Lexington, KY – August 8, 2025 – With the new Pony Jumper Championship format successfully underway, an impressive field of 44 athletes was whittled down to 15-way jump-off on Friday afternoon in the Claiborne Ring during the 2025 USEF Small/Medium Pony Jumper National Championship. Cisy Zhou of New York, NY, was the best of the day to claim the gold medal, topping the speed phase with a blazing time aboard Ka-Chow, a 13-year-old Welsh mare owned by Southside Equestrian, LLC.
Cisy Zhou & Ka-Chow
“It feels amazing to win today,” smiled Zhou. “The new format is really cool – it feels like going to a mini Olympics. During the jump-off, I was just trying to put in a smooth round, do all the tight turns and trust my pony.”
Grace Green & Bjerregards Katja
It was a strategy that paid off, going straight to the top of the podium as they crossed the finish line with all the rails intact in a time of 28.882 seconds, a full second ahead of the silver and bronze medalists. Grace Green came the closest to catching them with Bjerregards Katja, breaking the beam in 30.155 seconds for the silver medal. Lacey Powers took home the bronze medal with A&M Betty’s Secret after finishing the track in a clear 30.616 seconds. All the three athletes returned to the center of the ring to stand proudly on the podium with Zhou earning the top spot.
Lacey Powers & A&M Betty’s Secret
Zhou has been riding Ka-Chow for two years, starting in the Itty Bitty Jumpers at the Winter Equestrian Festival in 2024. Zhou explained, “She needs a soft hand, steering, but she does all the work for you. She’s amazing!”
While Ka-Chow lives in Florida, Zhou is based in New York, Zhou is able to ride her other ponies every day in the summer with her trainer Patricia Griffith at Heritage Farm, and every weekend during the school year.
“Cisy rode great – today was amazing,” expressed Griffith.”We were a little conservative yesterday, but that actually worked to our advantage because she’s like, ‘Okay, I didn’t go as fast as I thought I was going and I can go much faster.’ We haven’t shown this pony in a ring that big, so I think she underestimated that yesterday – that she could have let it rip a little bit more. But the way the format worked for our pony was actually better because then she wasn’t flattened that way out from doing a million jump-off rounds.”
Griffith concluded, “I thought the format was great because we’re trying to encourage good riding and not just speed. Even the jump off was more about the turns than it was about flat running – I liked the course a lot.”
While Friday concluded the Small/Medium Pony section of the championships, the final event will be Saturday’s Large Individual jumping finals to close out this year’s USEF Pony Jumper National Championships.