From Nights On Broadway To Saturday Night Lights New Yorker Georgina Bloomberg Calls Wellington Her Second Home Story by Kenneth Kraus • Photos by Geoffrey Tischman
The ball has dropped in Times Square, heralding in the New Year and marking the time when northern equestrians begin their pilgrimage to the south. For equestrian jetsetter Georgina Bloomberg, it means an adjustment from the whirlwind of New York City nights to the relative quiet and peacefulness that signals an arrival in Wellington, the winter capital of the equestrian world. “I really love Wellington and the time I spend here. New York will always be home and be my base, but I love spending time here and calling this home for the wintertime,” Bloomberg said as she began to unpack one of her many suitcases for the upcoming show season. This year marks the start of season number 17 for Bloomberg, who first arrived in Wellington in 1998 when she was still showing in the pony rings and had just begun to make the move up to junior hunters. Bloomberg’s equestrian talents were evident from the start, and she has found incredible success at every level. But when first arriving on the Florida scene, she began as so many young riders do, only as a weekend warrior. “We only came a few weekends the first two years because I wasn’t allowed to take time off of school,” she explained, adding that she attended the Spence School in Manhattan. As her career blossomed, Wellington became much more of a winter home. “As I started doing very well with Diplomacy and my other junior hunters, my mother let me come down more often, and we started flying down every weekend,” she said. “My senior year, I was able to come down for a few weeks at a time and coordinate my schoolwork with tutors to make up for the work I was missing up north.” And then, her incredible run of success on horseback carried on to the much more difficult jumper divisions and, in what seemed like a blink of an eye, there she was, winning consistently in the junior and amateur jumpers and scoring double gold medals at the North American Junior and Young Riders Championships. And all the while, Wellington became a bigger part of her life and her fast-rising career. “We rented a house in the Polo Club and then the Equestrian Club Estates for the first few years, 34
february 2015 | wellington the magazine