EcoVet Performance of the Week: Private Practice

Private Practice, ridden by Victoria Colvin, put in a dominating performance in the USHJA International Hunter Derby, blowing away the crowd with both power and grace. Watch the video here!

The hunter derby is to hunters what the grand prix is to show jumping — the fences are meaty and intimidating, the courses are complex and the horses are incredible athletes. While the horse is still expected to maintain his poise and style, the hunter derby brings a serious challenge to the discipline, with imposing solid fences more closely imitating what you’d see in the hunt field. Some of these heights are in the neighborhood of 4’6″ — that’s no snoozer of a fence.

The International Hunter Derby has certainly transformed what we can expect of a hunter round, and no performance quite embodied that standard like the winning round from Brad Wolf’s Private Practice, piloted by Victoria Colvin during last week’s championship.

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That course certainly wasn’t messing around — but then, neither were Colvin or Private Practice, attacking each fence right out of stride with a massive effort that still embraced the style and grace that are the hunter’s signature qualities. With scores in the mid-90s, the judges clearly weren’t messing around either, and this pair enjoyed a healthy winning margin!