May 26, 2025 
Ah, Rome.
Less than a week here and you wonder why a horse show takes place anywhere else. Why is every horse show not at the center of a gardens centuries in the making, in a city with a history spanning millennia, intoxicating and fascinating you at every turn?
Those stone pines, their dazzling height, their umbrella canopies high above. The Italian cypresses, tall and thin, surrounding the arena, shooting into the sky. The sun overhead, warming us, a steady breeze relieving its edge.
The green of the Rolex logo, everywhere in the arena, surrounding us on LED screens, on fences, on hats, the famous oxers, the iconic clocks—in this garden palette, made up of so many varieties of the color, it’s never looked better.
This is the Piazza di Siena at the heart of the Villa Borghese, an oval dish, its rim holding thousands of spectators, its center cradling a green field set with a half-a-million-dollar 1.60 jump course.
And there I am, maybe the luckiest girl in the world, who’s to know? But today I am more than one person—is that double luck?—on one side a working stiff with a pretty good job, giornalista (which I say with heavy accent), on the other, a member of the FEI Jumping Owners Club, which has gotten me a gracious invite to the VIP by a fellow member.
I need more than one lifetime to fit in all the pleasures, not to mention the pains. This one is crowded.
But on to sport! We have it here in Rome. A 45 horse-and-rider start list, with some of the best in the world.
I make my way onto the course before the class, where I spend my time once again contemplating beauty and laughing at the antics of the Rolex Equestrian mascot Rosie, hardly noticing the course. I think perhaps that giant airy oxer will cause a problem, or perhaps that Colosseum multi-plank thing?
No, it seems the big, airy oxer has enough space around it to cause no problems at all. And the Colosseum jump is so big and solid, really something like a wall, no one stutters there.
The jump that grinds nearly everyone’s dreams into the Roman dust is the temple oxer, a beautiful thing with a circular temple to one side and a wide liverpool beneath, cruelly set with pale green poles that no horse can see against the green of the arena ground.
The poles on this thing rain down, again and again and again.
But the show organizers have prepared for any possible disaster by setting the jumpoff like a winning round, giving us twelve in the second round, regardless of the number of clears.
I watch the first round from the VIP, chatting with my fellow owner and breeding enthusiast. He speaks of his stallions (several very famous) and shows me newly-sprung foals galloping an Italian field while I bite into a ball of cheese of unrivaled deliciousness.
I am determined to cheer for my fellow Americans, though, sitting next to two members of the Italian Army, I decide not to unfurl the enormous flag.
Many Italian riders wear uniforms of their armed forces. We learn from our companions how to identify that of the Police, the Army, the Navy, and the Airforce. In Italy, the traditions of equestrianism are a fount of national pride and riders are sponsored by the various branches of the armed forces. This makes the competition seem less like a niche sport for the uber-rich, and more like a continuation of the skill and tradition that has vaulted human civilization to its current height.
As for the Americans, ill-luck prevented Karl Cook and Caracole from doing a repeat (they were the winners of the 2024 Grand Prix), a spot as first in the order gave Lillie Keenan and her mount Argan de Beliard too high a hill to climb, and McLain Ward and Ilex retired. Laura Kraut, however, gave a clear round in determined fashion.
The biggest drama came when Italian rider and crowd favorite Giulia Martinengo Marquet was blocked on her approach to a plank-filled vertical when one of the jump crew seemed to spend hours resetting a middle plank that had been cast to the ground by the wind.
No one was in a forgiving mood. “This is not a game for children!” I heard shouted, among many other salty phrases. Luckily, due to the winning round format, the rider was able to make the jump off after knocking a pole further on the course, which we all felt would never have happened without the jump crew’s interference.
But you know us, not everything can be delicious balls of cheese and sun-dappled happiness. We have passions and opinions.
I have to admit to imagining a redemption story for Ben Maher and his gorgeous stallion Point Break, after their fall at Windsor. A lot of others felt the same, and we weren’t disappointed in their first-round clear performance.
The jump off, however, would bring drama of its own. First, we had the absolutely blazing time of Laura Kraut and Bisquetta, who finished more than two seconds faster than the winner, but took out a pole while doing so, ending up sixth. Lorenzo de Luca, one of two Italians, had a dispiriting two-rail round while Giulia Martinengo Marquet and Delta Del’Isle knocked another pole (still, we felt, due to the first round jump crew shenanigans).
We had brilliant rounds from the youth, with fast clears from France’s 25-year-old Nina Mallevaey and Dynastie de Beaufour (third) and Ireland’s 22-year-old Seamus Hughes Kennedy and Esi Rocky (fourth). Cian O’Connor and Iron Man grabbed second, 0.11 seconds behind our winner.
Last to go was Ben Maher and Point Break, and they ratcheted-up the drama by giving us all a bit of a wait coming out of the warm up. Maher, man on fire, tried leaving out a stride to the double, but that just didn’t work, the stallion jumping flat into it and sending much of the jump crashing to the ground.
Our winner was Brazil’s Yuri Mansur and his mare Miss Blue-Saint Blue Farm, also his partner at the Paris Olympics. Mansur is well-known for his bright yellow jacket, although on this day he wore the green jacket of his National Team.
This was Mansur’s first trip to Rome and his birthday weekend. It was only the second victory for a Brazilian rider, after Rodrigo Pessoa grabbed the Grand Prix title in 2009 with Let’s Fly.
Next stop on Erica Hatfield’s #DestinationHorseShow European: St. Gallen, May 28–June 1.
