July 5, 2026 
Spruce Meadows is a world unto itself. A vast equestrian campus set on over 500 acres, filled with pomp and circumstance—marching bands, paratroopers, Mounties, triumphant prize givings, crowd-filled stands, and even the unusual experience of commercial breaks during competition, as this is one of the few show jumping events broadcast live on TV.
This is the ATCO Queen Elizabeth II Cup with a one-million-dollar (Canadian) prize pot and a course design meant to break hearts.
And that it did.
Spruce adheres doggedly to its version of show jumping, a vision coming out of its founding in the 70s, when show jumping was a more rough-and-tumble affair. A vast grass arena with 16-foot heavy wooden poles and long gallops that make a class here a test of endurance if it is anything.
Spruce delights in “spills and thrills” and plays them repeatedly on the jumbotron screens that circle the arena. Sometimes people ask me why and for me the answer is simple—Spruce’s attitude is: “Don’t be a p—-y.”
As an owner or spectator at the side of the ring, there’s something very satisfying about passing that simple message on to a balking rider.
But of course, the sport in many ways has moved in a different direction, with more careful, supple modern horses and more technical, efficient courses. This has led many to skip the Spruce summer tour.
And on Saturday, I got the feeling that too many had done so, leaving us with a course built for the best-of-the-best while welcoming too many of the decidedly less-than.
As a fan-based journalist, I balked like a rider on a Spruce course walk. “This is a class for the critic,” I wrote to my editor, begging off the assignment.
And then I remembered the lesson Spruce teaches all of us, if we are willing to hear it: “Don’t be a p—-y.”
So here I am, writing it up, consulting my notes, which simply say: “Slaughterfest.”
There it is, right at the end, a trick I had seen played in Rome, the notorious “triple to the triple,” a triple bar leading to a triple combination–jump the triple bar then collect back for the combination and you’ve made the first of it, the oxer, but find yourself stuck before the B element, the horse stops with a swerve and off you go!
This happens no less than three times to the delight of the Spruce cameras, who, in the case of Rupert Winkelmann, poor guy, replay it over and over in a continuous loop while the jump crew runs in to fix up the jumps, jumbled on the ground like pickup sticks.
Going into the class, the answer as to who the winner would be seemed obvious: second-in-the-world Richard Vogel, who has spent the last four weeks cleaning up, winning so many classes it’s like no one else is there.
But Vogel knocks two down in the first round and even though the class brings back the top 12 from the first round and he makes it, hope for him overcoming such an obvious disadvantage in the second round is not burning bright.
But what did we have back there at the beginning of the class? The 31-year-old Saudi Arabian rider Abdulrahman Alrajhi, 52nd in the world, aboard 13-year-old Ventago, a German-bred Hanoverian gelding by Van Helsing out of a Scendix (Stakkato) mare.
Only fourth in the order, Alrajhi gave the class the first clear, setting us up to imagine the clears would, perhaps, not be too few in number.
Then McLain Ward, next to go after Alrajhi, scored eight faults. And then Winkelmann, next to go after Ward, fell off his horse. And then Daniel Coyle, last year’s winner, who fought bravely after his horse stumbled, still got a rail in that triple-to-triple line that hardly allowed anyone to pass unscathed.
And so the class went, with falls, scattered rails, bowling-balled walls, faults at times so numerous it had my colleague shouting at the TV screen “You should stop! Why won’t you just stop?” as the numbers ticked up into the 20s and even 30s.
One thing you can say about a Spruce rider is—they don’t stop, not unless their horse does, and even then he has to punt them onto the ground, a mandatory elimination, for them not to circle around and try again.
Spruce may break hearts, but the will to persist grows stronger.
What does the faultless Alrajhi have to say? “Honestly, I think Spruce is a totally different sport. It’s not like another show… It’s definitely struggling when we come here and I was actually complaining about how tough it could become here.”
I was complaining too, as I watched round after round struggle, with a few bright spots like 24-year-old Hallie Grimes, who had a near-perfect round on her 10-year-old stallion Jon Snow and Lillie Keenan, also almost perfect on her 12-year-old stallion Kick On.
But it wasn’t until Daniel Bluman entered the ring, 38th to go, that I reconciled myself to writing up the class after all, because that round was smooth and pretty, even with a stumble, and well-ridden to the point of making it look easy. It also had the bonus of adding a second clear round to the tally and giving Alrajhi something to fear.
The second round said goodbye to the triple-to-the-triple, but stuck the last line in the dappled shadows of the arena, so that almost every horse became confused as to where the rails were and where their legs were and ended up mixing up the two.
But before the end came, several riders improved upon their first-round score with a clear second round—Robert Whitaker, Lillie Keenan, Kyle King, and Danial Coyle—while Hallie Grimes scored one measly time fault. We all got excited imagining a well-populated jump off, but Alrajhi was not planning on letting that happen.
He went in with Ventago, who, like the other horses, was mightily impressed by the jumps, but had the good sense to give them a wide berth and jump clear.
“For me and my horse,” he said afterward, “The bigger the fences are, the better it is, honestly…when the fences are big, he backs off himself.”
But Alrajhi still had to deal with one other rider, the last, Daniel Bluman, with the 11-year-old mare Corbie VV.
Unfortunately, the puny top little plank rail of the lavender field jump went skittering to the ground as did our hopes for a jump off, making Alrajhi the winner of the ATCO Queen Elizabeth II and the only double-clear of the day.
And suddenly Spruce does not seem so bad a place after all. Is Spruce not the place to test your horse’s mettle and possibly improve him? Alrajhi says yes, reflecting on his experience with his horses after his 2025 visit: “I was very impressed with how the horses improve after Spruce…You see the results after Spruce.”
Don’t worry, we’ll be watching.
