Kentucky Three-Day Event winners list includes a $900 horse

Kentucky Three-Day Event winners Karen O’Connor and Prince Panache, pictured at the Sydney Olympics in 2000. — Karen O’Connor and Prince Panache, pictured at the Sydney Olympics in 2000, are among the Kentucky Three-Day winners.

(Image credit: Split Seconds / Alamy Stock Photo)

With entries for the 2024 edition of the US five-star closing next week, it’s time to take a look at the Defender Kentucky Three-Day Event winners’ roll call. Riders from five different countries have taken the spoils and three riders have won the event three times, although only one has managed to achieve this feat in consecutive years, while one other rider has won it a remarkable four times.

The US’s premier horse trials, Kentucky has run at the top level since 1998, with a four-star class added that year and later upgraded to five-star in 2018 when the FEI altered the star levels across eventing.

This was a sensational win at Kentucky – not only was it the first by a British rider, but it also kicked off Pippa’s Rolex Grand Slam of Eventing as she won Badminton Horse Trials that year on Supreme Rock and Burghley Horse Trials on Primmore’s Pride. The horse also won Badminton in 2005 – completing his own “career grand slam” – and was an Olympic individual bronze and team silver medallist at Athens 2004.

In 2004, Kentucky ran both its usual class and a “modified division” in which riders did not tackle the roads and tracks and steeplechase, as an experiment ahead of the Athens Olympics that summer running without those phases. This became the normal format for the sport not long afterwards. Windfall 2, the winner of this division, was the only stallion to win at eventing’s top level until Chilli Morning won Badminton in 2015 with William Fox-Pitt.

Three years after Pippa Funnell kicked off her successful Rolex Grand Slam bid at Kentucky, Andrew Hoy reignited the grand slam fever when he won Kentucky on Master Monarch and Badminton on Moonfleet. He led until the showjumping at Burghley, but 12 faults in the final phase meant he and Moonfleet ended up second behind Lucinda Fredericks on Headley Britainnia. Master Monarch was also a team bronze medallist at the Aachen World Equestrian Games (WEG) that summer.

Six-time Olympian Andrew’s Kentucky win set him up for a grand slam attempt at Badminton the following week – an attempt in which he went head to head with William Fox-Pitt, who had missed his chance to try for the grand slam at Badminton the year before when the event was cancelled. This meant both men were vying to win the grand slam at Badminton 2013, but in the event, neither could achieve it and victory went to Jock Paget.

Although it seemed as if much went against Oliver Townend during his time at the 2021 event, nothing – not a disappointing dressage test, a lost shoe in a rainstorm on a difficult cross-country trip, or the letdown of having a mount spun in the horse inspection– could stand in the way of topping the 2021 Land Rover Kentucky Three-Day Event, his third consecutive victory in the five-star at the Kentucky Horse Park.

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Pippa is a true eventing geek and has been H&H’s eventing editor since 2005. She has first-hand experience of competing up to British Eventing intermediate and international CCI2*-L level, and has worked in the industry on a top event yard. Pippa enjoys nothing more than immersing herself in the sport at the highest level, reporting from the five-stars and international championships, including the Olympics.

Celebrating Kentucky Three-Day Event’s winners, including record-breakers, legends of the sport and a $900 horse

Kentucky Three-Day Event winners, 1998 onwards

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