Shanette Barth Cohen, the Hampton Classic’s executive director, who used to face a wall, has a corner office now, with a window, a door through which she can escape, and a low-slung guardian lapdog named Jackson, but she won’t feel entirely secure until Opening Day has come and gone without incident.

    Last year, if you remember, forewarnings of Hurricane Irene’s arrival impelled the Classic’s staff to lower the 100 tents that had been raised to house the hunter-jumper show’s 1,600 horses, and to put them up again once the storm, which brought with it gusts of up to 70 miles per hour, had passed through.

    During a conversation the other day, Barth Cohen said she’d been quite proud of the 36-hour-straight effort everyone had put in. “I got to drive a tractor, one of the show secretaries operated a fork lift, Marty [Bauman, the show’s press officer] was raking . . . I still can’t believe our crew of 60 or 70 did all that, and then Cablevision, LIPA, and the town were very helpful in getting the power back on.”

    As a result, the weeklong show was shortened by three days, beginning on Wednesday, though there were no scratches when it came to the competitions.

    While she didn’t go to the Olympics, Barth Cohen watched the show jumping on a Webcast. The United States’ team, which included McLain Ward, a perennial winner at the Classic, and Beezie Madden, who’s also showing here next week, finished sixth. “It was a hard act to follow — the U.S. won the team gold at Hong Kong and Athens. . . . The last round was very tough with challenges all over the place.”

    Guilherme Jorge, the Classic’s Brazilian-born course designer, had been, she added, a member of the technical committee.

    Three Olympians, then — Ward, Madden, and Rodrigo Pessoa, a Brazilian — will be among the professional riders showing here.

    The Olympics were probably the number-one equestrian event, Barth Cohen said, in answer to a question, with the World Equestrian Games, which, like the Olympics, are contested every four years, and the World Cup Final, which is held annually, rounding out the top three. Asked where the Classic might fit in, she said, “We’re a World Cup qualifier — we’re an important event.”

    As for what was new this year, she said, “We’ll have a $50,000 hunter class in the Grand Prix ring on Opening Day [this Sunday, following the opening ceremony at 1:30] sponsored by the United States Hunter Jumper Association. . . . We have 40 entries so far, there will be pros and amateurs.”

    “It will be a nice flowing course designed by Steve Stephens. It’s supposed to simulate a hunt field, and it’s the horses who are judged — how beautifully and smoothly they go. There’ll be two rounds with the top 12 advancing. The jumps will be 3 feet 6 inches and riders will have the option of trying 3-9 and 4-0 jumps for bonus points.”

    The leadline classes judged by the Olympian Joe Fargis, an Opening Day fixture for many years, are to be held on the morning of Grand Prix Sunday in the Hunter-1 ring that is to be renamed in memory of the late Anne Aspinall, who won the Classic’s sportsmanship award in 2007 and who was for a long time a member of the Classic’s board of directors, a competitor in the show’s hunter classes, and who, with her sister, Emily, taught at the Topping Riding Club in Sagaponack. Hunter Ring 1 will be renamed the Anne Aspinall Ring at a ceremony on Opening Day at 7:45 a.m.

    The $20,000 Nicolock time challenge class, which offers spectators their first chance to see the pros in action, is to be held this Sunday, as it has been in the past, though the class is to get under way at 8 a.m. “We’ve got 30 signed up so far, though that number will probably go up,” Barth Cohen said.

    There would be “lots of things for kids” throughout the coming week, she added, “not just on Optimum Kids Day [Saturday, Sept. 1] with its free pony rides, circus performers, and the Laughing Pizza Band. . . . The Wildlife Center of the Hamptons will bring with them birds of prey, the Riverhead Marine Research organization will be here every day, Stony Brook University’s Children’s Hospital will put on a show called ‘Mission Nutrition,’ the A.S.P.C.A. on Monday will have dogs, cats, pot-bellied pigs, and horses up for adoption. . . . “

    “Our entries are as full as they’ve ever been,” she said in reply to a question about the economy, “and our corporate sponsorship has become more robust, though there has been some belt-tightening among our personal sponsors.”

    Twenty dollars will still get a carload of spectators into the grounds, off Snake Hollow Road in Bridgehampton. “And people can now buy grandstand tickets for Grand Prix Sunday online, at $25 for the bench seats and $35 for the bucket seats.”

    Asked, in parting, what the weather report was, Barth Cohen smiled and said, “I don’t know . . . I heard it was going to be beautiful.”

Paddle Relay Race

    Despite southwest winds that made paddling in Gardiner’s Bay difficult, the three-person, three-mile stand-up paddleboard relay race overseen by Paddlers for Humanity went on as scheduled Sunday with 13 teams participating.

    The race, which benefited the Retreat, was won in 35 minutes and 24 seconds by the Main Beach Surf and Sport team (Lars Svanberg, Ari Weller, and Evelyn O’Doherty), the first coed team to win this competition. The runners-up (and winners of the men’s division) were John Doyle, Jonathan Shlafer, and Michael Williams, in 36:57. Team Paddle Diva (Shari Hymes, Jessica Bellofatto, and Mary Scheerer) was the women’s division winner, in 39:35.

    Paddlers for Humanity’s 18-mile stand-up paddle from Montauk to Block Island will be on Sept. 15. The East Hampton Day Care Learning Center, the Montauk Playhouse Community Center, and the Children’s Dental Health Program are to be among the beneficiaries.

Bonac 10K/5K

    The Great Bonac 10K and 5K road races are to be held Monday at the Springs Fire Department on Fort Pond Boulevard. The 10K is to start at 9 a.m., the 5K at 9:20. In their 35th year, the races benefit the Springs Fire Department’s scholarship fund and the Old Montauk Athletic Club’s grants program.

Quigley Fund

    A barbecue fund-raiser for the injured 17-year-old East Hampton Town lifeguard, Doris Quigley, is to be held at Atlantic Avenue Beach in Amagansett on Sept. 8 from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. According to a flier, donations made out to the HLA/Quigley Fund can be sent to John Ryan at 7 Meadow Way, East Hampton. Admission to the barbecue will cost $20. There will be a 50/50 raffle and other prizes.

Thursday, August 30

HAMPTON CLASSIC, hunter and jumper classes in all five rings, with featured events to include the $5,000 Junior Jumper Classic and the $5,000 Strong’s Marine A-O Jumper Classic in Jumper Ring 2, the $10,000 Sam Edelman Equitation Championship in the Grand Prix Ring at 1:30 p.m., and the $2,500 Marshall & Sterling Adult Amateur Hunter Classic in the Hunter 2 Ring at 1:30, Snake Hollow Road, Bridgehampton, showgrounds.

Friday, August 31

HAMPTON CLASSIC, hunter and jumper classes in all five rings with featured events to include the $10,000 Junior/Amateur-Owner Welcome Stake, the $15,000 Speed Derby, and the $50,000 Spy Coast Farm/Young Horse Show Series Grand Prix Qualifier in the Grand Prix Ring, at 1 p.m., in the Grand Prix Ring, Snake Hollow Road, Bridgehampton, showgrounds.

Saturday, September 1

HAMPTON CLASSIC, Kids Day, hunter and jumper classes in four rings with featured events to include the $20,000 SHF Enterprises 5-Year-Old Young Jumper Championship, the $30,000 Split Rock Farm 6-Year-Old Young Jumper Championship, and the $30,000 Pilatus Cup in the Grand Prix Ring, Snake Hollow Road, Bridgehampton, showgrounds.

Sunday, September 2

HAMPTON CLASSIC, Final Day, featured events to include leadline classes from 8 a.m. and the $10,000 Hermes Hunter Classic at noon in the Anne Aspinall Ring, and, in the Grand Prix Ring, the $250,000 FTI Grand Prix and F.E.I. World Cup Qualifier, at 2, preceded by the $30,000 7 and 8-Year-Old Young Jumper Championships from 8 a.m., the $25,000 David Yurman Show Jumping Derby, the A-O Jumper Championship, and the Junior Jumper Championship, Snake Hollow Road, Bridgehampton, showgrounds.

Monday, September 3

RUNNING, Great Bonac 10K and 5K races, Springs Fire Department, Fort Pond Boulevard, 9 and 9:20 a.m., benefit Springs Fire Department scholarship fund and the Old Montauk Athletic Club’s grants program.

    Caroline Cashin, with 120 pumps, which took the pressure off her in the subsequent run that spanned the Atlantic and Indian Wells Beaches in Amagansett, was the runner-up to Neil Falkenhan and set a record for women in the Body Tech and Old Montauk Athletic Club’s “Pump and Run” competition on Aug. 22.

    This year, “thanks to my workouts at [her husband Ed’s] Exceed Fitness studio” on Plank Road, Cashin chest-pressed the bar 120 times, 22 more repetitions than she did at the same event in 2011.

    “The great part about this race,” the 36-year-old Cashin said, “is that you don’t have to be a fast runner to do well. Two years ago Mike [Bahel] beat me by three seconds — this year I beat him by three.”

    “I stopped spinning this year,” she continued, “and focused more on functional classes, and really noticed a difference. Not only was my lower body more toned, I was more fit in general. I know athletes who train at Exceed Fitness and they get results, but Ed’s classes aren’t just for athletic people — they’re open to everyone of all fitness levels.”

    Falkenhan, who’s 28, did 71 reps of 60 percent of his body weight and ran the 1.7-mile stretch in 9:58. Given his chest-press credits, which were translated into seconds and then deducted from his run time, he netted a 6:25.

    Caroline Cashin’s net time for the run was 7:22. Behind her in the standings were Bahel, 46, at 7:25; Erik Engstrom, 14, at 8:51, and Mike Bunce, 26, at 9:32. There were 20 competitors in all.

    Henrika Conner of the Old Montauk Athletic Club said later that “without Mike this event wouldn’t happen. He provided the weights, the T-shirts, water, food, and prizes. Billy O’Donnell brought a bench and more. The club provided the clock.”   

    The race to raise the $35,000 needed so that about 40 Springs School seventh and eighth graders may continue to be combined with the middle school in certain sports has apparently been won.

    Mark Lappin, one of a half-dozen parents who, under the Springs Sports Booster Club aegis, began soliciting donations from businesses and individuals scarcely a month ago in the run-up to a Sept. 1 deadline, said during a conversation Sunday evening, “It’s definitely a go.”

    “We’ve got $33,205 in hand at the moment, and we fully expect to reach our goal in the coming days,” Lappin said. He had received donations from 75 of the more than 200 businesses he’d solicited, though there had been complaints about the Springs district’s “high taxes,” he added, and skepticism as to whether the money for the continuation of combined Springs-East Hampton Middle School football, cross-country, tennis, wrestling, swimming, track, and lacrosse teams couldn’t be found in the budget.

    The overarching fact, he said, however, was that the school board, in the budget proposal approved by Springs voters last spring, had axed the combined sports funds. Thus there had been no alternative for the parents of the affected children but to launch the fund-raising drive. “The parents really should start paying attention to these budgets,” said Lappin.

    A lot of the donations had been anonymous, he said, “though the Old Montauk Athletic Club gave $6,480, and Henrika Conner gave $1,000 on her own, the East Hampton Indoor Tennis Club gave $1,000. . . . Dom Mucci, Springs’ superintendent, really went to bat for us, and he contributed personally. . . .”

    In a recent mailing, the Booster Club, whose organizers besides Lappin included Mary McPartland, Jen Charron, Janice Vaziri, Adam Wilson, and David Swickard, said in part that the self-discipline athletes learned on the field often was translated into greater academic success. “Sports unify kids from all kinds of backgrounds . . . and demonstrate the rewards of persistence in the face of adversity.”

    On the subject, Bill Herzog, a veteran cross-country and track coach at East Hampton High School and at the middle school, recently predicted that the level of the high school’s sports teams would inevitably decline if Springs and the middle school’s athletic alliance were discontinued.

    Bostwick’s (nee Cangiolosi’s) is eying its seventh straight East Hampton Town women’s slow-pitch softball league championship, though Groundworks Landscaping, a team that Kim Hren has gotten together, planted a 13-10 loss on the perennial champions in game one of a best-of-three final last Thursday.

    Thus Groundworks, which was to lose a couple of its young players to colleges earlier this week, Meghan Hess (University of Arizona) and Erika Silich (High Point), had a chance to win it all Tuesday. A Bostwick’s win that day would have brought about a rubber game at the Terry King ball field tonight.

    The insurgents reached the final by defeating the P.B.A. 5-1 in the third game of their semifinal series, which was contested Aug. 7. In the other semi, Bostwick’s swept Men at Work.

    In last Thursday’s game, Bostwick’s, which has played without several members of its core group this season, including Susie Warner, its longtime pitcher, scored four runs in the bottom of the first inning after Groundworks had put one across in the top half, on singles by Kathryn Hess, Hren, and Meghan Hess. A two-run home run by Virginia McGovern was the big hit for Bostwick’s.

    The Landscapers came back with four runs in the top of the third, two resulting from a home run by Kathryn Hess. Randi Cherill and Sarah Van Asco were credited with the other runs batted in.

    Connie Mabry, G.W.’s pitcher, shut Bostwick’s down in its half of the inning. Groundworks made it 6-4 in the top of the fourth. Silich led it off with a single, and came around to score on a base hit by Hren.

    The Restaurateurs wrested the lead back, at 7-6, in the bottom of the fourth on run-scoring hits by Mireille Sturmann and Kathy Amicucci. Neither team scored in the fifth, but in the top of the sixth Groundworks, with no one on and two outs, worked Eileen Noonan, Bostwick’s pitcher, for three more runs to go up 9-7. An opposite-field triple by Hren was the big blow, Andy Silich, the team’s manager, recounted.

    The defending champs tied the score at 9-9 in the bottom of the sixth only to have Groundworks come back yet again in the top of the seventh. Silich led it off with a single, Meredith Janis walked, a single by Emma Beudert drove in Silich, a base hit by Kathryn Hess drove in Janis, and singles by Cherill and Van Asco drove in Beudert and Hess.

    Bostwick’s, then, went into its last at-bat trailing 13-9.

    “They had runners on second and third with no outs, but a pop to short [Kathryn Hess] and flyouts to Erika and Emma around a sac fly sealed the victory,” Andy Silich said.

    Mabry pretty much handcuffed the P.B.A. in the pivotal game of the Groundworks-P.B.A. semifinal series on Aug. 7. Groundworks went up 4-0 in the bottom of the second on bases-loaded hits by Silich and Robyn Bramoff, and on a two-run throwing error.

    Groundworks made it 5-0 in the fourth, on a two-out r.b.i. single by Beudert. A bases-loaded fielder’s choice by Dale Brabant got one back for the P.B.A. in the bottom of the fifth, but Mabry held the P.B.A. in check in the sixth and in the seventh for the win.

    Mylan Le led off the P.B.A.’s last at-bat with a double, after which Meghan Pintauro drew a walk, but a subsequent double play and a comebacker to Mabry stranded the runners and ended the game.

   Annette MacNiven was heading toward a mountain bike triathlon in New Hampshire the other day with a light heart, for she knew she’d already won the regional championship in the 55-to-59-year-old age division, for the sixth or seventh year in a row.

    “The last 10 years I’ve been doing these off-road triathlons,” she said. “They’re going to be in the Olympics for the first time in 2016.”

    Recently, in the International Triathlon Union’s World Cross championships in the Appalachian foothills outside Birmingham, Ala., MacNiven exceeded her expectations, defeating a Californian and a Tennessean whom she had never beaten before, on the way to a runner-up finish, her best ever.

    “I used to be 30 minutes behind these girls, so I was very happy.” One of those whom she left in the dust was Barbara Peterson, a many-time national and world champion.

    “When I got there, and checked out the names, it looked like I was headed for fourth, and I didn’t want to be fourth!” MacNiven said, adding that it was the first time she’d met her rivals on “an East Coast type of course with a roller-coaster single-track bike leg with rocks and roots rather than the straight up, straight down kind you find in the mountains of Utah, say.”

    On such mountain bike courses, she said, “you use very light gears, not the heavy ones, and you develop good leg speed . . . you’re not grinding gears. Finally, I got them on my turf.”

    MacNiven’s husband, Tom, with whom she travels to races in an Airstream trailer, saw the fire in his wife’s eyes at various way stations along the Olympic-distance course, which comprised a .93-mile lake swim, an 18-mile mountain bike leg, and a 6.2-mile trail run.

    She liked the technical challenges mountain bike courses presented, MacNiven said. “I like it too that they’re all so different, and while you might hit a root, I’d rather that that happen than be hit by a car.”

    Leading into the world championships, MacNiven won her age group in two mountain bike triathlons, one of which was in Louisiana, on a course very similar to the one in Alabama. Not only did she top her age group in the Louisiana race, but she placed third over all. Also, the fact that East Hampton’s winter had been mild had been a great help in preparing her for the race season, which is to end soon.

    “I trained outside all winter — I’d just head out my backdoor and ride the trails in Bridgehampton. I didn’t have to go all the way out to Montauk.”

    The year before, because of all the snow, which forced her to remain inside, “I didn’t feel in racing shape when I went to the world championships in Spain. This time I was in shape and confident.”

    MacNiven has been a personal trainer here since 1998. She also works with the girls in the I-Tri program, coaches masters and Hurricane swimmers at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter, and works out with John Conner’s running group at East Hampton High’s track on Monday and Wednesday evenings. “I haven’t been on a track in 10 years,” she said. “I want to keep it up, even if I have to do it alone, but it’s so much better to train with others.”

    Masters swimmers, she added, in answer to a question, could avail themselves of the Y’s pool not only at 6 a.m., but also on certain days of the week at 9:30 a.m. and at 7:30 p.m.

    Having grown up in New Mexico, “I was always a runner — I was in my first national cross-country championship when I was 9 years old. I’ll never be a great swimmer, but I’m good enough. It’s taken me 20 years to change from a runner’s physique with tight ankles and heavy legs to a triathlon physique.”

    When it comes to triathloning, “I’m good at everything, though I’m not great at one thing.”

    “The Xterra Worlds are in October, but I can’t go. I.T.U.’s world championships will be in the Netherlands next July. . . . I’m hoping for another mild winter.”

   “You got a stop watch?” John Conner asked Bill Herzog at the starting line of the Miss Amelia’s Cottage 2-mile road race in Amagansett Sunday morning.

    When Herzog nodded, Conner said, “Can I use it?” Yes, he could, said Herzog, who was there to see how some of the young runners he coaches fared. “I hope it works,” he said to an observer. “I got it 25 years ago at Radio Shack.”

    This 2-mile race, about half of which is down Town Lane, is a favorite of kids, and of adults whose fast twitch fibers remain intact.

    Before it began, near the Amagansett railroad station, Conner recalled the year in which the train held up about half the field near the finish at Windmill Lane before swinging into their final kicks. On Sunday, the train arrived at the station a few minutes before the small but plucky group of runners took off up Old Stone Highway.

    Amid the blasts of the train’s horn, Conner called out to the some 30 participants, “It’s left, at Side Hill Lane, left, onto Town Lane, left, at Windmill Lane, and a sharp downhill left, onto the Amagansett Historical Society’s grounds.”

    Herzog had hoped Ashley West, who’s soon to be a freshman at Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania, and Dana Cebulski, who competed in the state cross-country meet last fall and who is to attend a running camp in Liberty, N.Y., this week, would be there, along, perhaps with Dana’s brother, Adam. But they were all no-shows. “Dana’s tired,” Herzog said, rolling his eyes. “And Ashley . . . I don’t know where she is. Maybe she’ll get out of a car at the last minute.”

    It was learned later that West had to go to work at 10 and had to run 11 miles that day as part of Susquehanna’s cross-country training regimen.

    Herzog said he wished Erik Eng­strom, who has been a regular attendee at all the summer races, and who has done well in them, would add some weight. “He’s almost transparent,” the veteran coach said as Engstrom, an incoming East Hampton High School freshman, who was walking by, smiled.

    This fall’s boys cross-country team would be quite good, Herzog predicted, “what with all these ninth graders — Erik, Jackson Rafferty, Randy Santiago, if he’s still in the district, T.J. Paradiso, and Leo Panish — mixed in with the kids Kevin Barry’s already got.”

    However, things could well go south for a number of high school sports, he added, if Springs School seventh and eighth graders were no longer able to be on East Hampton Middle School teams in cross-country, track, football, wrest­ling, lacrosse, and tennis.

    A group of Springs parents are engaged in trying to raise by month’s end the $35,000 the Springs School Board cut from its budget last spring that would have enabled the athletic alliance to continue.

    A 39-year-old, Justin Kulchinsky, wound up winning the 2-miler, as he had last year, in 10 minutes and 52 seconds. James Consiglio, 51, who won it in 2009, was the runner-up, in 11:33, outkicking the 14-year-old Engstrom (11:37) in the final yards. Sharon McCobb won among the women, and was fifth over all, in 13:26.

    Among the other front-runners were Craig Brierley, who had come with his young daughter, Julia, and Dan Kulchinsky, 62, Justin’s father, who was seventh in 13:49.

    The younger Kulchinsky, who owns the Mayfair Rocks jewelry store in East Hampton Village, was a top triathlete here some years ago, and still remains competitive despite breaks in training. His father had argued on the eve of the Montauk Sprint triathlon, which Mayfair Rocks sponsored, that he had to do it, and so he did, said Kulchinsky, finishing a credible 13th “racing against guys who’ve been doing this for 20 years. . . . Two years ago was the first time I’d done it [the Lighthouse Sprint] in 16 years — I was eighth. Then I got engaged, and then I got married.”

    He had clocked his first mile that day, he said, in 5:16. “I was pretty much racing against my heart rate.”

    Mayfair Rocks, he added, was among the stores that had donated gift certificates to the Springs Booster Club’s fund-raising effort.

    “I’m very impressed by the kids running in this race,” said Paul Fiondella, who laid out the Hamptons marathon and half-marathon courses. “It would be a shame if they can’t raise the money to recombine sports, but if they can’t, they should start running clubs.”

    “You know, people come out here in the summer for two reasons,” he continued. “One is to drink, which they do in Montauk, and two, because this is a nice, beautiful place where you can exercise. I do a 10-mile run twice a week, and I’m seeing many more runners out on the roads than I ever have.”

    “And more bikers too — more than ever,” interjected McCobb.

    “Exercise is one of the prime reasons people come out here — the town needs to get that into its head,” Fiondella said.

    Conner put in a plug for Mike Bahel’s “Pump And Run” competition, which was to have been held yesterday afternoon at Atlantic Avenue Beach.

    Competitors were to do as many bench presses as they could, he said, before setting out on a run along Bluff Road spanning the Atlantic Avenue and Indian Wells beaches. The bench press reps, valued at so many seconds per, were to be subtracted from one’s run time, he added. “You see some of the best athletes in town there, big guys, but often the smaller, quicker ones win out. It’s a lot of fun.”

    Asked if it were an open competition, Conner said that weigh-ins before the competition began leveled the playing field.

    “You’re embarrassed first,” quipped Beth Jordan.

   Gina Bradley, a city kid who took to the water once she’d graduated from the University of Vermont, said during a conversation the other day at her Paddle Diva office at the Shagwong Marina that she liked it that in a 90-minute lesson she would make the water completely accessible to women who otherwise might never venture forth.

    Stand-up paddleboarding, which she’s teaching now — though she began her waterborne career soon after college as a scuba diving instructor in the Caribbean — was easy, said the lively, intrepid Bradley, who incorporates what she’s learned over the years as a diving instructor, sailor, sailboarder, and swimmer — in short, all that she’s learned about the water and winds — into her classes.

    She came here to boardsail at Lazy Point, Napeague, about a dozen years ago, having returned from Cozumel and the Cayman Islands to New York City, where she’d grown up, to get “a real job” as a marketer of Web site designs to corporations “just when the Web began to get hot.”

    Soon, though, Napeague Harbor and its surroundings exerted more of a pull than moneymaking. “I fell in love with this place. . . . In 2000, I bought two cottages very close to Lazy Point, renovated them, lived in one, and rented out the other. . . .”

    That was also the year, she said, in which she was persuaded by one of her friends to take a surfing lesson at Ditch Plain from Scott Bradley — she knew more about the sport than she let on — a lover of the water also, who’d grown up clamming and surfing in Sayville, and who was to become her husband.

    “I knew right away that everything about him was 100 percent right. . . . By day, he’s in a suit and tie, driving a Prius, handling the insurance plans of medium to large-size businesses in the tristate region, by night he’s the most amazing father of two [Emma, 9, and James, 6] and husband to me, and on the weekends you can find him teaching water safety to the kids in the junior lifeguard program. He’s also a member of East Hampton’s Volunteer Ocean Rescue Squad, and, with his best friend, Lars Svanberg, and Fred Doss and Eddie Cashin, he founded Paddlers 4 Humanity. . . . He’s not not worked a day in his life. This man works. And he’s a caregiver, a volunteer, an open ocean paddleboarder . . . he’s amazing.”

    Back to paddleboarding, Bradley, who wears her blond hair in braids, and who, when she teaches, is upbeat and encouraging, said she didn’t like it initially, which is to say about seven years ago when her husband and his triathletic training partner, Svanberg, brought some of the first boards out here.

    “I didn’t get it,” she said. “I hadn’t had the proper instruction. So, I began watching videos and went onto the Internet, and I picked up the correct techniques and began seeing the benefits. I was getting stronger and yet it seemed effortless . . . it’s very good for your core. . . . I’d say if you do it two to three days a week for a month you’ll begin to see the results.”

    Women, she said, were more apt pupils than men. Asked why, she replied, with a smile, “They’re better listeners.”

    What she learned Bradley passed on to her friends — Diane Engstrom, Anita Hodgens, and Jennifer Ford among them. And soon, after she’d taken them out into Gardiner’s Bay, she realized she wanted to teach the sport and, as a spinoff, to familiarize more and more women with the stresses the oceans and inland waters were undergoing.

    She’s been teaching stand-up paddleboarding for the past three years — her favorite spots being Three Mile Harbor, Accabonac Harbor, and Sagg Pond. The following morning, she said, she would lead women students on an eight-mile paddle from Landing Lane in Accabonac Harbor to Lazy Point, where one of her instructors, Rob Grinnel, would pick them up and drive them back to the marina.

    She had begun with seven boards and a pickup truck, and now has 30. Shari Hymes, a kayaker, adventure racer, and mountain climber, had helped her develop the business, she said.

    Because of the sport’s rapidly increasing popularity, Bradley’s at the marina seven days a week, so there’s rarely a chance when she and her husband can get out on the water by themselves in the summer. Just the night before, he’d come over at the end of the day and, after relaying the news that the nanny had taken the kids to the movies, said, “Let’s go!”

    She could only smile and roll her eyes.

Thursday, August 23

BEACH VOLLEYBALL, semifinal and final matches, followed by awards ceremony and barbecue, Gurney’s Inn, Montauk, from 6 p.m.

Friday, August 24

TENNIS, clinics by Hall of Famer Mats Wilander, Montauk Racquet Club, West Lake Drive, 3-6 p.m., followed by dinner at Moby Dick’s restaurant.

Saturday, August 25

ARTISTS-WRITERS GAME, Herrick Park, East Hampton, 2 p.m., preceded by batting practice from noon.

Sunday, August 26

HAMPTON CLASSIC, Opening Day, events in all five rings, with $20,000 Nicolock Time Challenge class from 8 a.m., opening day ceremonies at 1:30, and $50,000 U.S.H.J.A. hunter derby in the Grand Prix ring, Snake Hollow Road, Bridgehampton, showgrounds.

Monday, August 27

HIGH SCHOOL SPORTS, fall practice begins at local schools.

HAMPTON CLASSIC, classes for riders with disabilities, Jumper Ring-2, from 10 a.m., and A.S.P.C.A. Adoption Day, Anne Aspinall Ring, from 11 a.m., Snake Hollow Road, Bridgehampton showgrounds.

Tuesday, August 28

HAMPTON CLASSIC, jumper events in two rings, hunter events in three, from 8 a.m., Snake Hollow Road, Bridgehampton, showgrounds.

Wednesday, August 29

HAMPTON CLASSIC, jumper, hunter, and short stirrup classes, Snake Hollow Road, Bridgehampton, showgrounds, from 8 a.m.