America’s Allison Springer has been a constant presence on the international eventing circuit for decades, as a rider, trainer, coach and trailblazer. She was the first competitor to don an approved riding helmet instead of a top hat in the dressage phase of an eventing competition at Kentucky (and she had to ask permission to do it!) She has multiple four-star short wins to her credit, but until today, she had yet to add CCI4*-L winner to her resume.
Allison Springer and No May Moon won the marquee CCI4*-L division. (Cealy Tetley Photo)
Springer rode Nancy Winter’s No May Moon to the win in the MARS Bromont CCI4*-L persistently and consistently climbing from third after dressage, to second after an incredibly challenging cross-country day, and finally with one of just three double-clean rounds in the show jumping they emerged victorious on a combined final score of 46.1 penalties. Canada’s Waylon Roberts and OKE Ruby R had an unfortunate rail down to lose the win, but were able to hold it to four faults to finish second on a score of 50.0. America’s Boyd Martin and Miss Lulu Herself posted one of the second double-clean rounds Sunday to finish in third on a score of 50.7. Interestingly, the top three horses in the 4*-L were the only three mares in the class.
“I think it’s like anything – you get experience by potentially not doing it right in the past,” Allison laughed. “I’ve had a couple of careful horses that were great at the three-star level and started out great Advanced but were a little too careful, so I learned from that and I just really wanted ‘Mayzie’ to tell me every step of the way.”