Upper Marlboro, MD – September 29, 2002 - Valerie Germain wasn’t expecting to show this year at the Capital Challenge Horse Show. She was just happy to have her horse, Say What!, alive and well. Not only did the chestnut gelding recover from a life-threatening illness, he came back just in time to jump Germain to the championship honors in the first ever Monarch International/NHJC Adult Amateur Equitation Championship held at the Capital Challenge Horse Show on the final day of the Monarch International Equitation Weekend.

“He’s a very special horse,” said Germain, 38, of New York, NY. “He got sick in the beginning of June and didn’t go back into work until the beginning of August. I got the message that we qualified for the class and I really didn’t think we’d go.” “Rexy’s” first show back was last weekend and the horse and rider combination just got better and better throughout the two days of competition at the Capital Challenge.

On Saturday Germain picked up an eighth, a fifth and a third before topping the prestigious year-end championship class. Germain shows in the equitation and the hunters on Rexy but surprisingly the Dutch Warmblood was imported as a jumper. Germain said, “We were looking for a jumper and had been imported the week before.” Germain and her trainer Nancy Fletcher of Fletcher Farm on Long Island, NY, tried him in the hunters and he seemed to find his new job. Rexy will get a week off after showing at the Capital Challenge and the pair then go on to compete in the 3’6” hunters at the Zone II Hunter Finals in October at the Farm Show Complex in Harrisburg, Pa.

The Capital Challenge Horse Show runs through Sunday, October 7th and features the World Champion Hunter Rider Finals throughout the week. Admission is free every day. For more information please contact the show office at 301-952-7944/7945 or look for scheduling, results, photos and more on the official website – www.capitalchallengehorseshow.com.

Monarch International/NHJC Adult Amateur Equitation Championship