Beezie Madden honored with the 2014 Audi Leading Rider Award in Kentucky….

Madden captured the Martha Jolicoeur Leading Lady Rider award and the Audi Leading Rider award for her efforts tonight, but more importantly, she bankrolled some valuable World Cup points as everybody is fighting for a spot at the World Cup Finals in Las Vegas next April.

This season has been an incredible one for one of the sport’s most breathtaking riders. After a major collarbone injury that put her on the sidelines for most of the summer season, Beezie Madden has come back with vengeance, winning both Team and Individual Bronze at the 2014 Alltech World Equestrian Games and maintaining her tempo well into the indoor season. Last night, Madden won the $250,000 Canadian Pacific Grand Prix CSI4*-W, presented by the Harrison Family with her star mount Cortes C, owned by Abigail Wexner. The pair took the feature Grand Prix title, earning valuable points towards this year’s World Cup Finals in Las Vegas, before capturing the two most prestigious awards of the 131st edition of the National Horse Show of Kentucky.

Madden captured the Martha Jolicoeur Leading Lady Rider award and the Audi Leading Rider award for her efforts tonight, but more importantly, she bankrolled some valuable World Cup points as everybody is fighting for a spot at the World Cup Finals in Las Vegas next April. “My first goal is to qualify. Even though I had a good score today, I really only have planned to do seven qualifiers unless I get desperate and start scrambling around,” she said. “Seven scores count, so I need all those to be good really.” Tonight was certainly a step in the right direction.

Hunter Harrison, the CEO of Canadian Pacific and Chairman of the Board of the National Horse Show and sponsor of tonight’s event said, “Let me congratulate Georgina and McLain and Beezie for an outstanding performance. It’s a pleasure for us to be able to sponsor a show of this prestige and for it to come off as well as it did. You can congratulate the course designer. He did a wonderful job because you see the cream came to the top here tonight. Three of the top riders in country and three of the top riders in the world,” he said. “We just feel very privileged at Canadian Pacific to be able to sponsor a wonderful event like this.”

Harrison then announced some very exciting news. “We made a commitment today to go through the 2016 National Horse Show as sponsors. We would probably go even further, except we have a policy that you cannot go beyond a CEO’s tenure. I’m out in 2017 and we’ll have to sell the new CEO that it’s a tradition that he should carry on,” he smiled.

Source: Phelps Media