Princess Margarita of Bourbon-Parma of the Netherlands has long loved fiery Spanish dressage horses and show jumping competitions where horses clear hurdles at speed, the winner determined by who clears them the fastest without knocking any down.
But recently, she has become intrigued by a uniquely American discipline called the hunters, where horses are judged not on their intensity or velocity, but on their innate beauty as they traverse a course of jumps — slowly.
So much so that she flew to New York to attend the Hampton Classic Horse Show in Bridgehampton this month, where she was sponsoring a class, to observe the hunters in competition, with plans to take back what she learns to promote the discipline in her homeland and abroad.
“I am going to watch and learn, because it is a master class,” she said in an interview this month. “My goal is to translate this, as a patron, for the Dutch world. It is an old horse country. Sometimes they have old horse ideas, and sometimes they need to modernize.”
There are many riders competing in the hunters in the United States. The governing body of the sport, the U.S. Hunter Jumper Association, said there were more than 55,000 hunter riders as of last year, up from just under 200 about two decades ago. The United States Equestrian Federation has seen hunter rider enrollment rise by about 15 percent in just the past five years.
But with few exceptions the discipline has failed to catch on broadly anywhere else in the world, overlooked by hard-charging international equestrians as, frankly, boring.
That may be changing. This July, a group of equestrian entrepreneurs realized a long-held dream to showcase world-class hunters in Europe, flying in American horses and top-ranked riders for a grand exhibition in the Netherlands, with plans for more.
Horse sales have begun to shift as well. When importing European show jumping horses for the hunters first took off in the 1980s, Europeans sold their too-slow horses cheaply to Americans, thinking them lackluster.
Now, the high prices commanded in the United States for those rare animals with innate hunter talent (a naturally languid gallop and a ka-pow jump) have awakened more European breeders to the charms of the hunter arena.
Anecdotally, it appears that many European horse dealers have shifted to training young horses in the American style from the ground up, rather than what was typical: trying to recalibrate a former jumper speed demon so that it can perfect the pace needed for the hunters.
The hunter discipline is less democratic than the timed, or jumper classes, because a horse must be born with the je ne sais quoi that makes them stand out: good looks, a fluid way of moving and the ability to jump powerfully while in slow motion.
Contrary to the hunter ride’s lugubrious appearance, perfecting this method of riding is painstakingly exacting. It requires seamless, invisible communication between horse and rider. But it also demands years of training for the animal in equine calisthenics to develop muscles that can propel something like 1,200 pounds of horse flesh into the air, seemingly with no effort at all.
This can come as news to many international equestrians who are unfamiliar with the discipline beyond social media clips.
“Here people say, ‘It’s boring,’” said Vincent Dumoulin, a breeder in Belgium who recently shifted to training his horses in the hunter style in Europe for the American market.
“I tell them that if hunter is boring for you, you should not start riding horses, because it means you don’t take your time as a rider to train,” he added. “They have no idea how difficult it is.”
Princess Margarita was introduced to the hunter methodology in a clinic hosted by Hunter-Jumper Equitation Europe, a group that has sought to gain traction for the sport on the continent.
“It is not easy,” she said. “It is beautiful and it is calm, and I think it is much more fair on the horses, but it is not boring.”
In July, the challenges of the hunter sport were put on display in the Netherlands at the Longines Tops International Arena in Valkenswaard at a first-of-its-kind international hunter exhibition. Called the Baran Global Hunter Classic, after Kristen Baran, the American philanthropist and rider who co-founded and sponsored it, the event featured an eclectic mix of competitors: American hunter superstars like John French and Geoffrey Hesslink flew their top-ranked, veteran hunter horses across the Atlantic Ocean in special cargo planes.
They vied against jumper riders like the Olympians Harrie Smolders of the Netherlands and Rodrigo Pessoa of Brazil, mounted on European grand prix horses — top level show jumpers long cultivated for a need for speed. At the Baran, those horse-rider pairs were both trying to go slow for the first time.
Inside the Tops stadium, where Olympians regularly compete over towering jumps taller than some of their horses’ heads, the Baran obstacles stood about a mere three and a half feet tall.
But for some of the just-minted hunter riders and horses, they were intimidating nonetheless. Rather than the typical simple-colored poles of the jumper ring, they were made in a naturalistic hunter style that can startle even the most sage horse, featuring mountains of Technicolor tulips, a giant windmill and a topiary hedge spelling out Baran’s name.
The idea was to demonstrate firsthand to European riders the skill necessary to excel in the deceptively-sleepy hunter ring, according to Baran, who founded the event with a business partner, Andrew Lustig. In doing so, they hoped to start an international competition circuit to draw them in.
There are talks to hold next year’s event in Fontainebleau, France, with Princess Margarita as its ceremonial chairwoman.
“We believe we are changing the trajectory of the hunter industry,” Baran said.
She also hopes that by attempting to internationalize the demand for hunters, European breeders, who have historically been in a race to breed the fastest, highest-jumping animal possible, will begin to tailor their breeding programs to create the placid hunter types, which are comparatively scarce.
“It could level out the pricing of hunters and make the sport more accessible on some levels,” Baran said.
But some said they believed the growing awareness of the hunters, driven partly by social media, was having the opposite effect on horse prices. Niels Haesen, who with his wife, Maxime Tyteca, runs Stal de Eyckenhoeve, a Belgian horse sales company, entered their 8-year-old chestnut gelding Lucky Larry in the three-day-long Baran. It was the horse’s first time competing in the hunters. He did well and was bought for six figures by a longtime customer in California by the event’s end.
“I think it made such a difference in the way I could price the horse because it had experience in the hunter ring,” Haesen said.
Combined with the 15 percent tariff issued by President Trump on European Union exports on Aug. 1, which includes horse exports, and higher freight costs, Mr. Haesen said he was concerned European hunters might become out of reach for Americans.
Others are banking on the opposite. Three months ago, Camilla Marie Alver, a horse seller from Belgium, spotted a striking 7-year-old black mare for sale with the slow, balletic trot of a hunter ring star.
Though Ms. Alver specializes in speedy jumpers, over the past years she has received so many requests for hunters, she said, she decided to buy her first hunter.
“Five years ago I would have never looked at that horse,” she said. “My boyfriend said, ‘What are you doing? What is this hunter thing?’ and I said, ‘Just wait. It will be worth it.’”
Sarah Maslin Nir is a Times reporter covering anything and everything New York … and sometimes beyond.
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