Equine Legend Takes Center Stage During Rolex Competition

The Rolex Kentucky Three-Day Event runs through April 27 at the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, Ky., and fans are enjoying all the action as the best horse-and-rider combinations from around the world vie to win the only CCI**** event held on U.S. soil.

Fans are also being treated to a ceremony honoring one very special horse.
The only three-time winner of the Rolex Kentucky Three-Day Event, equine legend Winsome Adante, will grace the Sheila C. Johnson Arena at the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington one final time as fans watch his official retirement ceremony on April 27.

Owned by Plain Dealing Farm in Scottsville, Va., and ridden by Kim Severson, Winsome Adante is the only horse to win Rolex more than once and he is undefeated at the competition. Officially retiring him at Rolex Kentucky was the obvious choice.

“Dan,” as he is widely known, won the competition in 2002 and then went on to be an integral part of the gold medal winning team at the World Equestrian Games in Jerez de la Frontera, Spain later that year. He battled a bout of colic in 2003, sitting out most of the competition season, but returned with a vengeance in 2004 and won Rolex again, making him a medal favorite for the looming Olympics. He delivered on the expectation, winning Individual Silver and Team Bronze Medals in Athens, Greece.

April of 2005 brought him back to Lexington where he won Rolex again as the overwhelming favorite, decimating the rest of the field and winning by an incredible17 points. He led from the start and was the only horse to finish on his dressage score. He went on to represent his country again at the 2006 World Equestrian Games and was third in his first attempt at the Badminton CCI**** in England in the spring of 2007.

It was after an injury sustained in 2007 that Plain Dealing Farm’s Linda Wachtmeister, in consultation with Severson and veterinarians, decided that due to a suspensory injury in a hind leg, it was in Dan’s best interest to retire him. The English Thoroughbred gelding is 15 years old and will live out his retirement in the field at Plain Dealing Farm.
The formal retirement ceremony will take place just prior to the beginning of the jumping test at the 2008 Rolex Kentucky Three-Day Event presented by Farnam.