Twin Rivers crowns Young Event Horse West Coast champions
O’Malley Van Het Pannehof Z and Nick Cwick win the 2025 USEA YEH West Coast 5-Year-Old Championship. Photos by Tina Fitch Photography.
Event marks another year of growth for the Young Event Horse program
By Jonathan Horowitz
– The 4-year-old and 5-year-old that won the 2025 USEA Young Event Horse West Coast Championships came to Twin Rivers Ranch in Paso Robles, Calif., with very different backgrounds. Their successes highlighted the scope of horses that take part in the YEH program, which has become a stepping stone to the upper levels of eventing.
Nick Cwick sourced O’Malley Van Het Pannehof Z from Belgium. He and the chestnut Zangersheide gelding with proven show jumping breeding lines won the 5-year-old championship with the highest score on either the West or East Coast. That marks the third time in the last four years that the top-scoring 5-year-old in the country has come out of the West Coast championships, and it puts “Z” first in line to be awarded the prestigious Holekamp/Turner YEH Lion d’Angers Grant to travel to Le Lion D’Angers, France, should the horse qualify for the FEI WBFSH Eventing World Breeding Championships in 2027 when he is 7 years old.
“I try every once in a while to buy one that I think could potentially be a five-star prospect, but it’s hard at 4 and 5 years old to pick that,” Cwick said. “I saw this one and knew he was special. So, I purchased him. He was a bit quirky when he first came over, but he’s really come into himself in the last six months. From the second he got here, I thought he had the ability to be a really special horse.”
On the other hand, 4-year-old champion Earned Effort would have a “Made in America” stamp. Anna Collier has competed his dam, Katie D, up to the three-star level and bred her to the young Hanoverian stallion Escher, who stands in America, to produce an eventing prospect. “Owning your own farm and breeding your own horses, it’s a challenge for everyone,” Collier said. “So, I’m just so grateful and surprised. He’s such a joy in the barn, and I’m absolutely thrilled.”
The YEH program is described by the USEA as “an eventing talent search” with the goal “to identify young horses that possess the talent and disposition necessary to excel at the four-star and five-star eventing levels.” Following the East Coast championships held at the Maryland 5 Star at Fair Hill, the West Coast championships at Twin Rivers Ranch attracted eventing prospects that came from overseas and that were bred in America. There were seven different breeds represented among the 13 4-year-olds and 12 5-year-olds. Twin Rivers Ranch has hosted the West Coast championships as a standalone event since 2020.
“Whatever they’re going to do in life, I feel like this is such a great experience for them,” said Amber Birtcil, a YEH West Coast veteran who competed two 4-year-olds and two 5-year-olds in 2025. “It’s so nice because the atmosphere is that of an FEI event, but it’s so calm and quiet. We joke all weekend that this is the best show all year. You get to just come and bring a couple horses and focus on these young horses. You really take your time with them, and you put all your energy and effort into them.”
The horses were scored on their gaits and rideability on the flat in a dressage test judged by Debbie Adams. Then, they were evaluated for conformation by Christel Carlson. The championships ultimately came down to a jumping and galloping test on a course of five show jumps and 10 cross-country fences designed by Adri Doyal that was judged by Adams and Derek di Grazia.
“This was my first year doing it, and I truly enjoyed being on the judging panel for this year’s Young Event Horse finals,” di Grazia said. “It’s always exciting seeing the group of 4- and 5-year-olds that are presented and hopefully one day will be the future stars of the sport. That’s really what it’s about to me—seeing who is going to come through. You see them now, and then you try to follow them along and see where they end up. That’s the exciting part.”
The 4-year-old championship went first.
“The 4-year-olds out here were so well-prepared, so schooled,” Adams said. “I was impressed that 4-year-olds could do that much that well. That deserves a definite nod to the quality of the 4-year-olds’ education.”
Earned Effort and Collier moved up from eighth after dressage and conformation to finish first with a score of 83.84, the second-best 4-year-old score in the country behind the 84.31 of MBF Mirror Image and Arielle Aharoni from winning the East Coast championship.
“He got off the ground really quickly and efficiently and landed so soft,” Collier said of the jumping. “He’s never jumped a keyhole or anything like that before. He looked and put his head down a little bit. He’s so smart.”
Earned Effort, who is registered Oldenburg, had the highest marks in the “Jumping Overall Evaluation” for rideability, between fences, and the open gallop at the end of the test. His “General Impression” score as a potential four- or five-star event horse was the highest in the field with a 9.2 out of 10.
“Everybody at the barn absolutely adores him,” Collier said. “The joke is if he lets you measure his ears, you can measure them. They’re over eight and a half inches long, and I think they’ve gotten bigger. I have to have a special bonnet and tie it on. The Germans always say the larger the ears, the smarter the horse.”
Collier has developed a successful eventing breeding program based in Washington, with her current four-star horse, Blue Time, being a homebred. Blue Time is out of three-star eventer Savoy Six, whom she bred to Persiflage, an Anglo-Arab with Thoroughbred and Arabian racing lines. Collier credits Joshua Lacey with starting and John Camlin with helping produce Earned Effort. She said she looks forward to bringing his 10-year-old dam, Katie D, back to competition after she delivers her next foal next year.
Earned Effort and Anna Collier win the 2025 USEA YEH West Coast 4-Year-Old Championship.
MBF Rafeldino, a bay Dutch Warmblood gelding by El Salvador out of Cisijgje V, and Andrea Baxter were 4-year-old West Coast reserve champions with a score of 81.99. The was the third-highest 4-year-old championship score in the country. They had the best dressage evaluation of 17.02 out of 20 for both championships.
“He is a beautiful type; he’s a nice package,” Baxter said. “He’s your classic 16.2, elegant, really well-rounded package, and he’s a beautiful mover with great balance. He’s a very talented and scopey jumper. His name is ‘Jamaica’ because he’s very laidback. Hence why I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to show off the jump because he’s just like, ‘Yeah, yeah, been there, done that.’ So, I was really happy with how we went.”
Jamaica was purchased through the Goresbridge Go For Gold Sale in Ireland, and Goresbridge was a prize sponsor for the YEH championships for the first time this year, as was the MBF operations of Meabh Bolger and Brian Flynn in Ireland for the West Coast championships.
Baxter placed three in the top six with Beachfield Vivaldi, a bay Irish Sport Horse Gelding by Vivant Van De Heffinck out of Cloonacauneen Black Beauty, in fifth, and DOS MBF Endeavour, a bay Irish Sport Horse gelding by HHS Cornet out of DOS Kono, in sixth.
“I had three very different horses in the 4-year-olds,” Baxter said. “If you asked me any given day leading up to the championships, every day was throwing darts at a dart board for which one was better or struggling or exceeding. The process of watching them all come along was hilarious, actually. All of them rose to the occasion and put their best foot forward.”
Baxter, who is passionate about the YEH program as a member of USEA’s YEH Committee, won the 4-year-old championship in 2024 with MBF Dig Deep. In 2025, the bay Dutch Warmblood gelding by Golddigger out of Amber, took eighth and has also performed consistently well in horse trials at the Training level this year.
“The 5-year-olds were really stiff competition,” Baxter said. “He was a little flatter across the jumps because he’s so trained.”
For the 5-year-olds, judge Adams said, “I would say the top horses we had in the 5-year-olds on the West Coast, they’re all agile and clever enough that they could handle terrain.”
Ultimately, the 5-year-old West Coast championship went to O’Malley Van Het Pannehof Z, with a nearly foot-perfect jumping and galloping test, moving them up from eighth to first on a finishing score of 88.44. That topped the 87.70 of Pine Top Penny Belline and Kylie Cahoon from the East Coast championship. Their “Jumping Overall Evaluation” of 14.15 out of 15 and their “General Impression” of 9.8 out of 10 were the highest in the country.
“He gives me that feeling,” Cwick said. “I saw it in him when I bought him in Europe. When he showed up and I sat on him the first time and jumped him, I knew right away. He felt like he had all the right parts to be a top horse. The way he goes, the way he reads the jumps, he’s brave but he’s careful and smart. He feels to me like he would fight for you if you needed him to down the road once he’s more educated. He’s just a cool type, and I feel like he enjoys it. He wants to be out there, and he wants to do the job.”
Although the horse Cwick calls “Z” is first in line for the Holekamp/Turner Grant, if he were to take part in the 7-year-old world championship in France, it would most likely be with a new partner because he is for sale. He said Cwick Eventing’s business model is to import young prospects from overseas and then sell them in America. Cwick also sourced Camelot PJ, Baxter’s 2023 West Coast 5-year-old champion, now competing at three-star.
In the case of Z, he is by the 11-year-old Belgian Warmblood stallion Minute Man, the winner of the CSIO5* Falsterbo Nations Cup in Sweden at 1.60 meters in July with Henrik Von Eckermann. Minute Man’s pedigree combines some of the most sought-after sporthorse lines of Quidam de Revel, Contender, and Heartbreaker.
“I think he’s a big dog,” Cwick added about Z. “He’s got a great personality and is easy to be around, which is nice. When you ride him, he’s got all the right stuff to be a top horse. He gives me that feeling, and I really hope that whoever ends up with him can take him to the level that I think he can be.”
Birtcil rode 5-year-old West Coast reserve champion Prince of Oolde to a score of 84.97, third-best in the country.
“We call him ‘Noodles’ because ‘Oolde’ looks like ‘Oodles,’” Birtcil said. “He was super. He’s really been great for me all year. The gal that works for me, Fielding [Neale], competed him at the beginning of the year and was very successful introducing him to the sport and taking him around his first couple Novices. Since then, I’ve done several Trainings with him, and he is just lovely. He’s very big, very scopey. He goes in big loose-ring snaffle and a regular cavesson. Just really, really fun to ride.”
The bay Dutch Warmblood gelding by Ibolensky out Aurora J is a half-brother to Magical Touch, an 8-year-old competing at the three-star level in Great Britain and Ireland with Eliza Bell.
The YEH West Coast class of 2025 will now try to follow in the footsteps of their siblings and previous years’ YEH classes that have horses rising up the levels of eventing. That’s Me Z and Tommy Greengard, the 2022 winner of the 5-year-old West Coast championship, placed 16th out of 64 in the 7-year-old world championship at Le Lion in 2024 and have three podium finishes at the four-star level in 2025. Of the 18 horses that competed in the 5-year-old West Coast championship in 2023, 10 have since gone on to complete FEI events at the one-, two-, or three-star levels as 7-year-olds in 2025.
“It is really exciting that we can continue to prove that we are sourcing nice horses here,” Baxter said. “The Young Event Horse program costs a lot of money and takes a lot of effort for us to maintain to the best to our ability equal competition on the East and the West. It’s really exciting to be able to see that it’s worth the effort and that we’ve consistently been able to produce top horses from this coast.”
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