March 3, 2025 
We are in the thick of it.
Mid-WEF, thick like syrup. You have three places to go every day, and more in the evening. Nights go late at fundraisers, galas, auctions, classes under-the-lights…
Is it morning already? I was just stumbling into bed, whiskey-blurred, thoughtless with fatigue, and now, moments later, the light is peeking in from behind the curtains.
This week brought us the annual Nations Cup at our Winter Equestrian Festival showgrounds. A parade of nine nations: Belgium, Brazil, Great Britain, Ireland, Israel, Mexico, Venezuela, USA, and—most significantly for this columnist—the small but mighty Team Canada.
I am bedecked in a body-length Canadian flag, with a headband sporting two additional flags, and a collection of temporary land-to-the-north facial tattoos. Silver sparkly hearts emblazoned with “Team Canada” hang from my ears.
It isn’t enough, I conclude, looking at myself in a full-length mirror, noting my nondescript footwear. Where are the shoes? I know my friend has Canadian-flag embellished sneakers. I know she will be tripping around like a princess, walking as if floating on air, while I clod along beside her like an ogre!
I cast my eyes around. The only options in red-and-white are my enormous puffy slippers, bought off an Instagram ad late at night when a chemically-altered consciousness made any other move unthinkable. I put them on.
Emerging from my house, I am met by a wall of resistance. Two of my companions, waiting to golf-cart with me over to the showgrounds, silently shake their heads. The third, having, in a past life, worked in fashion on the island of Manhattan for more than a decade, speaks the words everyone is thinking and I quickly change shoes.
So, I’m not technically a Canadian, but as a Minnesotan—that great state in the north—I really practically am. I mean, we play hockey and survive vicious winters and tap our trees for syrup and live in log cabins (timber imported from British Columbia) on the shores of fantastically beautiful lakes. Some even say we have funny accents, although I’ve never noticed.
But what I am is a horse owner, proud sponsor of Amy Millar and our guy, Jagger HX, riding this week for Team Canada!
Earlier, on Friday evening, I was out in the International Ring during the U25 Grand Prix course walk when lo!—who did I spot but that famous jump designer, that rascally man of infinite creativity and energy, head of StrideFull Show Jumps, leaning nonchalantly against an obstacle (not his)?
I quickly whipped out my phone so I could film our encounter. This is a man who flies from France to Doha to Hong Kong to the U.S. and this is like a weekly schedule for him. An in-person sighting is like adding to your Life List in birding.
And what a lucky encounter, because very shortly after I procured both a euro-style kiss from him (and sent the video evidence of his presence to all my art-of-the-jump-admiring friends), I was introduced by him to WEF Week 8’s legendary course designer.
This guy is an inductee in the Show Jumping Hall of Fame, a former top competitor, a former U.S. Chef d’Equipe, and the possessor of the most intense and transfixing blue eyes.
And he is the designer and manufacturer of that most evil of evilest jumps: that terrible and mean narrow little blue-and-yellow wall that bedeviled horses and riders all week. Anyone paying attention either loathed it or (secretly) nastily loved it.
He stuck it near and exactly parallel to that side of the arena during the U25 Grand Prix, so that so many horses stopped in horror that, at first, I thought no one would finish a round. That, or get out without a bevy of time faults brought about by an initial disobedience, and a slow, courage-accumulating circle before a second jump attempt.
He told me it was a Rio-Olympics-inspired gymnastics pommel horse and that I could take it off his hands for a price that to me seemed outrageous, considering it is one of the most unpleasant and uncharitable jumps ever to grace an arena. Delighted by his handiwork, he insisted on his price while I insisted he must pay ME to take this jump off his hands, loathed as it was and is!
And yet, I couldn’t help but fantasize about surprising my riders with this thing, setting it up in our arena at Eyecandyland (home of Eye Candy Jumpers) and watching their stunned faces filled with a mixture of eagerness and repulsion as they contemplated sending their spooking mounts up-and-over this thing.
I wondered how many of them would turn on their heel upon seeing it and never come back. Would I and my ill-favored jump preside over an empty stable?
Anyway, it was a testament to our sport’s up-and-comers that the more mature set that rode on Saturday seemed to have just as much of a struggle with it. It was not a question of experience, not with a tricky jump like that!
Oh, before I finish typing up this jumbled assemblage of words, I think I need to mention that KENT WON AGAIN.
I mean, it’s really not my business as the writer of a column on WEF when this happened at WEC in Ocala. But I feel plenty of rights to say it—as Secretary-General of the KPF Fan Club the Kent Dolls—the dude won AGAIN, taking the top spot in the $200K 4* Grand Prix.
But, back at WEF, the ladies didn’t need him. An all-female cast of riders made up of Natalie Dean, Charlotte Jacobs, Carly Anthony, and Laura Kraut, grabbed the win for Team USA in decisive fashion Saturday night, delighting the assembled crowd and, I gotta admit, even bringing a bit of warmth to the heart of this Canadian-flag-bedecked American spectator.
This one’s for the girls!
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