It was a dark and stormy night, really it was! One horse, Leslie Howard’s Midnight Hour remained in the $5,000 Capitol City Classic at the Pennsylvania National Horse Show. The lead had been set early. Seconds and split seconds separated the top five, until Midnight Hour struck.
“He is a very fast horse,” said Howard, “He’s light. He’s quick covering the ground and in the air. The course was straight forward. My plan was to take the inside track and turn sharper than everyone else.” That’s just what they did. Midnight Hour’s time 29.383, was more than a second faster than Jill Henselwood’s Black Ice and almost two seconds less than Laura Chapot on Samantha.
Asked if going last helped, Howard admitted she hadn’t watched any of the other rounds. “I just rode to my plan.”
Although this horse was in her barn in Darien, CT for years, Howard has only shown him the past six months. They worked well in the unique two phase class. The first part of the course is the Power phase. If the horse successfully clears all jumps, he proceeds into the Speed phase, an instantaneous jump-off .
Samantha with Chapot went fifth in the field of 27 and set an expected blistering pace. Henselwood came two horses later and set the clock back further. Only a dozen horses graduated from the Power phase to Speed and it was looking as if the early riders were going to run away with the victory.
This class marks the return of the Open Jumpers and World Cup riders to Harrisburg. Earlier in the day, 34 horses took up the $5,000 Keystone Speed Challenge. In this class, faults for rails down, are converted to time penalties, making speed the currency of the class.
Molly Ashe aboard Lutopia was the runaway winner. Their time of 43.668 seconds was a full seconds faster than Beezie Madden and Conquest II.
“Lutopia is pretty quick,” said Ashe “She’s very hard to beat when she’s on. She doesn’t slow down in the air.” Ashe won the $65,000 Budweiser Grand Prix de Penn National in 2003 and this was her first time indoors since last year’s Grand Prix.
“She gets a little claustrophobic inside, gets going too fast. If I don’t make a mistake and she doesn’t dart ahead of me, then,” she smiled, “we’re alright. My plan was to go faster than anyone else and we did.”
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