Beth Underhill of Schomberg, ON, won the $50,000 Brookstreet Grand Prix on Sunday, July 16, at the Ottawa National Horse Show held at Wesley Clover Parks in Ottawa, ON.

A large crowd of spectators cheered on the 31 competitors who tackled the track set by 2016 Rio Olympic course designer Guilherme Jorge of Brazil. Seven of those would jump clear to advance to the tie-breaking jump-off.
When Underhill entered the ring as the final jump-off challenger, the time to beat of 39.93 seconds had been set by Amy Millar of Perth, ON, riding her 2016 Olympic Games partner, Heros. An Olympian herself, Underhill is no stranger to pressure and rose to the challenge, guiding Count Me In around the shortened jump-off track in a faster time of 39.23 seconds to seal the win.

“I’m fortunate that Count Me In is a very fast horse,” said Underhill of the ten-year-old Hanoverian gelding owned by Sandy Lupton. “Sometimes he’ll get a little too quick, and he’ll get a little ahead of himself. I took a couple of calculated risks today. There was an option to leave out a stride to the combination that I’d seen Amy and Jonathon (Millar) do, but I felt it was going to make my horse get too quick, so I was hoping that by being efficient everywhere else on the track, it would be enough to win. Fortunately for me, my strategy paid off.”

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