As they say, if you build it, they will come. Over a decade ago, Jeff Brandmaier had the vision to expand the Knightwood Hunter Derby (a class in honour of his wife Muffie Guthrie’s mother Lorna – a formidable horsewoman herself) into a national series. The classes are a welcome throwback to the old days of hunters where the classes were more exciting than ‘around the ring and across the diagonal’ and offer higher jumps for extra points, handy options, and fun tailgate parties.
Brandmaier, Guthrie and Cawthra Burns enlisted the help of show managers, rule makers and provincial federations coast-to-coast to produce and promote the class into the burgeoning series it is today spanning five provinces and offering hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual prize money and a National final at the Royal (2020 is the 10th anniversary).
The real influence of this series can be seen by the increasingly elevated level of horsepower being bred, developed and acquired in Canadian hunters today. This is the only class that sees juniors, amateurs and professionals competing on a level playing field (in Ontario that is usually over a course of beautiful jumps that Brandmaier himself has built).