WELLINGTON, FL - 2025
In the winter months, Wellington, Florida becomes the showjumping capital of the world. It attracts the very best in the industry, from Olympic Gold medallists down to the most promising rookies on the circuit, and prize money at the flagship Rolex sponsored season finale now exceeds $750,000. It sometimes seems there are more horses than people in Wellington in March.
The other venues of the Grand Prix circuit in France, Sweden, Italy, Belgium and Ireland attract the same cavalcade of riders, horses and sponsors but they don’t have Palm Beach as their immediate neighbour. Undoubtedly, the proximity of one of the world’s most rarified and idyllic communities has given Wellington an edge on the glamour and prestige front. The palm trees that encircle many of the venues also add an extra visual spark to the whole affair.
We were lucky enough to be introduced to Emily Smith whose family are at the heart of Wellington's showjumping community both socially and professionally. Emily not only fully embraced our plans to include these festivities in our Palm Beach series but also lent us her facilities and her son Spencer who is a successful and well-known show jumper.
In the UK, I grew up reading Jilly Cooper’s raunchy novels about love, lust and rivalry in the horse world. She told stories that suggested the competition was just as fierce in the bedroom as it was in the horse ring. It was a licentious world where the leading show jumpers had many female admirers and sometimes found temptation too much.
This vignette of Wellington plays to her narrative. But I know Spencer Smith - who is jumping the 7-foot fence in the photograph - to be a man of strong moral fibre and he would never allow his focus to be derailed in the same way as Jilly Cooper’s protagonists.