Roo Report — Live Oak International 2026

FEI 3* Horse Single | Loretta with Andy Marcoux, Tara Devine backstep, Sue Amendola OG Groom

Live Oak International has long been one of my favorite combined driving events in the country. This was the 35^th Anniversary of the event.

My first experience at Live Oak was as a volunteer sometime around 1993 or so. Things have grown exponentially since then! This year there were 62 competitors from 5 countries, plus a world-class jumping competition headlined by a $200,000 Grand Prix, drawing over 15,000 spectators across the weekend.

Dressage

I was very happy with Loretta’s dressage test. She showed poise, consistency, clear gaits, and transitions throughout. Just as important, her relaxed confidence carried throughout the test.

She did her shoulder-ins that were on 3 tracks (the right 3 tracks, by the way, as opposed to haunches-in). Her trot work was very steady throughout, showing clear distinctions between working, collected, and extended trot.

It’s funny—in the test the collection felt like we were barely moving, but watching the replay, we probably could have added a little more collection.

Of course, our extended trots paled in comparison to the naturally huge extended trots on display by some of our competitors—such as Jazandro driven by Jacob Arnold (who finished 2nd overall) or Famtijn (Fam) driven by Marianna Padgett (3rd.) I’m ok with that for the moment, since we’ve really been focused on getting Loretta’s fundamental skills honed before asking for the kind of extravagant movement that comes naturally to some horses.

The walk was quietly one of Loretta’s better moments in the test. She showed regularity, ground cover, suppleness through the back, and a genuine stretch to the bit. What was striking was how much the field struggled with it, even among the leaders. The heavy footing and a jumbotron looming in the corner didn’t help anyone, but there seemed to be only a handful of horses in the division that managed a 4-beat walk, let alone any extension.

Watch the test with scores on Youtube

The canter has been a challenge for Loretta, and this is an area where she’s made good improvements. Her canter movements were consistent with clear 3-beat strides, and even a fairly decent transition from the extended canter back to collected canter. We did get one comment regarding that transition being a little late. Joke’s on them though—we usually just use the whole A side of the ring to come back, haha!

When the scores came back, however, we were buried all the way down in 8th place, almost 8 points behind Leslie Berndl’s test with her aptly named horse Impressive turning in an impressive 43.38 first-place score. Great job Leslie, but… Ughhh!!

The scores were fairly consistent among the judges, pointing out that there is still lots of work to be done. One thing that I appreciate is that the judges who were the most critical were also the judges that left the most comments. Those comments go a long way in deciding where to focus our training.

Marathon

On to the fun stuff! The marathon obstacles at Live Oak International are among my favorite obstacles we get to drive. Many people are intimidated by their scale, and often by the complexity, but these obstacles are right up our alley!

While the obstacles were not flagged quite as technically demanding as they were last year, they were still a really nice balance of high-speed routes and tricky little shortcuts. While obstacles 1 (Couture Water) and 2 (Brook Ledge Gulch) offered a few minor route variations, the remaining 5 obstacles had all of us scratching our heads!

All but one of the obstacles offered gate variations such as bi-directional gates, or multiple gates of the same letter. These variations really had all of the competitors studying the obstacles closely to come up with the best routes for their horses and ponies. I love stuff like that!

Little Loretta was on fire on Saturday! We posted the best times in the division in obstacles 3 and 5.

Big shout out to my Coach Taz Lester seen here coaching us along the way between obstacles.

Obstacle 3 is the dreaded “Eagles Nest,” sponsored by Great American Insurance. It features a 6+ foot mound in the middle capped with a 3-post tower (the Eagle’s Nest at the top), surrounded by a series of single panel fences creating somewhat of a ring around the center, with more single panels stabbing in toward the center of the mound on the inside, plus a few triangle elements.

It presents technical challenges not only from finding a smooth route, but from creating safe turns with the ever-changing slope of the ground. I’m very proud to report that we rocked that obstacle! In fact, we got the best score of the day for all 3* competitors, winning a cool grand for the accomplishment.

Less headline-worthy, but in a way more important to me, was Loretta’s performance in “The Gulch.” That’s a huge obstacle that features a long gulch through the middle (thus the name), with a high bridge over it. The total change in elevation in the obstacle is probably on the order of 20 feet, which we had to cover in one run — from under the bridge all the way up and over.

The nature of these types of obstacles leads to large, wide-open running routes, not Loretta’s strong point against the big horses with long legs. Well, she proved she could hang with the big boys, placing second to Marianna driving Fam, who’s a really big, powerful horse. GO RETTA ROO!!

Timer Meltdown

I’ve used the same timer setup for more than 20 years. It’s a couple of clear Pelican cases with very simple kitchen type timers inside (2 timers per box.) Keeping it simple has been a successful strategy… up until now.

Somewhere on our way to the third kilometer my Golden Gator (and horse owner) Tara Devine informed me that both *(expletive) count up timers were blank. We only had 1 count down timer running, plus a blank one we keep on the carriage in case we need to record a hold time on course.

Much discussion ensued. We set the hold timer to match the remaining count down timer in case that one crapped out too (which it did, I never should have replaced those RadioShack timers!)

Having a count down timer on the carriage is really useful in the last kilometer to make sure we come in the time window on course, but it’s not that helpful for managing split times to make sure we’re on pace kilometer by kilometer. There’s math involved, and if you know me – that’s not a strong point of mine.

Tara, also found navigating and mathing to be pretty mutually exclusive skills! Fortunately I’ve been in that position before. We had the good fortune of starting at 10 minutes past the hour. My watch still worked, so we able to easily navigate our times by time of day. Thank God we didn’t have to break out the sun-dial!

Oh, ya, and we still had 4 more obstacles to drive…

Top marathon placers, Andy Marcoux, Janelle Marshal, Marcus Holzinger

Loretta was in Full Beast Mode. She totally forgave me when I was late on the cue that gate A was a 180º turn in Obstacle 5 sending her into a full 4-hoof lockup before yanking us around and laying down the top time. We finished the marathon 1 shoe short of a full set, but Loretta never took an off step.

All told, at the end of the marathon we came out on top by a razor-thin margin. We beat out Janelle Marshall driving Finsternis by one tenth of a point! Talk about a close competition!

Looking at the scoring breakdown, Loretta’s consistency is really what brought the victory home. We didn’t win obstacles 3 and 5 by large margins, but we also didn’t place below 3rd in any obstacle. We turned in 2nd-place finishes in obstacles 2, 4, and 7, and a 3rd-place finish in obstacles 1 and 6. That, coupled with an error-free go, brought our overall placing up to 4th place in the standings.

Cones

The field saw quite a few trades in placing after the marathon scores were added to dressage. Marianna moved from 3rd to 1st, Janelle picked up 2nd, and we jumped up to 4th—just behind dressage leader Leslie Berndl, and ahead of Jacob Arnold in 5th.

The margins were tight! The difference between 1st and 5th place was a narrow 4.07 points. That equates to one ball plus about 15 seconds in penalty points. No place for the faint of heart!

The cones course at Live Oak usually trends toward the relatively simple and straightforward. That was not the case this year. There were quite a few technical spots amongst the many stadium jumps that challenged both drivers and horses.

There were 3 zig-zags on the course, with the final zig-zag being adjusted down to 8 meters between gates for the 3* singles competitors. On top of that, there were many places where jump standards stood in the way of clean approaches.

Fortunately, Loretta is a veteran of the Live Oak arena, so she doesn’t get distracted from the task at hand by the stadium, dozens of jumps, a huge Jumbotron, or the hundreds of spectators. She made a careful start through cones 1 and 2, then kicked it into high gear from 3 on.

By the time we cleared cone 16, we still had 49 seconds left on the clock! We were able to relax the pace for the slightly compressed zig-zag of #17, and the tightly spaced 18 and 19, finishing the course comfortably within the time allowed and no balls down. That should have resulted in a double-clear round…

Unfortunately, while we were having fun blasting around the course earlier on, we managed to give the #4 cone marker (the number box) a bit of a love-tap while we were on our way to the #11 oxer. So, while we did not dislodge any balls, nor knock over the #4 marker, the rule states:

“If an Athlete knocks down or dislodges any part of an Obstacle which has already been driven, the Athlete will incur three penalties.”

Bummer City!! That seemingly incidental little touch cost us a 2nd-place finish! Moral of the story: No Touchy Touchy Anything on the Course!

In the end there were just 4 double-clear rounds from a field of 13 competitors (1 retired after marathon). Janelle took the top position with Marianna in second. Jacob slid past Leslie and me with his double-clear round to earn 3rd place overall. Leslie also had a 3-point penalty, so our positions relative to one another remained the same, but now in 4th and 5th.

Final standings in FEI 3* Horse Single:

• 1st – Janelle Marshall (142.62)
• 2nd – Marianna Padgett (147.49)
• 3rd – Jacob Arnold (148.45)
• 4th – Leslie Berndl (149.03)
• 5th – Andrew Marcoux / Loretta (149.20)

Top 5 competitors separated by less than seven points — it doesn’t get much tighter than that.

Progress Over Podium

In the end it was a mixed bag for us. Of course we would have loved a second-place finish this season with the intense competition we’ve been facing. That said, I’m really proud of the consistent work we’ve been putting in with Loretta. She absolutely is putting in her best effort and shows that she has more to build on.

Next Event — Katydid at Tryon International in April. Come cheer us on!!

———