In 1987, a tract of land that had previously been a part of Camp Atterbury during World War II was reconfigured to host the equestrian competitions when the Pan American Games were conducted in Indianapolis.
When the games wrapped up, some local riders expressed an interest in using the space for eventing — an equestrian event in which a horse and rider compete in dressage, cross-country jumping and show jumping.
The site, now known as Hoosier Horse Park, regularly hosts some of the most prominent eventing competitions in Indiana and the Midwest — and when it comes time to design the cross-country course for each of those, Jon Wells is the man who gets the call.
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Click here to purchase photos from this galleryWells, one of the nation’s most respected course designers, spends roughly nine months each year on the road planning and building courses at various horse parks across the eastern half of the United States.
He makes a handful of stops in Edinburgh each year. Wells put together the cross-country course for the Indiana Eventing Association Horse Trials that concluded on June 3. He also previously designed the courses for the Penny Oaks Horse Trials before Cathy Wieschhoff took the reins for this year’s event (July 21-22).
Over the 13 years that he’s been designing at Hoosier Horse Park, he’s gotten to know the land well.
“This was an industrial site,” Wells said of the horse park’s wartime history. “There were rail lines; there are sewer lines under us. There are fire hydrants in the bushes over there.”
Fittingly, eventing has its roots in military conflict, originally based on tests that cavalry horses would be put through to determine which were most suitable for use in battle.
Count Clarence von Rosen, Crown Equerry to the King of Sweden, devised the first Olympic competition for the 1912 Games in Stockholm.
Dressage, the most formal of the three events, tests the elegance, agility and obedience of a horse — “like test driving a car,” Wells said. Show jumping takes place on a tighter course, often in a stadium setting. But cross-country jumping, Wells’ specialty, is the ultimate test of strength, stamina and bravery.
“Cross-country is going to war,” Wells said. “You’re going across natural terrain and thick, solid natural obstacles. That’s the battle.”
For Wells, the battle is coming up with manageable but challenging courses for each event, then building and placing the obstacles across more than 30 acres of space.
Sometimes, that means moving truckloads of dirt to incorporate water.
“It’s a big piece of land, and it’s a lot of work,” Wells said while finishing up work on the course for the IEA Horse Trials in late May. “There’s about 90 different jumps that we’ve rearranged in the last week into unique courses.”
Part of the challenge is being able to get the grounds set up for competitions at different levels of skill. At the beginner novice level, there are usually about 15 fences no higher than 2 feet, 7 inches. At the preliminary level — the first of the upper levels of the sport — the fences are up to a foot higher and there are as many as 30 of them.
At some spots on the Edinburgh course, the obstacles for the two courses are side by side. Many of the jumps that Wells builds are designed so that the height can be adjusted.
Wells also needs to properly space out the obstacles across the course, sometimes placing two jumps closer together to challenge the horse and rider. In each case, he’s trying to gauge how fast the horse will be moving as it approaches; changes in the camber throughout the course can also have an impact on that.
The rider needs to take those same things into account as he or she tries to navigate the course as smoothly and quickly as possible.
“To negotiate these jumps, obviously, you have to slow down some,” Wells said. “That’s what they have to strategize, is where they can make time, where they might — they might even try to cut a corner off somewhere or jump something at an angle or do whatever they can do to make the time.”
Because so much work goes into preparing a cross-country course, Wells is often on site doing work months in advance. Moving hurdles around, especially ones that have been in use at the park for several years, can be done in the days before the event — but when heavier lifting is involved that needs to be done before the season gets underway.
“You don’t want to wait until the week of an event to be building fences or doing any kind of earth work,” Wells said.
Wells got his start in eventing back in 1985, when he took a job on a farm in Tennessee where competitions were being held. He has been building courses since 1990, bouncing from state to state as he’s needed.
As soon as the IEA event wrapped up, Wells hit the road and traveled 579 miles to Great Meadow International in Virginia, where he built courses for June and July competitions.
Of course, he has plenty of help at each of his stops.
“This is an expensive thing to put together,” Wells said. “It’s a lot of volunteer hours and stuff, getting all this equipment out here, all the flags and signs, all of these fences have to be staked down and so on.”
By the time the riders and horses come to town for Penny Oaks, Wells will have all of that taken care of yet again.
There won’t be any wars that these horses need to take part in — but if there were, the layout they’ll face here later this month would surely do a good job of determining their readiness.
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Penny Oaks Horse Trials
Where: Hoosier Horse Park, Edinburgh
When: Saturday, July 21 (dressage at 7 a.m., cross country at 9:30 a.m.); Sunday, July 22 (show jumping at 8 a.m.)
More information: <a href="http://www.pennyoaksstables.com">www.pennyoaksstables.com</a>
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