U.S. Equestrian Team To Seek World Crown (Published 1974) (2024)

The United States Equestrian Team's three‐day squad —the silver medal winner in the 1964, 1968 and 1972 Olympic Games—will compete in the world championship Sept. 12–15 at Burghley, England.

Horse Show News

Bill Steinkraus, president of the U.S.E.T. made the announcement yesterday. He said the team would leave for England about Aug. I to take part in some warmup events before the championship.

The team has not been selected yet. Two trials to aid the selection committee to determine the squad will be held during the next two months.

The first will be at the Middletown Pony Club Trials on May 12 at Middletown, Del. The other has been scheduled during the Essex Horse Trials in Far Hills, NJ., on June 1–2.

The Middletown event will be at the open‐intermediate level, while the Far Hills trials will be at the advanced level. The dressage and jumping phases will be held the first day at Far Hills and the three‐phase speed and endurance tests the second day.

The selection committee will be made up of Jack, LeGoff, the U.S.E.T. three‐day coach; Neil R. Ayer, Maj. Gen. Jonathan R. Burton and John. H. Fritz, all of the U.S.E.T.'s three‐day advisory committee.

LeGoff said a short list of riders would be selected early in June to undergo a month's training at the team's headquarters in Gladstone, N.J. The actual team for the championship will be picked just before the group leaves.

LeGoff said the short list selection will be based on both the results and the quality of the riders' performance at the trials, plus previous experience.

Britain, winner of the Olympic gold medal in 1972, is expected to field a strong team for the championships.

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Jack Gordon will bid adieu to Four Seasons Farm next Saturday and Sunday after the final indoor show of the season at the Readington complex.

“This will be about the 25th show we've run here since taking over the place five years ago,” Gordon said the other day. “Most of them have been one‐day shows. We've had a few two‐day events and a couple of years ago we ran the Monmouth County show when it was dispossessed from its grounds.”

Gordon's lease on Four Seasons runs until Aug. 1. However, he said, it was being taken over by a new group. Gary Kunsman, chief instructor for the last two years, will stay on.

Gordon has formed Bloodstock Enterprises of Mechanicsville, Pa., in partnership with Bernie Traurig, a leading jumper, and hunter rider. Bloodstock will be concerned only with buying, selling and training horses. It will conduct no shows.

“We're going to have a $1,000 jumper stake at the last show,” said Gordon. “Then I'll have a party for everyone around and be on my way.”

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The Highland horse show, a new event on the Long Island schedule, is set for Saturday at C.W. Post College and will be for the benefit of the United States Equestrian Team . . . Vic Goines, chief of the Homestead Spring show in Sparta, N.J., on April 27, has added a nonthoroughbred working hunter division to the event.

The directors of Rose View Farm in Poughkeepsie, which ran a series of indoor shows the past winter, plan to move outdoors later in the spring . . . The Woodedge Stables shows in Moorestown, N.J., near Philadelphia, have an entry fee of only $4 a class. Can anyone beat that?

Mrs. Sidney Towle, wife of the headmaster, will manage the Kent School show on April 27 . . . Bevel's Saddlery of Bernardsville, N.J., has added a new shop called the Horse and Hound . . . The seventh annual Prix de Villes of North America, with teams of junior jumpers competing in a simulated Prize of Nations class, is scheduled for Lake Erie College in Painsville, Ohio, next Saturday and Sunday.