As Havens Schatt prepared for Sunday’s $200,000 ClipMyHorse.TV Hunter Classic, she kept reminding herself to treat it like any other class. The high-dollar hunter class at HITS Hudson Valley VIII in Saugerties, New York, was the biggest thing her mount Chaquisto Blue PS had ever contested, and certainly the most important class Schatt had ever ridden him in.

“I just always went in for practice—no pressure, no expectation, no nothing—and he always delivered,” she said. “So I was like, ‘Havens, just because it’s a big class, you cannot ride him more. You cannot try to get a rub [in warm-up]—don’t do any of that stuff. Just ride him the way you’ve always ridden him.’ So that was a little bit hard for me. I had to keep telling myself, ‘Easy, easy.’ ”

As they walked into the ring, “CB” certainly took notice of the bigger atmosphere. His head came up, and he eyed his surroundings, so Schatt took her time before picking up the canter, making a bigger courtesy circle than she normally would for a class of this caliber, but her primary goal was giving him a good experience.

“The first probably four jumps, I felt like I kind of needed to hold his hand a little bit and just be a little bit not as brilliant as sometimes you would want for a class like that,” she said. “But I think his jumping style was covered up a lot, and by the in-and-out to the last two lines, he was just in the groove then, and I could let go of his head a little bit and just kind of get to the jump and let him explode over the jump.”

Schatt was first in the class and had to wait for remainder of the competitors to go to see whether their scores could hold up. Initially she figured they’d get pushed down the leaderboard given the quality of horses in the field, but one by one they failed to catch her, and her hopes soared. By the end of the 15-horse class, Schatt was thrilled to find herself atop the final standings.

“That class, on that day, at that time of the month or the year, suited that type of horse perfectly,” she said.

Schatt first purchased CB last September off a video with the idea that he could be an equitation horse. Though he had a beautiful jump, he didn’t have the daisy-cutter movement of the complete package for a junior or amateur hunter.

“He’s just like a big puppy dog,” she said. “He’s really, really tall, so he’s always got to put his head down for you to pet him or whatever, and he’s always more than willing for you to pet him and feed him treats. For the most part, he’s quiet and he’s super, super willing, like he didn’t even think twice about going in there and doing exactly what I told him to do.”

Watch their winning round, courtesy of ClipMyHorse.TV:

Since he was still green, and it’s so expensive to keep horses in her winter base in Wellington, Florida, Schatt decided to send him to fellow hunter rider Tim Maddrix in Ocala, Florida, to get his initial show miles. When it was time to head back north to Lexington, Kentucky, Schatt took him back and later sold part-ownership to Caroline Oliver with the idea of making him Oliver’s equitation horse. Schatt showed him sparingly, but she found that judges were often scoring him in the 90s.

Nonetheless, at the beginning of last week, CB wasn’t her intended mount for the classic. Initially she thought she’d ride Julia McNerney’s Cascartini, who she’s ridden in USHJA international hunter derbies and on whom she’d qualified for the ClipMyHorse.TV Hunter Classic earlier in the year.

Though Schatt competes in Wellington at the Winter Equestrian Festival over the winter, she made a pair of trips up to HITS Ocala in order to qualify for the classic to support her friend, HITS Chief Customer Officer Joe Norick, who asked if she’d consider participating. HITS hosts six qualifiers across the Ocala and Saugerties series, and riders must place first through third in one of those classes to qualify for the classic, where they are limited to one horse.

On her first trip to Ocala, Schatt entered three of her green hunters, but the conditions weren’t favorable for their education level, with the class taking place in the early evening on a rainy, windy day. While they went well, mistakes kept them out of podium placings. On her second trip north, she tacked up the reliable Cascartini with the goal of putting in a solid round. They finished third, cementing Schatt’s spot in the final.

“It was a little bit more nerve-wracking to know if you wanted to go for that big money [in the final], you had to make this happen,” she said. “And like I said, we spend our winters in Wellington, so it’s a lot to ask the clients to go up there to qualify for the class.”

But “Marty” made the trips to Ocala worth it, and Schatt’s team arrived in Saugerties planning to enter him in the classic.

CB had come to Saugerties primarily to go in equitation classes with Oliver, who is a working student for Schatt. But when the 7-year-old Oldenburg (Chacoon Blue—Coquista PS, Balou Du Reventon) won a 3’3″ performance hunter class with Schatt, they started considering entering him instead. After Marty took second in the $40,000 USHJA International Hunter Derby, which was intended to be his warm-up, they all sat down to make a plan, ultimately deciding McNerney’s horse had done enough for the week, and that the classic could be a good experience for CB.

Schatt thinks CB’s relative inexperience benefited him in the ClipMyHorse.TV Hunter Classic. The one-round class featured more classic hunter fences, and she felt that, while more experienced horses might not find the jumps interesting, CB still did and would maintain his expressive jump.

“I think you need a fresh horse that hadn’t been everywhere, seen everything, to think OK it’s another round, but you need one brave enough and solid enough to go in there and deliver,” she said.