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By Betsy Parker
Rappahannock News Staff Writer
Making something new with a good oldfashioned remix, area event riders Dana Voorhees, Rebecca Howard and Sinead Halpin offer the inaugural DerbyCross on July 29 at Great Meadow in The Plains.
The new sport marries the speed of horse racing, the technical and bold jumping of the cross-country phase of three-day eventing, and the precision and ability of show jumping with a team twist: Teams of four riders will compete in the ground-breaking event that organizers hope will take off as the newest entry in a crop of spectator-friendly horse sports.
The trio conceived and developed DerbyCross, with help from Great Meadow Polo director Juan Salinas Bentley.
“The course is a strategically designed track combining cross-country questions, such as ditches, logs and water, with show jumps,” said Howard, an advanced level event rider who trains with David and Karen O’Connor in The Plains. “It will ask the horses to be brave over cross-country fences, then careful over show jumps, against the clock.”
The course, expected to take about five minutes to complete, with around 25 jumping efforts, will be set up in the homestretch portion of Great Meadow under the Member’s Hill area.
Five teams of four are slated to compete. Team captains include eventers Canadian rider Kelli Temple, Virginia native Sara Kozumplik Dirks, Allison Springer, Clark Montgomery and Sydney Olympic medalist Nina Fout.
Each team will include riders handpicked by the captain, with one catch: One polo player will join each team. For the event riders, fences will be set at 3 feet, 9 inches - intermediate level eventing height. For the polo pros, less experienced in jumping, fences will be set
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