”I don`t like to watch,” says Cyd DellaRippa, when her daughter Lara practices the sport in which she is a gold medalist. ”I`ve often asked her,
`Why don`t you take up marbles or bowling or badminton?` ” Her father, Jack, an airline pilot, puts his hands over his eyes when she`s on course.
Lara DellaRippa, 19, of far west suburban Wayne, is aware of her parents` aversion to her activities, but it hasn`t stopped her. She is one of the most talented young equestrians in the Midwest in a demanding, dangerous discipline called combined training-also known as three-day eventing or ”the military”- the last because of its origins as the test of an officer`s cavalry horse.
Eventing is considered the most complete test of horse and rider because it tests the horse`s obedience and suppleness on the flat in dressage
(difficult steps and gaits controlled by very slight back and leg movements of the rider); his courage, endurance and jumping ability galloping full out on a cross-country course with formidable natural obstacles such as banks, ditches and water; and finally, a stadium course to show the horse is still obedient after the all-out test on cross-country.
The focus of the equestrian world will turn to Tempel Farms in Wadsworth, Ill., Aug. 14-19 as the best of North America`s young equestrians, aged 16 to 21, demonstrate their skills in the annual international-level North American Young Riders` Championships.
As last year`s gold medalist in eventing, DellaRippa will be the defending champion.
More than 100 riders from Canada, Bermuda, Mexico, Guatemala, Puerto Rico and the U.S. will gather to compete in all Olympic disciplines of dressage, eventing and show jumping.
All riders who have been selected will have passed through a series of selection trials in their respective disciplines before making their teams.
DellaRippa represents the Midwest`s Area IV, one of the eight areas into which the U.S. is divided.
Fourth go-round
This is DellaRippa`s fourth Young Rider`s competition; the first was in 1987 in Boston where her team ended up fourth.
”I had a fall on cross-country, a stupid fall,” she says, explaining that year`s fiasco. ”I didn`t end up anywhere. I just made a stupid mistake. My horse didn`t know what I wanted.”
DellaRippa, small and slender with long brunette hair, is dressed in a T- shirt and shorts as she stands in the aisle of her little two-horse barn in Wayne. At 8 a.m. on a humid summer morning, she has just tidied up the barn.
In `87 she rode C`est Magie, or Domino as he is called, a 15-year-old thoroughbred gelding she has owned for the last four years.
”I had only done one intermediate (events are divided according to difficulty into novice, preliminary, intermediate and advanced) before that event in Boston. Domino had gotten sick that summer. We were very green,” she says.
In `88, trying again with Domino at the Young Riders competition held in Wadsworth, she placed 8th individually, though her own team was the gold medal team.
”In `89, I won the individual gold medal with Saxon; the team won a gold medal,” she says. Saxon is her other horse, an 8-year-old Cleveland Bay/
English thoroughbred cross from England she has owned two years. Saxon is recovering from pneumonia, so DellaRippa will ride Domino this year in the Young Riders competition.
Both of DellaRippa`s horses were found by her mentor, Torrance Watkins of Virginia, a member of the U.S. equestrian team`s gold-medal-winning squad in the `84 Olympics; Watkins placed fourth individually.
Watkins found Saxon in England, when he was only 3, DellaRippa explains, and believed he had potential. She sold him, and Saxon ended up in the stables of Ralph Hill, another local eventing star. At the time DellaRippa was Hill`s working student (one who toils in exchange for lessons) and she bought Saxon in October 1987.
Watkins found Domino in a clinic in Texas, says DellaRippa. ”I went out to Virginia to look at her farm and I rode him the whole weekend. I went out a couple more times and begged and pleaded with my dad to buy him.” She had to sell the gelded quarter horse she was then riding to afford him.
Not a cheap sport
The price of an eventing horse ranges from under $5,000 for a young one with no training, to somewhere between $20,000 and $50,000 for one that`s going well at preliminary level and seems to have potential for going on, Della Rippa says: ”If you want an advanced horse that`s going well, you can pay $100,000. I picked an expensive habit.”
DellaRippa has been ”crazy about horses” since she was a child. When she was 7, she learned that eight-week riding lessons were offered through the park district at a nearby livery stable.
”My dad told me if I was going to take lessons, I had to take English. That was OK with me. The eight weeks went on to 16 weeks and they kept going and going. They went on for a year and a half.”
Pat Mallady, an instructor at North Wayne Stables, taught DellaRippa basic dressage, she says: ”I took lessons with her until I went out to Torrance`s in `86.” She met Watkins in `84, when the Olympic medalist came to a Chicago stable to give a clinic.
DellaRippa got her basic experience in all the novice and training events in this area, in Wisconsin and in Indiana up until `86, she says.
”I kept doing all (Watkins`) clinics. One winter she said she thought I had potential to go on, but she didn`t think my horse could go on. She asked me if I wanted to be a working student for that summer of `86. That was the first year I did Radnor and Chesterland,” she says, mentioning two of the country`s biggest three-day events, both in Pennsylvania.
”We won the Chesterland Preliminary with Domino. There were a lot of big-time people there,” DellaRippa says. It was intimidating to her to compete on the East Coast against outstanding adult riders.
”At first I used to think, `I`m in an event with Michael Plumb` (one of the sport`s great stars who has represented the U.S. successfully in a number of international competitions), and I almost died. I`d be riding against all the big names with their young horses. But you get used to it and they become just another competitor.”
DellaRippa credits her family`s help in keeping her astride in her sport: ”My parents are very supportive. My dad is a pilot for United, so he has a hard time getting the time off, but he`s there whenever he can. I know financially I could never do this alone. I think everyone needs someone out there supporting them.”
Social life is possible
As for fitting in school and social life with horses, she says, ”The end of the event season is in October. If you budget your time, you can go out with your friends. You just have to decide if it`s worth it to you. In `86 I wound up going to Chesterland instead of homecoming,” she says with a smile. ”It is hard; people don`t understand why you like these big animals, spend so much money, and run and jump over big things that could kill you. Your really good friends understand.”
Being involved in such a demanding sport ”teaches you responsibility, because you can`t just say, `Oh, I`m not going to ride him today.` He has to be worked enough to be fit. You could really hurt him if he`s not in condition. And you have to spend a lot of time practicing; that`s the only way you`re going to get better.
”I think it really helps you to mature. Things I learned three or four years ago, people my age are learning just now.”
She is the sole caretaker of her horses; they live in a garage-sized two- horse stable in back of her parents` house.
”I was born in Elgin,” says DellaRippa. ”We`ve only lived here in Wayne two years. My parents wanted to move and they figured we were so into this, we might as well buy a place with a barn.
”Boarding is nice, but you never find a place where everything is the way you want. If something goes wrong here, I have no one to blame but myself.”
Demanding dressage
As for dressage, which young people find difficult to focus on
because of the infinite attention to detail it demands in the making of exact figures, similar to figure skating, she says, ”When you first start into eventing it is like, `Oh, dressage, the boring stuff.` ”
She currently works with a local dressage instructor, Jeanne Dake, trailering her horse a half hour to Dassenbrook Stables in Elburn, Ill., for lessons. ”It`s getting to be more fun, now that things are starting to come together. It helps everything else,” she says of this obedience-demanding discipline.
She still works with Watkins here and in Virginia.
”Torrance seems to have a sixth sense. You can do the slightest thing and you don`t even know you did it. Your horse will jump to the left and twist, and she`ll know exactly what you did to cause it. You`re thinking, `How did she know?` ”
DellaRippa will enroll this fall at the University of Delaware where she will study international business and be closer to Watkins to continue working with her.
Once a week DellaRippa jumps with Lisa Anderson, the resident instructor at Lamplight Stables in Wayne. Anderson was the leading USCTA Area IV rider in 1989, ranking sixth overall in the United States, and is the coach for Area IV`s Young Riders team, which also includes Kelly Jolston, from Rockford, Leann Sidlund and Lucinda Vette, both from Wisconsin.
Having worked with DellaRippa on and off for three years, Anderson finds her ”an excellent student” and a modest one, giving credit to her horses when they win, taking the blame when there`s a mistake, and making every effort to make the correction.
”She has brought her horses along herself,” Anderson says. ”They are both difficult to ride, but so is any superhorse. If she keeps them sound and well, she will continue to go on.”
DellaRippa has been hurt herself only once. ”Last spring I fell and broke my nose at High Meadows in Vienna, Ill.,” she says.
”Yeah, I know I could be seriously hurt or even killed, but it never really occurs to me `It could happen to you.` Especially when you are going on cross-country, you don`t think about it. You think about it a lot when it happens to somebody else.”
A reminder of the danger involved is that Young Riders` coach Anderson had a steel plate surgically inserted in her neck and wore a brace resembling a steel cage for several months after an accident last November in which she nearly broke her neck in Nashville. Her horse had taken an extra stride before a fence and spun in the air. Anderson flew into the air and landed on her neck.
Courage and trust
”She is absolutely brave,” Anderson says of DellaRippa. ”I think that she really trusts her horses and that`s the main thing. She knows as well as anyone else that accidents can happen.
”It is very prestigious,” says Anderson of DellaRippa`s win of a gold medal at Young Riders. ”I think it opens the door for future international competition.”
How does it feel to be galloping full out on a cross-country course, jumping banks, ditches and an occasional obstacle that look as if a horse should use it as a stall rather than jump over it?
”The first couple jumps after you come out of the start box, you`re a little bit sticky,” says DellaRippa. ”Once you get going you feel like you could just jump anything; they could put a house in front of you and you would try. It takes a lot of concentration and you have to be really with your horse.
”You always have to be right on top of it. You can`t relax, and think,
`We just jumped that jump, now we`re OK.` There has to be a big trust between you and your horse. Say you`re jumping into a big pond of water, (your horse) can`t be going, `Well, are you sure you want to jump this?` (He has) to go, `All right, she said ”jump,” I`ll jump!`
”It`s hard to instill the courage in them through you. They have to like to do it.” she says.
She finds herself talking to her mount on course as if he`s a person:
”The next one`s going to be hard, you`d better whoa!”
Then she quietly adds something that every horse-lover knows: most human friendships can`t compare to the constancy of this four-legged beast.
”One thing you find out about your horse is he`s always there if you need him,” says DellaRippa. ”I think drugs and stuff are totally stupid, so it never crossed my mind doing that. As for alcohol, in high school your parents can never totally control you. I have too much respect for my horses and myself to do that to myself.”
Regarding her aspirations, she merely says, ”I would love to go over to England and watch some of the British riders, go to Badminton (the ultimate British three-day event) and see some of the greats.
”It`s fun,” she says of her sport. ”I don`t regret ever doing this. I still had fun in high school, went out with my friends and dated. (She graduated from Larkin High School in Elgin.) I think I had more of a good time because I had the best of both worlds.”
