May 16, 2025 
“Step back! Step back! (Unintelligible) is coming through!”
“Who?”
“(Unintelligible)!”
“Who’s that?”
“PRINCE Edward!”
“Who?”
The woman looks at me like I’m crazy.
“I’m sorry, I’m like…super American.”
A group of men pass by, all wearing similar patterned-fabric suits.
The only Prince Edward I know is the island in Canada, so I call Coach (my nickname for Irish rider Paul O’Shea), figuring, being from this general part of the world, he’s going to know who Prince Edward is.
“There is no Prince Edward. There’s only a Prince Andrew.”
Google is more helpful. There IS a Prince Edward, the youngest brother of the King.
“Haha!” laughs someone later. “Don’t ask the Irish about the British Monarchy!”
It’s Day One for International Showjumping at the Royal Windsor Horse Show, a 5-star just outside of London in—you guessed it—Windsor, England. The day has started out badly for me.
I arrived the day before from London, where I was ensconced in luxury in a boutique hotel in Soho, whose location I had chosen by triangulating the locations of a number of bookstores I wanted to visit. There I had three days of literature, superior service, and a shower that actually made me cry out in pleasure. The sort of shower our American president has signed an executive order to bring back, a veritable Niagara spewing forth from an adjustable rain showerhead.
It was natural that nothing else would or could compare. But the grim dark-yellow walls of our hotel in Windsor, the garish, too-bright bathroom lights, the shower with one of those half-walls that leave the bathroom absolutely soaked, the weak toilet paper where your finger breaks through unexpectedly and unpleasantly, and, most disturbingly, the full-length mirror facing the toilet so you learn stuff about your anatomy you were never meant to know—
In the morning I woke up, bent in half with an apparently-now-broken back, an effect of the wonderfully stiff mattress, and discovered the espresso machine I had carted all the way from my home in Wellington, Florida, had broken in transit. This was on top of the less-than-enthusiastic welcome I had received from hotel staff the day before.
“You don’t like to go anywhere where people aren’t making a big deal out of you.”
This was said by the Global Director (GD) of Strategic Operations, the person who runs our stable, Eye Candy Jumpers. She was not there, but she lives in my head.
“You are weaponizing my trauma!” I shot back. This was an accusation I recently heard leveled by a friend, and I thought it apropos. “I don’t need to always have people making a big deal out of me.”
But it would be nice right now if someone were making a big deal out of me, I whispered to myself in that other part of my brain that was imagining our conversation.
I received no such lackluster fanfare as I left my paradise in Soho.
“You’re leaving? You’re like…a part of the hotel!”
“But I’ve only been here three days?”
Those people knew how to do their job. All the men wore leopard-print suits, so that when I first arrived, entering through a hidden pink door, I burst out laughing upon seeing them.
And what would the GD say to me now, knowing I had to back up for a prince no one’s ever heard of AND was kicked out of the Rider’s Lounge (sponsored by Hermes) for…not being a rider, duh.
“You can’t please everyone,” said the beautiful woman who had taken a seat across from me in a pretty little seating area outside the arena at the showgrounds. (I was allowed there.)
“I actually can,” I replied, “I just haven’t got the chance.”
The conversation had begun with me asking her if she understood the befuddling FEI show jumping schedule. (She did not. It turns out she is a model, not a horse person at all).
Today we had a 1.45m two-phase for something like 15k Euro (no ranking points, presumably the warmup class) followed by a 28k 1.55m D-ranking class (lowest of the ranking point classes, presumably the Grand Prix “qualifier” although here there is no qualifier because there are only 35 athletes invited, so everyone is qualified).
Two more D-ranking classes follow on Saturday, one at 1.50m for 28k, the other at 1.55m for 50k. (Ok, maybe that’s the “qualifier”?) And then on Sunday ANOTHER 28k D-ranking 1.50m class and finally what we’re all here for—the half-million AA Grand Prix!
One might wonder at my regaling you with the minutiae of prize money and ranking points, but this is the game we in show jumping play. As a general rule, you’re jumping for prize money and points. The importance of either determined by your position in the world ranking and your financial situation.
In addition to not wanting to overtax your horse at heights that don’t seem worth it for the money, the FEI rules allow for only one ranking point “counting score” per day, so even if you won or placed in both classes on offer, you’re only going to walk away with the points from one.
Ok, fine, it’s a confusing game. But as I said, it’s the glorious one we play!
My big question is why anyone is jumping any of the other classes, and not just dropping in for that juicy GP?
My answer came when I saw innumerable Whitakers—like absolutely loads of them, of all ages, but of apparently similar talent—blitzing these classes to the joyous adulation of the crowd. Jessica Mendoza got a cheer. Matt Sampson was noted. Ben Maher received a holler. But let a Whitaker enter the ring and you can hardly hear the planes roaring overhead.
(Did I mention Windsor is right next to Heathrow, with nonstop, ceaseless, incessant plane traffic? It is said the late Queen, in frequent residence at the 1,000-year-old Windsor Castle, could name the model of every plane flying by just based on the sound. I swear—google it.)
And they got what they wanted.
Jack Whitaker took the top prize with his uncle John taking second. There was also a Whitaker in 5th and a Whitaker in 12th. It turns out this is the real dynasty in town, official royalty be damned. (Am I allowed to write that in England?)
Follow Erica Hatfield’s European horse show tour on Eye Candy Jumpers Instagram.
