[Archived] “The Stable View” Fall 2016 Newsletter

Pavilion Update

As many of you are aware we are about to break ground in terms of the building of a Pavilion. The size is to be 90’ X 45’. It will be on three floors with the ground floor accommodating offices, a Kitchen, IT, Storage and a Mechanical Room. Upstairs the entire space will be open and will be capable of being divided into two separate rooms. This will allow for flexibility of use including VIP’s, Owners, Club Members and Volunteers in terms of Equestrian activities, also for Weddings, Corporate Retreats and Family Reunions. It will also be available as a Conference Center. An elevator will connect the two floors with the third floor holding space for commentators, a camera crew and their associated IT. The building will be “green” with waterless toilets, reflective glass and will be heavily insulated. By way of homework for this project, we have over the past three years visited 20 venues and have decided that at Stable View, for many reasons that a fixed structure would be preferable to a tent. The most important being that we wish to use the structure year round. The outside will complement the existing architecture on the property and it will also fit in with the “separate workstation” approach that we have adopted. Inside there will be ‘state of the art’ technology that will facilitate video conferencing also access to the Internet. The building will have its own wi-fi and all areas will have charging stations. It’s estimated that the building will take between nine months and a year to complete. The positioning of the Pavilion will be between the Outdoor Arena and the new Derby Field. The viewing area will be 15′ above the surrounding area and there will be a tunnel from the front (Outdoor Arena) to the back (Derby Field). The tunnel will have a glass ceiling so that horses can be viewed from the second floor during events. We hope to start building the Pavilion immediately after the Advanced HT on 1st and 2nd October.

Advanced comes to Aiken

On October 1st & 2nd Stable View will be hosting their recognized horse trials. This horse trials is especially exciting as it will be Aiken’s first ever Advanced event. The Advanced and prelim divisions will run Saturday while the Training through Beginner Novice divisions will run Sunday. There will be up to $75,000 prize money awarded with $60,000 going towards the Advanced and $15,000 to Prelim through Beginner Novice. Join us for the Advanced Course Ribbon Cutting Ceremony to celebrate the opening of the new Advanced course. Competitors make sure not to miss the competitor’s party!
The event will be sure to have something for everyone as it will host an Oktoberfest theme. Come watch Olympians such as Boyd Martin and Phillip Dutton tackle the new Advanced course. As well as other top riders such as Clayton Fredricks and Leslie Law. Equestrians should make sure to join Captain Mark Phillips and Boyd Martin on the xc course walk being offered as well as the stadium course walk with Richard Jeffery. We ask for a $10 donation to the Cumbee Center to Assist Abused Persons. In order to miss none of the action, the event will be live streamed as well. Spectators are encouraged, non-equestrians and equestrians. Entrance is free of charge and there will be vendors and concession as well as a tailgate competition. Additionally there will be a Happy 2 Hours of tasting held both days. Come sample free tastings from places such as the Carolina Moonshine Distillery and River Rat Brewery. Aiken Horsepower will also be at the event hosting an Antique Car Show with 200 cars. Spectators will be asked to judge and rank the top three vehicles! Also, make sure to sign up for the giant Jenga competition!
If you would like to be a part of the first ever Advanced in Aiken consider volunteering for the event! There are plenty of jobs that need to be covered and many do not require any equestrian experience.

Contact: Volunteer Coordinator-Rebecca Guiterriez at svvc@stableviewfarm.com

Holly Spencer earning USDF Gold Medal at Stable View

Aiken local Holly Spencer recently accomplished a long time dream of earning her USDF Gold Medal. She received her final score towards the medal at one of the newly introduced Wednesday Recognized Dressage Shows held at Stable View. Her mount for her final score was her mare named Festina. She is a 13 year old Danish Warmblood mare that Holly bought as a four year old from her breeders, Karen and Andreas Seemann in Denmark. When Holly bought Festina, she only had about 90 days of training. The pair came up through the levels together with the help of their trainer, Amy McElroy. She also regularly rides in clinics with Gunnar Ostergaard, who introduced Holly to the breeders of Festina.

However, Holly says the journey to the medal was quite a long one as it started in the early 90s. While Holly has ridden all her life, she spent the childhood years of her riding career on ponies and did not show until college. She then fell in love with eventing, where she competed through prelim. Her switch to dressage began with a little homebred TB who was very sweet but not the fanciest mover. Due to soundness issues, jumping was limited and therefore Holly began taking dressage lessons from Amy. Holly then began to show him in dressage and was competitive through Second Level. In fact she received her First and Second Level scores towards her Bronze Medal on him.

While working towards her Bronze, Holly received a retired racehorse that much preferred being a dressage horse. She brought him through the levels from training to third level and received her Third Level score to receive her Bronze. This horse also gave her the Fourth Level and PSG scores for the Silver Medal and then helped Holly to the Intermediare scores which are the first half of the Gold Medal.

Despite all the great things this horse did for Holly, he was not going to be a Grand Prix horse. This is when Holly began doing some Freestyles with him and started the process of saving towards another horse. He is now 31 and still living the good life with Holly. In 2007 Holly bought her current Grand Prix mount Festina. Holly has successfully brought the mare up the levels from Training to Grand Prix but says they still have some work to do to get their performance in the ring where Holly wants it. Holly says the constant progression is “what dressage is all about”.

Holly is thankful for having the opportunity to ride such good horses and have such a great trainer like Amy! She loved receiving her last Grand Prix score at Stable View as she states “It’s such a lovely place, not only the facility but the site as well”. She acknowledges that “the horses love the footing and the riders love the big airy covered arena to warm up in! The barns are beautiful and easy to work in, the day parking has shade and easy access to water and wash racks. I hope there are many more dressage shows here for us to enjoy”.

Improving Stable View with help from You

As many of you know Stable View takes great pride in getting and responding back to feedback from its competitors and volunteers. After each event a survey is sent to those who participated to find out what was good about the event and areas of improvement. Many of the suggestions for improvement have been addressed for each type of event Stable View hosts.

For the ‘Under the Stars’ Jumper Series, Stable View made sure to keep the start time at 3:00pm per request and continued the series year round! Warm up was tight sharing with the course in the covered arena therefore the outdoor was opened for warm-up as well. A loud speaker was also added in the warm-up and parking area to help competitors better hear the announcements. An exciting future improvement will be that starting in 2017 there will be year-end awards for the “Under the Stars” Jumper series. So make sure to come out to each show to tally up points for some great prizes!

The “Under the Stars” Dressage series is a new series for Stable View but has so far been very successful. However, we have already started making improvements to make it even better. The shows will continue to be one-day Wednesday shows with the intention to add more recognized. In the future the classes will be split into AA, J/YR and Open for ribbon placings. For the hot summer months we made warm-up in the covered arena vs. the outdoor and designating a lunging area is in the works.

There have been many changes in order to improve the recognized horse trials as well. The horse trial divisions will also be split into AA, J/YR and Open instead of one large division. A mobile horse show office was purchased and placed in the trailer parking area. This is a more convenient location for the competitors. Many improvements have been made to better warm up for the horse trials. The dressage fields have been extended to provide more warm-up. The XC warm up has been moved up the gallop track. However, this is still not the ideal size so there are plans for clearing land to the right of the gallop for more warm up space.
Stable View is always evolving and improving to better the experience of its competitors and volunteers. The survey responses are a great tool to hear your voice and make necessary improvements. Stable View is looking forward to seeing the new improvements in action throughout the rest of the 2016 competition year.

Featured Sponsor- Equiterra Properties, LLC

Equiterra Properties, LLC, began because of owner, Sharon Anderson’s, love for riding and of her interest in the horse industry. She had a vision to create a quiet, natural setting where homeowners could live and enjoy their horses with other like-minded equestrians. In 2003, Shaon and her husband took a trip to Aiken to find personal land for their future retirement.When in Aiken their plan changed when they found a beautiful 246 acre parcel of land on the Aiken/Edgefield county line and had a vision of creating an Equestrian Subdivision. Ground broke for a road and 22 lots in 2004 and over half the lots were sold before the road was completed.

Currently, they continue to market the remaining lots in Spring Meadows Equestrian Subdivision. They also develop other small horse properties when the opportunity arises. Spring Meadows Equestrian Subdivision is located only 6 miles from Stable View Farm, which makes it a great location for equestrians to buy property and stay connected with all the events at Stable View. Spring Meadows contains a 13 acre common riding area with stadium and cross country jumps, as well as common riding/walking trails. Sharon enjoys sponsoring Stable View “because of all the exciting shows and events that go on there”.

Featured Volunteer-Christine Watanabe

Christine’s first exposure with horses was at a very young age and quite a funny one at that! Her next door neighbor had a horse and when her dad held her up to see it, she was bitten, literally! She started riding at The New Town and Country Stables in Waimanalo, HI. This is actually the stable where Olympic Dressage team member Ali Brock started riding! Christine purchased her first horse, EZ, in 1994. In 2000 she relocated to the Dallas-Fort Worth area and unfortunately had to sell EZ. She was lucky that EZ’s new owner eventually moved from Hawaii to Oklahoma and brought EZ with her! He ended up just a couple hour drive from Christine! Currently Christine owns a horse named Westwind that she purchased in 2006. In 2009 Westwind moved to Aiken with Christine’s trainer and Christine followed a year later. Other than riding her horse, Christine’s involvement with horses includes scribing at Stable View as well at Kay Whitlock’s dressage shows and driving for CDE. When she is not with horses, she enjoys reading and playing video games!