How the Hampton Classic Horse Show comes together
Around this time of year, you can hear some of the social heavyweights in the Hamptons begin to complain. Even the most formidable hosts and hostesses are feeling a little weary and tapped out. It’s the cumulative effect of summer entertaining. Those who started out at a disco paced gallop are slowing down to a tea party crawl.
My advice to them: put yourself in Tony Hitchcock’s shoes and you will feel carefree by comparison. He’s expecting about ten thousand people on Sunday, all of whom want to be fed and entertained. Beside that, he has to arrange the care and feeding of 1,500 horses and the well being of hundreds of riders, trainers and grooms. Tony and his wife, Jean Lindgren, are executive directors of the Hampton Classic. And while we all know the Classic as one of this country’s top equestrian events, it is also a logistic achievement of immense proportions.
At the grounds off Snake Hollow Road, what looked like a farm with a few outbuildings just a few weeks ago is now an equestrian city of enormous canvas tents, with streets, lighting, water, a post office, a city hall-like command center, security and shops. I recently asked Tony and Jean and the staff about the planning and coordination behind this enterprise.
Remarkably, the show operates with just a few people working very hard for most of the year and a few dozen people working very hard in the weeks leading up opening day. During the week of competition, hundreds of paid workers and volunteers take care of everything from deadheading flowers to shoeing horses.
About two weeks before opening day, barns—actually huge striped canvas tents—are erected and stalls assembled within. The barns front on “streets” with gravel plazas that include running water for hosing down the animals—the equivalent of an outdoor horse spa. Exhibitors set up tack rooms with furniture, antiques, equestrian gear, cups and ribbons on display in a secondary competition—and in fact a prize is awarded to the most original tack room.
Now that the equine stars of the show are taken care of, attention shifts to the comfort of the folks with deep pockets who are underwriting most of this—the patrons and sponsors and their guests. Nearly three thousand of them are sheltered in the Grand Prix and the United States Equestrian Team tents—together over seven hundred feet long and forming two sides of the Grand Prix ring. These tents lack facilities for washing and brushing—on the theory that patrons have done this at home. Any lack of grooming facilities, however, is amply compensated by lavish lunches and so much champagne it might as well be flowing from a hose.
A grandstand seating 5,000, and tented sponsor chalets for 500 enclose the third and fourth sides of the Grand Prix ring. Four other rings, as well as practice areas, additional seating, boutiques, food vendors, press and television facilities, a tent for kid activities and gardens and parking areas are short walks away.
As the show has grown over the years so has the complexity of the operation. One day I watched a telephone technician surrounded by a gigantic maze of colored wires—absolutely indecipherable to a non-techie—which became 125 phone lines operating through a bank of five computers. This, along with an extensive radio dispatch network, enables staff members to speak with one another from any place on the sixty acre showgrounds.
All this grew from a small local show. It’s now one of the largest in the country; it’s televised internationally; it’s talked about all over; and it’s the biggest social event in the Hamptons. It’s so well organized all we have to do is kick back and enjoy it.