Fair Hill’s Fall Festival: CCI** Competition continued...
Melissa Hunsberger just moved to Maryland this spring after spending the last 13 years at Phyllis Dawson’s farm in Virginia. She is now based out of Destination Farm in Dickerson with fellow event trainers Natalie Hollis and Suzannah Cornue. At this year’s event, Melissa rode Starstruck after the lunch break on T ursday when the wind picked up. T ey earned a 66.9 and were in 25th place after the fi rst 35 rides. At the end of the second day, they moved down to 53rd place. “He’s a very, very hot horse,” Melissa commented. Melissa is no stranger to Fair Hill, growing up in Pennsylvania; the Fair Hill three-day was traditionally a fall
fi eld trip. As an adult, she was able to ride twice at the event with her Rolex four-star horse, Just Fun Stuff , as well as once with her advanced horse, Expedience. “It is just a beautiful venue with fantastic courses. It was awesome to be back there this year,” she said. Melissa and Starstruck had a stop at fence 11b on cross-country day. Melissa said that her horse, who just moved up to Intermediate this spring, jumped in big and just missed the line to the second brush. “It was one little green moment but he handled the rest of the questions and jumped around boldly and confi dently,” she said, adding that when fi nished, he felt as if he could go out of the start box right away and run around the course again. T ey moved up a few spots and ended the day in 50th place. Melissa had her hands full with a very fresh Starstruck on Sunday. “My challenge as a rider is to work through
how to keep him mentally focused,” she said, explaining that he got distracted by the other horses in warm-up and spectators surrounding the ring. After a few rails fell, they fi nished in 51st place. Melissa is pleased overall with Starstruck’s fi rst Fair Hill experience stating, “Fair Hill is a good test of what type of horse you have. T e two-star is more like a two-and-a-half star and if your horse gets around well there, it is ready to move on.”
Mary Macklin (Red Hawke Eventing) and Mahogany Beauteo rode their CCI** dressage test on
Friday. T ey were tied for 54th place going into cross-country. Mary and Mahogany Beauteo were fast and clean through the fi rst half of the course, showing how
prepared they were for their fi rst trip around Fair Hill. Unfortunatly, they had a runout at 11A (the fi rst element in the angled double brushes) after the Dansko Village. “I just didn’t present her to the fence well. After that she was sharper and I was sharper and the rest of the course kept getting better,” she said. Even with the stop, the pair moved up into 47th place. Mahogany Beauteo passed the second horse inspection easily on Sunday morning. Mary and the mare had three rails down and fi nished in 46th place overall.
continued...
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