Welcome!
• Home • FAQs
• Site Map
Weather
• Contacts
Free Service Appreciation
Choose Pondside Web Productions for your hosting and web design needs!

Mary Jane King Wins Adult Amateur Hunter 50 & Over Championship at the Kentucky Spring Horse Show

May 9, 2009

Mary Jane King and Rigoletto won the Adult Amateur Hunter 50 & Over division championship at the Kentucky Spring Horse Show after two days of competition. Photo © 2009 Lauren Fisher
Mary Jane King and Rigoletto won the Adult Amateur Hunter 50 & Over division championship at the Kentucky Spring Horse Show after two days of competition.
Photo © 2009 Lauren Fisher

Lexington, KY --- Kentucky Horse Shows LLC, hosted its third day of competition for the 2009 Kentucky Spring Horse Show series today and awarded championship honors to Rigoletto and Mary Jane King for their two days of competition in the Adult Amateur Hunter 50 and Over division. The Kentucky Horse Park’s scenic facility will host two weeks of competition, the Kentucky Spring Horse Show, May 6-10, and the Kentucky Spring Classic, May 13-17.

This week’s hunter divisions are featured as World Champion Hunter Rider (WCHR) recognized competition with some of the best horses and riders in the country participating and this afternoon’s top horse and rider combination in the Adult Amateur Hunter 50 and Over division was Mary Jane King and Rigoletto. King, of St. Louis, MO, had two very successful days with her eight year-old gelding Rigoletto to win the division’s championship honors. Monopoly and Margaret O’Meara were awarded the reserve championship tricolor.

Mary Jane King just bought her horse Rigoletto in June of last year with the help of her trainer, Rick Fancher, who keeps her horses at his farm in Louisville, KY.

“I am really happy,” King smiled after her win today. “Rick has done a great job helping me with Rigoletto. Rick has gotten him straighter, gotten the lead changes easier, and just gotten him to canter forward a little more.”

She added, “He is very quiet, but it is a good thing, and he is very sweet. He licks and he nuzzles and he is just the sweetest horse, so he is fun.”

King started riding as a child, but then quit for nine years before she started riding again with Fancher. “I have been riding with him for thirteen years and he has found me some wonderful horses,” she said. “I have Lyrical, who is retired at 19 years old who was a wonderful horse for me. Then I have Acapella who is 16 years old and still doing the Amateur-Owners. It is the eleventh year that I have had him and I owe a lot of that to the care that they get at home; Rick takes really good care of them.”

King plans to continue showing throughout the season and hopes to make it to some of the indoor shows in the fall. “We will come back here in June then go to Cleveland in July. With the horses living in Louisville this is really convenient, so we are here a lot and it is a lovely facility to be at,” she expressed. “We are here in August again and then hopefully Capital Challenge and Harrisburg.”

King has shown at the Kentucky Horse Park a lot in the past and is very impressed with the new improvements. “I love the facility and I love the new footing,” she emphasized. “It is wonderful. My 19 year-old horse felt like he was nine; he just loved it.”

To May 2009 News Articles Index | To British Columbia Equine ...On-Line Home