Author: Silver Oak Jumper Tournament

That’s a wrap for the third day of world class competition at Silver Oak in Traverse City’s Flintfields Horse Park. The first feature event from today actually took place just before the Welcome Stakes, and it was the Rood&Riddle 1.30m Open class. Rood&Riddle Equine Hospital has been a phenomenal sponsor for Silver Oak, we love when they help us create purse classes for all our riders, professional or amateur. Elise Oken aboard her mount Iraola del Maset strode into victory with an impressive ride leading by several seconds after a speedy jump off.

The next class of the morning we really kicked off the first of our big prize classes with the $36,600 GGT Welcome Stakes, which boasted an incredible one hundred and seven riders!! Of course the class was so large that the judges and coordinators ran a California split and thus we had two winners and double the purse! Shane Sweetnam strode to victory for his section while Natalie Dean and her mount Don’s Diamant also took home the blue for her respective section. There’s hardly a better example of horses as the great equalizers of our sport than Sweetnam  this win we saw today! Of course the GGT footing used in the International arena, and all of the arenas at Flintfields, held up with ease and provided the perfect environment for a truly gasp-worthy number of competitors to test their skill.

Today we have seen some invigorating competition, and the momentum was far from letting up after the Welcome Stakes. This held especially true for one of our featured classes today, the Low Amateur Owners, which was sponsored by one of our fantastic partners Horseworks Insurance Specialists. As real horse people, familiar with the industry, they are an excellent choice to help find coverage that protect and best fits the needs of you, your dogs and horses, and your business. The winner, Jorge Gomez aboard Kyrol was understandably over the moon with their victory and had nothing but great things to say about the excitement of a great sponsored event. We are so grateful to Horseworks for their continued support to help create classes like this for riders to participate in, they have been supporters of Silver Oak for the last several years now as well, and we look forward to continue that relationship for years to come.

This jumper tournament is so fortunate for all of the sponsors we partner with to help bring this show to the highest tier for all levels of riding in the sport of showjumping. We plan to continue to deliver just that for the rest of the weekend, with several more feature classes including the Babington Benefit Classic and the $75,000 Agero Grand Prix.