About the Championship
The Field Hunter Championship brings together foxhunting enthusiasts from all across the U.S. and Canada to participate in the week-long trial.The competition offers four days of first field hunting privileges to the same horse and rider for a combined entry fee of $425. (An additional horse entry will require a separate entry fee.) Riders are welcome, but not required to hunt every day.
Mounted judges ride alongside the numbered contestants as they hunt with four area hunt clubs. At the end of each hunting day, the qualifying horse and rider combinations are announced for Friday's finals at Sunny Bank Farm.
During the Friday morning finals, competitors may elect to participate in a Best Turned Out competition prior to the start of the official competition. All competitors will participate in a mock hunt, and finalists will be asked to individually ride in a course of approximately 12 jumps and tests. They may be asked to dismount and remount, open and close a gate, or trot over a selected obstacle. After each horse's hunting skills are demonstrated and the individual rides completed, the Championship is determined.
Trophies will be awarded for Best Turned Out, Sportsmanship, Most Suitable Pair, Hunt with the Most Competitors, and the prestigious Matthew Mackay-Smith Top Placing Thoroughbred Award. Ribbons will be presented through 8th Place. The event is judged according to the manners, style and suitability of foxhunting mounts. Judges have been selected from various hunt clubs.
Theodora A. Randolph
Mrs. Theodora Ayer Randolph was Master of Piedmont Fox Hounds from 1954 until the time of her death in 1996 and Chairman of the Virginia Fall Races for many years. When Mrs. Randolph first became Master of Piedmont, she hunted seven days a week. Wednesday, Friday and Saturday she led the field at Piedmont, and on the others days she hunted in the field at Middleburg, Blue Ridge or Rappahanock. Horses and horse sports were the most important part of her life, and foxhunting, was the sport she loved the most. In addition to her foxhunters, Mrs. Randolph had steeplechasers, flat horses and show horses, and most of them were homebreds. Since one of her homebreds was among the first to win the Field Hunter Championship, it is quite fitting that this event carry her name.
Dot Smithwick and Sunny Bank Farm
Steeplechase trainer Dorothy “Dot” Smithwick campaigned horses on the National Steeplechase and Virginia Point-to-Point circuits for decades. She was the original creator of the Theodora A. Randolph Field Hunter Championship (previously known as the North American Field Hunter Championship. Mrs. Smithwick was heavily involved in the Piedmont Environment Council (PEC) and the Goose Creek Association, and she was a member of the Virginia Steeplechase Hall of Fame. Career highlights include winning the Pennsylvania Hunt Cup with Dr. Ramsey and multiple races with Rockaround, Quixotic, Double Found, Topeador and Double Redouble.
Mrs. Smithwick owned Sunny Bank Farm, a 1,650-acre farm that sits adjacent to Glenwood Park in Loudoun County, VA. She placed 1,076 acres of Sunny Bank into easement in 2005. Originally a Quaker farm, Sunny Bank has been in Smithwick’s family since 1779. It remains one of the largest conserved farms in Virginia. Mrs. Smithwick’s family began farming in Virginia in 1769. Sunny Bank employed an open-door policy, taking in horses and horsemen and providing a haven for steeplechasing and fox hunting. According to historians, Civil War general Robert E. Lee’s horse, Traveller, was bred and raised at Sunny Bank.
Our Board
Amy McNeely | Chairman
Karyn Wilson
Eva Smithwick