a long time. Help rushed right out to her, and when she got up, everyone cheered. All's well that ends well, and in this case there's a victory gallop of the finalists around the arena:

And here's "Clever" headed back to the stall with ribbons on display:

The rest of these images are various action shots. I took A LOT of pictures to get these good ones. It was a fun day!

Here's "Clever" in the arena...

and other horses in action ...

This pretty paint was in the amateur classes... it's sort of unusual to see a horse of a different color competing in these English riding events. Most of the national level horses are European bred imports.