Twenty-year-old sensation Lucy Deslauriers rode her longtime partner, Hester, to top honors in Friday’s $75,000 Douglas Elliman Grand Prix Qualifier CSI4* Presented by LONGINES at the Hampton Classic.
Any rider wishing to compete in Sunday’s marquee event had to complete Friday’s class. As an added incentive, the starting order for Sunday’s $300,000 DOHA.INC Grand Prix is the reverse order of finish in the qualifier, putting Deslauriers in the highly favored final position in Sunday’s competition.
Of the massive 64-horse starting field, 16 were able to successfully navigate the first-round course set by 1976 Olympic Silver Medalist Michel Vaillancourt of Aiken, SC, to advance to the jump-off.
Deslauriers trains under two-time Olympic gold medalist McLain Ward, to whom she placed second in this class three years ago. She credits her coach for reminding her to stick with the plan and trust in her horse and herself.
“Hester felt really good and fresh coming into the first round,” said Deslauriers who recently rode on the U.S.’s Bronze Medal team at the Pan American Games in Lima, Peru. “The triple combination was a huge focus of mine as it caught a lot of people with the striding. The B to C elements were set on a very short distance. I really tried to stay patient.
“Before I went into the ring for the jump-off, McLain reminded me to stick to the plan. He said ‘Believe in it and know that it’s the winning plan. Don’t worry about what everyone else has done.’ I tried from start to finish to do that, to stay calm and patient, and not rush or get anxious trying to figure out if I was fast enough or not.
“I tried to keep a good pace and I had planned all my striding which was good, because I really had to stay focussed and straight. As it turns out, I didn’t quite get the angle to the second-to-last jump that I wanted, and I had seen a couple of people have that last jump down whether they did seven or eight strides to it. I was really just thinking about keeping that last jump up, hoping that when I did the eight strides it would be fast enough to win.”
Kocher and Carollo were fast in a time of 36.39, good enough for second place behind Deslauriers and Hester, and just in front of Canadians Amy Millar and Truman, who finished with a jump-off time of 36.93 seconds.