On the Line

Who among us hasn’t had one of those am-I-or-aren’t-I, eyeballing the ground, thrown up the neck, hanging on for dear life close calls? You know what I’m talking about – when you’re very, very close to ending up with your butt in the dirt, but at the last possible second, you pull your shoulders back with a mighty effort, your horse puts his neck back up instead of farther down, and you’re saved -this time- from picking sand out of your shirt collar. It’s the close call fall.

John French experienced a very public close call fall yesterday afternoon during the $10,000 USHJA International Hunter Derby class at the Blenheim Spring Classic III in San Juan Capistrano, CA. With six mounts entered in the class, and being the freakishly consistent competitor that he is, John rarely leaves a high level derby without a ribbon in hand. And yesterday was no different; he placed 4th with Pimm’s Cup, owned by Whitney Miller.

But after fence 1 during the handy round, a big, bright white coop going towards a crowd of spectators, his round on Oscany Inc.’s Clooney took a surprise turn. ”I don’t know what happened,” said John after the class. Clooney jumped a little bigger, and maybe cracked his back a little more over the spooky fence, and both horse and rider fell out of sorts on the landing side.

However, this is John French we’re talking about, and the popular, easygoing rider dug deep and saved himself at the last minute. Ever the consummate professional, he shook the moment off as he circled, grinned a little sheepishly while acknowledging cheers from the crowd, and continued on to fence 2. Clooney and John still placed 10th overall in the Derby. Morgan Geller won the class, and Sidelines April feature subject Nick Haness was third with Havana. Overall, it was a challenging course with a difficult handy round, and plenty of other riders had trouble. Destry Spielberg’s Rumba (the same Rumba that John French rode to the inaugural Hunter Derby Final championship two years ago) had refusals in the handy round, but previous round points helped them place 10th.

A challenging course, big spooky fences, thrills and near-spills. Hmmmm. That sounds like a hunter derby at its best! See HorseShowTime.com for full results.

Use the scroll arrows at the bottom of this photo to see how Cheval Photos captured John French’s close call fall:

The hunter pose finally catches up with JF. . . ?

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