It's Time For Bromont and Announcing a New Five Star Rider!

Montreal, Quebec is the site of the Bromont CCI being held this week. It was the location for the equestrian events from the 1976 Montreal Olympics where US rider Tad Coffin won the individual and team eventing gold medal on Bally Cor. It was also where parts of the movie International Velvet were filmed in 1978 and if you were a horse crazy kid back then like I was you were a fan of Tad Coffin and hung on every stride of International Velvet!

With so much history it's no wonder so many eventing riders dream of competing there. Five Star rider Doug Payne is competing on his Pan Am Games hopeful, Camerlingo and they are currently in second place in the one star, a mere four points off the lead. Doug uses Five Star bridles on all of his horses and when I say he uses them, he really uses them!

Speaking of Canada and eventing, we have a new Five Star sponsored rider to announce! Five Star Tack is pleased to announce that Canadian eventing rider Rebecca Howard is now a Five Star rider. Rebecca is a very accomplished and successful competitor. Riding Riddle Master she competed as an individual at last year's World Equestrian Games and finished tenth at this year's Rolex Kentucky 4 Star. She is riding Roquefort "Rocky" in the 2 Star at Bromont and is leading after dressage! She and Rocky have had a "rocky" couple of years. The pair suffered a fall at the beginning of 2010 and Rebecca was injured and out of the tack for awhile. They are making up for that down time with a wire to wire win in last month's Jersey Fresh 2 Star. She and Rocky are on the fast track to the Pan Am Games and we wish them the best of luck on their journey!

Rebecca is the head trainer at The Fork Fam in North Carolina, site of The Fork CIC and I can't think of a nicer place to train out of! She has a number of students who have gone on to have successful eventing careers of their own including Canadian rider Stephanie Rhodes - Bosch. She also has a number of horses she is bringing along. After her two star win at Jersey she was at the Virginia Horse Trials competing her novice level horses. Rebecca's long term goal is to represent Canada at the 2012 London Olympics. Competing at Bromont was a dream of Rebecca's when she was growing up in Canada as shown by this video courtesy of Samantha Clark of Eventing Nation.



This is Rebecca's winning dressage test from yesterday.


We wish Rebecca and Doug a successful weekend at Bromont!