Better than gold
Bryna Closson jumps her Irish-bred gelding Rip Tide over a rail at Larkspur Farm in January. Closson and Rip Tide won a segment of a premier show-jumping competition Sept. 5 in Calgary, defeating Olympic gold medalist Eric Lamaze. Garrett Cheen file photo/Daily Inter Lake
Whitefish rider jumps ahead of Olympic champion
A talented Whitefish horsewoman outperformed her sport?s top-ranked Olympian to win her division in the world?s No. 1 show-jumping competition in Calgary on Sept. 5.
Bryna Closson, a 24-year-old show jumper and horse trainer, beat out Eric Lamaze to capture the $25,000 Phillips, Hager and North Cup for the 1.40-meter event of the Masters Tournament at Spruce Meadows.
Lamaze, 40, last month won an Olympic gold medal for Canada in individual show jumping in Beijing.
Closson rode her Irish-bred gelding Rip Tide, turning in a time of 35.550 seconds in the jump-off for first place. During the round she drew four faults, or point deductions. Lamaze ran the course in 38.610 seconds with eight faults.
?I did my round first and knocked down a rail,? accounting for the four faults, Closson said Wednesday. ?I thought, ?Well, I just opened the door for him to win.? ? Then he ended up with two rails.?
Both of them, she said, ran very good rounds.
?Eric was super nice,? Closson said of their conversation after the event. ?I said, ?Thanks for letting me win.? He was very complimentary and congratulated me.?
Lamaze and Closson were the only competitors to run clean qualifying rounds within the allowed time, out of a field of 40-some entrants from around the world.
Lamaze rode Take Off, a Dutch Warmblood mare, but won his Olympic gold on a different horse.
The 1.40-meter event is one division below what the show?s organizers classify as international divisions, the 1.50-meter and 1.60-meter events. Rails in the 1.40-meter division are 4 feet 7 inches high.
Closson also performed well on a second horse in the Masters Tournament?s 1.20-meter jump events. She and her horse, Quiver, placed fourth on the first day, 12th on the second day and second on the third and final day. With rails 3 feet 11 inches high, the 1.20-meter is the Masters? lowest competition.
Her father, Sutton Finch, rode his own horse to a sixth-place finish in the 1.30-meter event at the Masters Tournament.
The family opened Larkspur Farm north of Kalispell in January this year to board horses and train area riders for show-jumping events.
Although Closson and her family have been competing in Spruce Meadows? summer and indoor shows for the past 10 years, this is only the third time she has competed in the prestigious Masters Tournament.
?The Masters is their biggest show up there,? she said. ?For the past four or five years, I think, it has been ranked the No. 1 show-jumping show in the world.?
Competitors from around the world fly in their horses for the tournament. Entrants from the United States, Guatemala, Mexico and across Canada were listed in the 1.20-meter division.
Closson said 63,000 people were at the Masters Tournament on Saturday and Sunday, when the United States won the two days of international division competition. Some 300 or 400 horses were entered in all the week?s events, she estimated.
?It?s been a good show season,? Closson said. ?My horse [Rip Tide] just keeps getting better. At Vancouver [British Columbia] we did well in some of the meter-50 shows.
?This fall we may go to California to try some World Cup qualifiers, just to start getting some practice,? Closson said. ?We don?t expect to actually qualify, we?ll just get some practice.?
Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com