Olympic show jumper Laura Kraut won the $340,000 FEI Jumping World Cup™️ Washington CSI5*-W on Saturday night at Showplace Arena in Upper Marlboro. on the 10-year-old Zangersheide gelding Tres Bien Z. She rode against competitors from 12 other countries.
Kraut has represented the United State on four Olympic teams — 2000 (Sydney), 2008 (Beijing), 2020 (Tokyo), 2024 (Paris) — and was an alternate on the 1992 team in Barcelona. She has been on five FEI Longines Jumping Nations Cup. She represented the US at the 2006 FEI World Equestrian Games in Aachen, Germany and she was on the gold-medal winning US Team at the 2023 Pan American Games in Santiago, Chile. Kraut is currently ranked 8th in the world.
Kraut is no stranger to the Washington International Horse Show (WIHS). She has been competing at the event since 1978 when she rode in the medium pony hunter divisions This was the second time Kraut has won the President’s Cup. Kraut told The Chronicle of the Horse that WIHS is “one of the goals of the year, particularly in the United States, for everyone—jumpers, hunters, equitation. I hope that it stays that way. I think it’s a goal that every rider should work towards.”
(C) Shawn Macmillen Photography
In 2018, we published the following brief history of the WIHS in celebration of its 60th year running:
A Bit of WIHS History
“With approximately 500 competitors contesting for top honors each year, WIHS has always seemed to be the show for top local, national and international riders. Although spectator attendance was low its first year, the first WIHS board, led by Major General W.H. Adendroth as president, knew this sort of show had a place on the show calendar. From its first show in 1958 at the D.C. Armory, its popularity for both spectators and competitors rapidly grew.
The showcase of those early years was the annual International Cup in which jumper teams from different countries would compete for top honors, with Presidents and First Ladies often presenting the trophies. At times it may have seemed that many spectators came to see who was watching from the stands just as much as they wanted to see who was in the ring.
Notable guests have included Presidents John F. Kennedy, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Gerald R. Ford. Celebrities such as William Shatner, Bruce Springsteen, John Cleese, and Christopher Reeve have also been seen at the show. Shatner even showed a few times in the Saddlebred classes. One year, Zsa Zsa Gabor rode into the main arena on her Tennessee Walking Horse stallion Silver Fox.
Now-famous horses, and one Olympic medal winning pony, have made appearances at WIHS through the years. Stroller, the 14.2-hand British pony won the Fault-and-Out for International Jumpers in 1967 before going on to win an individual Silver Medal at the 1968 Olympics with Marion Coakes for Mexico. Rodney Jenkins’ famed Idle Dice made his first President’s Cup appearance in 1970 when Jenkins’ experienced horse Brendan fell earlier in the week and was out of the competition. Idle Dice was only six years old for his big WIHS debut and soon became a crowd favorite returning several times.
The show remained at the Armory until 1975 when it moved to the Capital Centre in Landover, Maryland. Many competitors and fans loved the Capital Centre and the show probably would have remained there, however the arena was scheduled to be torn down when the Washington Bullets (now Wizards) basketball team and Washington Capitals hockey team moved to the newly-built Verizon Center (now called the Capital One Arena) in downtown Washington, DC, in 2000 . . .
Although the modern day WIHS consists strictly hunter and jumper classes with a variety of exhibitions from different disciplines, the old days of the show held breed classes, carriage classes and even dressage freestyle competitions. Hunt Night was a favorite of many locals who headed downtown to cheer on their local hunt club often running into the wee hours of the next morning before the winning Hunt Team was crowned.”
In 2020, the show moved temporarily to the Tryon International Equestrian Center in Mill Spring, NC due to the COVID pandemic. It returned to Maryland in 2022, and has been held at the Showplace Arena at the Price George’s County Equestrian Center ever since.
Laura Pickett Excellence in Horsemanship Award
In honor of Laura Pickett, a beloved Maryland equestrian with deeps roots in the pony club and fox hunting communities, WIHS presents the Laura Pickett Excellence in Horsemanship Award to “the ‘up and coming’ adult or child rider and their trainer competing at the WIHS Regional Horse Show and USHJA Zone 3 Championship who best exhibit the enthusiasm, dedication, style and commitment to excellent horsemanship that brings out the best in horse and rider.”
This year’s winner was 17-year-old Victoria Roemer of Fox Creek Farm in Churchville, Maryland. Congratulations!
