'Thrills and Spills' Come to Rarefied Horse Set

Destination Known galloped across the wide field with Allison Springer, 32, on its back, through the water and over jumps. A standard event in the horse world, except for the crowd clad in her team color waving orange pompoms and the song "Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy" blaring from the speakers.

DerbyCross isn't conservative or traditional or anything else you might associate with horse events. The year-old sport, which combines cross-country racing with show jumping, incorporates rock music and cheering crowds. All in two hours -- regular horse events take three days.

"I think it is a bit more high-energy than just regular cross-country because people are free to scream and get involved," said Clark Montgomery, 26, captain of last year's winning DerbyCross team. "It's not that quiet or laid back. We are not looking to go out there and be subdued and make it look pretty."

Riders from around the world arrived yesterday at Great Meadow in The Plains, home of the Virginia Gold Cup, to compete in the new sport, which started in Northern Virginia and is trying to make horse competitions more spectator-friendly.

About two years ago, three Northern Virginia riders were looking for a way to make the sport they love more interesting to new fans. Over dinner and red wine, Sinead Halpin, 25, Rebecca Howard, 27, and Dana Voorhees, 42, considered the problems with viewing and understanding traditional horse events that span three days and include cross-country, show jumping and dressage.

Cross-country courses can span miles, and fans have to crowd around certain jumps to see some action. Scoring for show jumps can be confusing for people new to the sport, and dressage, or ballet on horseback, is more quiet and elegant than quick and exciting.

So the trio eliminated the dressage, simplified the scoring, made the field smaller and limited the event to two hours. For fun, they added rock music for a sound track.

"The hardest part of [DerbyCross] is they have to go fast and be bold, and then they have to come in and be careful and sharp," Halpin said. In three-day competitions, usually "they have a day to recover, and we ask them to do it in eight strides."

DerbyCross can be far from elegant. Each team of four has a polo player, who is not accustomed to jumping, traversing water hazards and memorizing courses.

"It's very hard for us to jump and do all that kind of stuff and not get lost on the course," said polo player John Gobin, 37. "You get nervous and you kind of go blank."

One professional polo player, Doug Barnes, 33, was so unfamiliar with jumps that last year he joined a starter class with 10-year-olds. At last year's DerbyCross, he was so nervous he got sick the morning of the competition.

"It was the most nervous I have ever been," Barnes said. But he went on to get the best time of all the competitors.

The DerbyCross is similar to indoor competitions in Europe called Darbys, where riders race while doing jumps, but the fields are smaller and laid out differently and riders don't have to deal with uneven footing on the field.

Competitors from as far as New Zealand and Argentina came to the Fauquier County field to compete for the $10,000 top prize. Many of the riders have either competed in the Olympics or won awards in international competition. Part of the draw for riders is the course, which was created by David O'Connor, winner of a gold medal in equestrian events at the Sydney Olympics.

For Boyd Martin, 27, a professional rider who moved to Virginia at the beginning of the year from Australia, the event is more exciting than some of the other events in which he competes.

"There is a very high chance of thrills and spills," Martin said.