Trailblazer Kara Chad of Canada and the exuberant, homebred mare Corinna Z, winners of Thursday’s 2* Qualifier, were quick across the ground and brave to the last fence on Peter Holmes’ short course, setting the time to beat at 35.66 seconds.

The time held until three horses later when Ireland’s Conor Swail and Clonterm Obolensky shaved nearly two seconds off the clock on 33.72. It looked good enough to take the red ribbon until the final pair entered the ring—Langmeier and Chadina—snatched the win from Swail. The dainty chestnut mare zipped around to stop the clock five tenths of a second faster, securing victory on a time of 33.16.

Swail finished second, with Elisa Broz (USA) rounding out the top three.

Langmeier commented on her partner of four years, “I know my mare very well. She’s very fast, so I know that in some places I can take my time and others I can kind of risk it. She turns very fast and she’s so efficient. I knew where I could kind of of edge out Conor a little bit.”

Chadina, a 12-year-old Oldenburg mare, is no stranger to the victory gallop, having earned 13 podium finishes in international competition, including five wins—three over 1.50m heights (Jumpr stats). Developed by Langmeier since age 8, the mare has exceeded all expectations.

“The first time I sat on her, to be honest, I thought she was going to be a nice 1.40m, 1.45m horse. I was just coming out of college and I thought she was a nice, simple ride. And she’s just kind of taken off.”

As has Langmeier, who set a goal to compete in the CSIO4* Nations Cup at tbird this year on Mimosa vd Rollebeek. “I’ve tried to get really consistent at that [1.55m] height, and I think it helped,” she continued. “I went to the World Cup Finals this year for the first time, so my horse is very well seasoned. She has all the scope in the world, so she’s a great horse to do all these things on.”

The annual class doubles as a fundraiser for Uryadi’s Village, a non-profit organization founded by retired Irish team member Jennifer Crooks and named after her grand prix horse Uryadi.

“The mission of Uryadi’s Village is to create a self-sustaining village for orphaned children where the children live in a family-style environment with a house mother and grow up like other kids and have clean water, good sanitation, medical care. We have a focus on kids with developmental special needs and so the therapeutic and medical care is really tailored to each child,” shared Crooks.

Now in its eleventh year, Crooks first launched the initiative at tbird. That first year they raised $16,000, the seed money that started the organization. This year, they raised over $50,000.

She continued, “We started with 13 kids, and now we’re 100 kids. I did not imagine that it would become what it has. We started in this little cement compound in the middle of Soddo, and now we are on a hillside, and we have five acres, and it’s a beautiful campus where kids can run through the bushes, and play with the horses, and play with chickens, and just it’s just a great place to grow up now.”

The need for Uryadi’s Village has never been more urgent, she added. In the last month, the unexpected collapse of the humanitarian aid sector in Africa has forced many organizations to close their doors. “Ethiopia was the largest recipient of USAID funding, hundreds of millions of dollars, and that all disappeared in a week,” she said. “Where we are fortunate enough not to be funded by USAID, all of the organizations around us that are, are closing, so the need is astronomical.”