Sports

The sky on Grand Prix Sunday, which caps the weeklong Hampton Classic Horse Show in Bridgehampton, was uncustomarily gray, and, for the first time anyone could remember, a light rain fell as 40 horse-and-rider entries vying for the $132,000 winner’s share of the $400,000 Longines purse traversed a tough, sinuous 17-effort course that posed problems just about everywhere.

“For me, it was one of the most challenging — grueling at parts — but challenging things I’ve ever done. And yet, it was one of the most exhilarating and euphoric when it was over,” Bennett Schmidt of East Hampton said of his participation in the 434-mile Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa, or RAGBRAI.

Over the past three decades, Paul Annacone, a native of East Hampton, has become one of the most sought-after tennis coaches on the professional circuit, now with Taylor Fritz, who may be on the verge of a title.

Katie Osiecki, North Bar’s pitcher, returned for the East Hampton Town women’s slow-pitch softball league’s playoffs, and immediately made her presence known, leading her team to a trophy at the Terry King ball field in Amagansett.

The trails are mapped today, but when two former college classmates began their horseback rides on them decades ago, without maps or smartphones to guide them, the goal was to find a path that stretched through the woods and reached the edge of the ocean. With an expanded group of women, they are still exploring the trails today.

The Hampton Classic began early Sunday with leadline classes for 2-through-7-year-olds aboard ponies as a three-time Olympian, Joe Fargis, watched them pass back and forth, posing questions having to do with horsemanship.

I was surprised to see in my logbook that my lobster catch was better than expected this year, although lobsters in our local waters have been on a downswing for decades.

Sunday’s main event at the Hampton Classic, the $30,000 Open Jumper Challenge, was won by Sydney Shulman Desiderio and Villamoura, topping a field of 41.

In what possibly was the longest Artists and Writers Softball Game ever played, the Artists wound up prevailing 11-10 in the bottom of the 12th inning at East Hampton Village’s Herrick Park Saturday before a sizable crowd.

Some 1,600 riders and horses, Olympians among them, are to begin strutting their stuff at the weeklong Hampton Classic Horse Show in Bridgehampton on Sunday.

Sergey Avramenko, a native of Belarus who lives in Hampton Bays, topped a field of 716 at Ellen’s Run in Southampton Sunday in support of the Ellen Hermanson Foundation’s work here to diagnose and treat breast cancer.

A trip to the North Fork to pick up 1,000 oyster spat from the Cornell Cooperative Extension Marine Center means it was time to replenish my North Haven stock.

Coming this weekend are Paddlers for Humanity’s Montauk Point to Block Island paddle and the Southampton Village Ocean Rescue squad’s long-distance swims at Cooper’s Beach Saturday morning, the Artists and Writers Softball Game at East Hampton Village’s Herrick Park that afternoon, and Ellen’s Run at the Southampton Intermediate School on Sunday morning.

The Hampton Lifeguard Association’s team in the national lifesaving tournament held last week on South Padre Island in Texas finished fifth among the 25 contending entries from around the country, a significant improvement from a year ago.

Tortorella Pools and Maidstone Market continue to contend for the lead and the playoffs’ top seed in 7-on-7 men’s soccer action Tuesday evenings at Herrick Park in East Hampton Village.

This year, Stony Hill Stables in Amagansett is celebrating 60 years in business, most of them under the ownership of the Hotchkiss family.

The Raptors, a Montauk team made up largely of Daunts and Davises, won the 16th Travis Field Memorial softball tournament Sunday night, besting Taste Our Sauce 4-3 thanks to a walk-off hit by Anthony Daunt. Plus a 3-on-3 Hoops 4 Hope basketball tourney at Sportime.

More than a race, Ellen's Run, which is in its 29th year, is about support and camaraderie. The race sets off from the Southampton Intermediate School on Aug. 18.

Kevin Bunce Sr., who has been keeping the ball rolling for the Montauk Rugby Club, said that his 7s squad been a winner or a runner-up in a half-dozen U-23 tournaments. The goal now "is to get enough guys involved so that Montauk can field a 15s side again."

At daybreak, I went to check my lobster traps off to the east, but before we ventured forth, I wanted to do a bit of fishing on the east side of Gardiner's Island. Fluke and sea bass were the intended quarry. My expectations were very low. Let me explain.

At the peak of Mount Kilimanjaro on June 21, Summer Romeo told her fellow hikers that she could never do the climb again. “We were literally crying from sleep deprivation, agony, headaches, and nausea.” But by journey's end, she was already thinking ahead to her next adventure.

After finishing dinner on our outdoor patio overlooking Shelter Island Sound the other day, we noticed a canoe with a man, woman, and child in it moving rapidly on the strong incoming full-moon tide. It was getting dark and they were too far from the beach.

Edmar Nateras, a 17-year-old Sag Harborite who runs with East Hampton High School’s boys winter and spring track teams, won Jordan’s Run Sunday, a 5K based at Pierson High School in Sag Harbor, where he runs cross-country.

The East End Ospreys laid a hurtin’ on the Kraken at the Bridgehampton School’s field last Thursday evening, pummeling the former two-time champion 10-2 to win the deciding game of the Hamptons Adult Hardball League’s best-of-three final series.

The Jones Beach lifeguard team topped 17 other entrants from beaches all over Long Island, including half a dozen from East Hampton, in last Thursday’s Main Beach invitational tournament, winning both the men’s and women’s divisions.

Coming up this weekend are the two-mile, one-mile, and half-mile ocean challenge swims at Kirk Park Beach benefiting the Montauk Playhouse, and Jordan’s Run, a 5K road race in Sag Harbor that commemorates Lance Cpl. Jordan C. Haerter.

Vanessa Rizzo, 14, and Matteo Somma, 17, won races here over the weekend. Somma, who lives in Malverne, topped a field of 443 in the Montauk Lighthouse sprint triathlon, and Rizzo of Sagaponack won the Hampton Lifeguard Association’s Run-Swim-Run at Amagansett’s Atlantic Avenue Beach.

We are in full-scale summer mode as August approaches. In Montauk stripers are still running, and the same is true for fluke and a plethora of undersize sea bass.

Some 80 young basketball players spent Monday afternoon at the Ross School in Bridgehampton drilling their footwork, practicing dribbling and ball-handling skills, shooting hoops, and simulating offensive and defensive tactics under the expert eye of a celebrity coach: John Wallace, a former Knicks player visiting for a junior basketball clinic.

The Kraken pitched well, fielded well, and hit well in Sunday’s Hamptons Adult Hardball League’s championship series opener against the East End Ospreys at the Bridgehampton School.