Ki-Juan Minors is delighted to have won a class with his new horse at the prestigious Winter Equestrian Festival in Wellington, Florida.

Minors and his six-year-old gelding Jacaarta have been a partnership for less than two months and the future appears promising after the pair picked up first prize in the young jumper class restricted to horses aged 6.

“You can’t ask for much more at your first show with your brand-new horse to come out and win the class,” Minors said.

“We were all pretty excited about that. He’s a very inexperienced young horse and I only just recently got him. He had only ever competed in a few other classes with me in December just to get my feet wet with him and before that his previous owner had him in some very small classes.

“I’m really excited for this young horse. I did purchase him as an investment and like they say out here everything is for sale, but I wouldn’t mind holding on to this one for a little bit longer.

“We have good horses and if the right opportunity comes along and you see a good partnership that could be made you pass it along. If not, you hold on to him and see what you get.”

Minors was also in action on board Pop Muzic, a ten-year-old gelding owned by Marilla van Beuren, and like Jacaarta he is stabled at Idle Hour Farm in Wellington.

The pair took part in a number of classes and racked up a string of places against some high-level competition while being named overall reserve champion in one of their divisions.

“I actually started with him as a four-year-old and I have been working him for six years now,” Minors said.

“We came out and did the high performance conformation division, which was his first time in that category, and we had some really good results. We were second twice on the first day and on the second day we finished second, third and fourth, so we ended up overall reserve champion for that division.

“We also competed in a $15,000 International Hunter Derby and in the first round we scored 88.5 out of 100, which puts us in fourth of the 19 riders. I was then asked to come back in the second round and I had a little error at one of my fences, at my trot fence, which caused us to be placed eleventh, but we were still really happy with the outcome.”

The Winter Equestrian Festival in Wellington lasts for nearly three months and Minors will be back in action in a few weeks with both of his horses.

“This was Week 1 of the show and there are 12 weeks in total,” Minors said.

“We will come back with the team in Week 3 and 4 and get Jacaarta ready for the six-year-old competitions again. For Pop Muzic, also known as Teddy, we will get him in the International Hunter Derby in the international ring.

“We’ll see how it goes, there are a lot of classes, a lot of horse shows and I want to be very smart and take my time with them. The season is very long.”