The weeklong Hampton Classic Horse Show, in its 50th year, leaped into action at the Snake Hollow Road showgrounds in Bridgehampton Sunday with leadline classes for 2 through 7-year-olds from 8 a.m., competitions judged in the Grand Prix ring by the two-time Olympic gold medalist Joe Fargis and watched by anxious, adoring parents.
“That’s a fifth-generation potato farmer . . . Babinski,” one of those parents, Max Spooner, who assisted Ron White in coaching Bridgehampton High’s boys basketball team not long ago, said, pointing to his and his wife’s 4-year-old daughter, Scout, and her trainer, Kendall Sarna, who was wearing a blue dress.
Scout’s mother, Nell Blagg, who rode when young but “didn’t compete,” said after the section ended that she had to get Scout dressed when she was still asleep at 6:15 a.m. She was the youngest at Silver Tide Stables in Sagaponack, “which is good,” Blagg said, “because she has older girls to look up to, and they give her pointers. . . . Now, we’ll go up to the stands to cheer on the older ones. It’s a great community.”
A large entourage from the North Fork had a few minutes earlier erupted when it was announced that Paisley Ellerson, a 4-year-old on Oopsie-Daisy, had won Scout’s section — the last of four 2-to-4 sections that the 77-year-old Fargis judged that morning.
“She was third over all in the division,” Paisley’s father, Tyler, said afterward. “We’ll get ’em next year.”
As for the leadline classes, Fargis, who has been judging them for 40 years, said, “When the kids start, the most important thing for them is getting good guidance — learning to be good at sports and forming a good character. I think they’re all just happy to be here. It really doesn’t matter who wins — they just enjoy the day.”
Besides Ellerson, other 2-to-4 section winners were Peyton Fishlinger of Syosset, on Carousel’s First Steps, Esmeralda Sanampudi of New York City, on Sail Away, and Zoe Bensimon of New York City, on Batteries Not Included. The 5-to-7 leadline section winners were Mackenzie Jane Mulligan of New York City, on Magic Carousel; Carolyn Upward of Brookville, on Twilight’s Whisper; Sophia Wulf of Brooklyn, on Oohh Darla, and Eva Hyejung Frelinghuysen of Washington, D.C., on Sneek a Peek.
The day’s main event, the $30,000 Wellington Jumper Challenge, over a Nick Granat-designed 15-effort course with 4-foot-6-inch jumps in the Grand Prix ring — a competition that drew 43 horse-and-rider combinations — was won by Brianne Goutal-Marteau, on S&L Marlon VD Heffinck, a 13-year-old Belgian warmblood stallion. The pair went double-clear, beating Sam Walker, a Canadian, and Funny Star Semilly by 1.4 seconds in the jump-off to capture the $7,500 first prize.
“I was able to take advantage of my horse’s big stride — he was fast everywhere,” Goutal-Marteau told the show’s communications director, Marty Bauman, afterward.
The day’s most contested hunter class, the $10,000 Marders Local Hunter Derby, was won by Lady in Blue ridden by Meghan Knapic of Smithtown. Cloud 9 ridden by Laura Bowery of Southampton and Wellington, Fla., was second, and Remedy ridden by Anne Byers, who trains with Bowery, was third.
Commemorating the popular five-star show’s 50th anniversary, former board members were invited to take part in the opening day ceremonies. Ten of them came, including the 100-year-old Tinka Topping, who, along with the late Christophe de Menil, Anne Aspinall, and the late Ross Runnels, resurrected what had formerly been the Southampton Hospital Horse Show on a field adjacent to East Hampton’s Dune Alpin Farm in 1976. Other former board members attending were Michael Braverman, Diana Brennan, Emily Aspinall, Stephanie Bulger, Lisa Deslauriers, Katherine Kaneb, Silas Marder, John Wattiker, and Joey Wolffer.
International riders — the world’s number-one, Kent Farrington, and a former number-one and seven-time Grand Prix winner here, McLain Ward, among them — will begin commanding attention in high-stakes jumper classes that begin today and are to end with the $400,000 Longines Grand Prix Sunday afternoon.
