Freshman Mckenna O’Neil has been riding horses her whole life.   The ninth grader lives with her mom, dad, and older sister, who also competitively rides horses. 

     This October, O’Neil traveled to Kentucky to participate in the RRP, the Retired Racehorse Project competition. 

     The RRP is the largest Thoroughbred retraining competition in the world for recently retired ex-racehorses. The competition took place October 12-17 at Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington. To be eligible for the competition, accepted trainers (professionals, amateurs, juniors, and teams) had to apply in early January with Jockey Club-registered Thoroughbreds who marked a workout or race after July 1, 2020, and did not have more than fifteen retraining rides prior to December 1, 2020. Trainers are responsible for acquiring their own eligible horses. 

     O’Neil retrained her horse Jarir. She won third in showjumping and was the top junior.  

     “You get a horse off the racetrack, and you retrain them to do a different discipline. My horse Jarir had previously done hurdles and timber, but I retrained him to do showjumping, which is basically jumps in the ring on differing courses.” O’Neil did meter jumping, which is three feet tall.  

     The competition lasts about four or five days, depending upon the finale and scoring.  

     O’Neil says, “The first day you had to do one course where the equitation is judged, making the course look pretty. That qualifies you for the finals, where you had to do another course, which had a jump-off. That one is all about speed and going clear by not knocking any rails.” 

     O’Neil also participated in field hunter, which is another discipline. The participants were limited to participating in two disciplines at most. 

     “Field hunter is cross country. The field master lets hounds loose, and you have to follow the field master, which is following the hounds’ scent.” 

     This discipline also lasted four or five days but was scored differently than the showjumping. 

     “On the first day, you had to do a whole cross-country course by yourself and get around without any stops. The second day we did a mock hunt, which is when they don’t let the hound go and you just do cross-country with the whole group. If you qualify for the finals, you had to do a course where you had to drop a rail in the middle of the course.” 

     O’Neil placed fourth in the field hunter, along with being the top junior. She also won the Pony Club award for being a member of the Elkridge Harford Hunt Pony Club and winning the highest number of points in the RP out of the Club.