The Hampton Grand Prix — Year of the Women

For the 50th year of the Hampton Classic, the weather could not have been kinder. Not too hot. No rain. Not even windy. That breaks something of a tradition of bad luck that had mired parking, blown down tents, delayed the opening and even canceled the event: hurricanes, torrential rain, mud, even a couple of tornadoes. Oh, and Covid.

Jessica Mendoza, winner of the Hampton Glassic Grand Prix 2025 (Photo credit: Instagram)

Equine sport is a rare activity that allows male and female athletes to compete equally, not only riders but horses, and presents no barrier to age. Some horses in the $400,000 Hampton Grand Prix were 9 years old, and some were veterans of 16. The Grand Prix, a five-star competition, set a 29-year-old British rider based in Florida, against, among others, McLaine Ward, a seven-time winner who is now 50 years old. She won. He came in 15th place.

A note here about those FEI ratings for those who don’t follow horse shows. A two-star rating is for a novice rider and horse in an international level competition, with fewer and lower jumps, and smaller cash prizes. A five-star rating is for elite athletes at the international level (both human and horses) with difficult courses (many and higher jumps) and big cash prizes.

After a decade in which no woman had won the Hampton Grand Prix, in this year’s event, seven out of the ten top finishers were women. Mendoza walked away with $320,000 in prize money. (The $400,000 was divided among the top ten finishers.) On top of that, she got a $20,000 bonus for accumulating the most points during the week. And she was handed a couple of Longines times pieces, some Wolffer Estates wines and other prizes.

Jessica Mendoza in a brochure for her Triple M Farms

Mendoza rode “In the Air,” a 12-year-old black Dutch warmblood mare. They had also won a $32,000 three-star jump-off in Wellington, FL, this year. Mendoza was a star equestrian in Britain, having joined the British team as an alternate at the Rio Olympics at the age of 16. Then she moved to the US. With Caroline Mawhinney she started the Triple M Farms in Wellington and North Salem, New York, to train riders, and develop and sell horses. What Mendoza calls the Mom Club, high-powered parents of her riding students in Wellington — Georgia Kipp, Kristi Mitchem, Melissa Skowlund and Pernilla Amman — chipped in to help her buy In the Air around two years ago.

She developed the mare, who had not been a star on the European circuit, and in just a year had her at a high enough level to win a three-star victory last year in Michigan. But when she brought In the Air to the Hampton Classic last year, the pair was not ready. They competed in two classes, and did not make the second round.

Skylar Wireman, a 20-year-old new to the Hampton Classic, with Tornado (Photo credit: Lindsey Long @lindseylong.com)

These events are as often determined by the matching of horse and rider, as they are of the pitting of rider against rider. Owning a horse or forming an alliance to ride a horse are avenues to success, as  is developing a winning horse and breeding horses and buying and selling horses.  The other femal star we are concentrating on today, Skylar Wireman, was trained by her mother and operates far from Wellington. Their stable in in San Diego County, in a town of 4,000. Skylar, who went professional only two years ago, until recently did all of the grooming and tacking of her horses, clipping them, preparing their manes. With help from her mother, Shayne, and a group of supporters she owns two horses that she campaigns internationally, Barclino B and Tornado.

Brianne Goutal-Marteau,, past owner, with her husband, of Two Trees stables in Bridgehampton, won the first two-star event of the week

So let’s look at what led up to the Grand Prix. The first jump-off of the week, a $30,000 two-star event, was won by a local, Brianne Goutal-Marteau. She and her husband, Romain, owned Two Trees, the 115-acre equestrian facility in Bridgehampton that has been sold. Since they live in Manhattan, and Wellington, they are starting a new summer stable in New Jersey.

As the week went on Daniel Bluman, who had won the Hampton Grand Prix three times for Israel, won the $40,000 CME Group National five-star Grand Prix riding Phelina de Septon. At Sunday’s Grand Prix Bluman took the opportunity to announce the retirement of Ladriano Z, age 16, a great jumper who gave him his third Grand Prix win here, in 2023. Bluman came in 18th in Sunday’s Grand Prix, riding a 12 year-old chestnut gelding.

Daniel Bluman, after winning the $40,000 five-star Group National Grand Prix on Thursday. (KindMedia)

Here is another familiar name from past horse shows: McLain Ward, who has won the Hampton Grand Prix seven times. This year he won the $116,000 Douglas Elliman five-star Grand Prix qualifier riding his reliable mount, High Star Hero, owned by Michael and Wendy Smith. Shane Sweetnam riding for Ireland came in second, as he would in the Grand Prix. And Jessica Mendoza came in fourth. At Sunday’s Grand Prix, Ward rode a different horse, Imperial, a black gelding, and finished out of the money.

McLain Ward riding High Star Hero in winning the Douglas Elliman five-star Grand Prix at the Hampton Classic (KindMedia)

And then we come to the most surprising competitor in this year’s Hampton Classic. On Thursday there was a five-star $32,000 purse sponsored by North Star. The winner was Alex Matz, the 14th best rider in the North American league, with Kent Farrington ranked Number One and Jessica Mendoza ranked 46th. (This is the FEI ranking for 2025.) The rider who came in second that day, by half a second, was Skylar Wireman, the red-headed young lady from California. Although she had been competing on the western circuit, FEI had ranked her as 24th in the North American League, while most people at the Hampton Classic had never heard of her.

Skylar Wireman at the last jump of the qualifier (still from video)

That led up to Saturday’s $62,000 five star Winning Round. The course had 15 jumps, with the highest set at nearly five feet. There were 35 riders lined up. With that much prize money, most of the top riders were in the ring: ones we have talked about Daniel Bluman,  Shane Sweetnam, Brianne Goutal-Marteau, McLain Ward, Jessica Mendoza, plus other accomplished riders on the international level: Alex Matz, Mimi Gochman, Kent Farrington, Alesandra Volpi. The Jump off was down to five: Shane Sweetnam, Renee Ditmer, who won the Hampton Classic last year, Skylar Wireman, Spencer Smith, and Luis Pedro Biraben.

Biraben had turned in the  fastest time so far, and Skylar was next. This was only the second time she and Barclino B had competed in a five-star class. He was young, a fast horse. And she was daring. She cut the last corner so sharply Barclino’s hind quarters were headed in one direction while his front quarters had already gone straight.

Wireman made a hard landing after that jump, but was victorious (still from videotape)

The landing was so hard it flattened her to the saddle. But she recovered and immediately raised her left hand in triumph. There were still other riders to go, but no one could beat her time.

In the end, she was out of the money in Sunday’s Grand Prix, riding Tornado, the first horse she campaigned. But she did come in 11th. For a 20-year-old on her way up, starting from a small town in San Diego County, this was a long way up.

Skylar Wireman turns 21 in November. She will no longer qualify for young rider competitions. She now must compete with the international A Team.

Let’s look at the last woman to win the Hampton Classic Grand Prix, back in 2015. She was a senior from Yale who had been born in Japan and grown up in New York. Her name was Karen Polle. After she won the Grand Prix — the cash prize back then was $250,000 — she and her horse, With Wings — went on to compete elsewhere. She credits With Wings with changing her life. Polle graduated with a degree in economics and went to Stanford University.  And she still rides.

Karen Polle, winner Hampton Classic Grand Prix 2015 (Instagram)

She is a member of the Japanese National Show Jumping Team. She is an Hermes “partner”  and, in fact, competed at this year’s Hampton Classic in a jump class with a horse she rides now called Celine. She did not end up in the money.

Winding the calendar further back, the Hampton Classic was visited in 2000, 2001 and 2002 by the world-class female rider Margie Goldstein-Engle, who has won almost 200 grand prix competitions in her lifetime. She is something of a  super equestrian, in the Hall of Fame. In 1987 she and her horse, back when they did puissance, jumped 7 feet 8 and  3⁄4 inches. Goldstein-Engle is 5 feet 1 inches tall. Her lifetime earnings as a rider are $4 million.  She is now 67. Back at the turn of the 21st century, she was the first person to win the Hampton Classic Grand Prix for three consecutive years, recorded as simply Margie Engle.

What is there to say about how well women did this year at the Classic? Was it a fluke, or a sign of progress for a sport where girls dominate the sport up to age 20 and then, at a professional level, men seem to take a preponderance of the top prizes. Is that changing as more women buy their horses and run their own stables? As they develop circles of supporters who will back them and put them on the horses they deserve?

It used to be that Daddy bought his daughter a horse, and that was the horse a girl rode, and took to college. But times have changed, women have changed. Now it may be a powerful mother who buys the horse, a woman who herself rode competitively, or still rides, or runs a horse-training business. These new equestrians have never known a time when women could not do something just because they were women. Start a business, take out a loan, get backers, negotiate a deal, take risks, demand respect, go for the money, drive a hard bargain, go for the gold.

It is in their blood to compete, at least the ones like these women, riding 1,200-pound animals over five-foot fences at break-neck speeds (we know that is true) because they love it.

Maybe 2025 is an anomaly, but thousands of little girls who are getting on their ponies and tripping over rails hope it is not. — Linda Lee