Daniel Bluman Continues His Perfect Attendance Record and Wins the $10,000 FEI 1.40m Welcome Speed Class
With a field of 50 horses, the TerraNova Hunter/Jumper Week 3 $10,000 FEI 1.40m Welcome Speed class was the largest to date. The 1.40m track was designed by FEI Level 3 course designer Mauricio Garcia (PUR). Garcia is an accomplished international grand prix rider. He has assisted at the World Cup Finals in Las Vegas (2005, 2007, 2016), Pan American Games (2003, 2007, 2011), the Olympic Games (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2016) and has built at numerous world-class venues such as Hickstead, Spruce Meadows, Kentucky Horse Park, the Winter Equestrian Festival, The Oaks and Tryon.
“I want everybody to get acclimated to the ring and the jumps and to my way of taking them one jump to another,” Garcia shared. All but one of the fences were built to the maximum height. He said that lowering the obstacles would not be fair going into the grand prix height of 1.45m on Saturday. The vertical at fence three was slightly lower to encourage the riders to turn inside on the way to fence four.
“I want the winner to take out strides and the young horses to be able to do normal strides a little bit wide without penalizing them,” Garcia said.
With 14 jumping efforts and a time allowed of 80 seconds, 16 horse-and-rider combinations jumped clear. As the ninth pair in the ring, Israeli Olympian Daniel Bluman and the 2012 Selle Francais gelding Cachemire de Braize (Quality Touch x Pashmina De Braize/Jaguar Mail), owned by Over the Top Stables LLC, breezed around the track in 66.550 seconds. Bluman asked his mount to gallop forward on the bending line between fences eight and nine and Cachemire responded by leaving a stride out.
Bluman said the gelding has been home relaxing since his win in the $77,300 FEI CSI2* 1.45m Grand Prix presented by Arthramid Vet during TerraNova Hunter/Jumper Week 1 in February. “He’s fast and he’s careful. He tries to be very competitive,” he said. “Today’s course was a good course, a very nice, flowing course for the horses to get a nice round before tomorrow’s grand prix, which for sure will be much more technical and bigger. I think he [Garcia, course designer] does a great job and we’re very happy to be here again.
“I’ve gotten an A for attendance, I’ve been here every week of competition and I will be here next week also. Clearly, I like it and I enjoy being here. Facilities are great, management is great and it’s really fun to be here,” Bluman said.
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