Going Along for the Ride at Oaks Classic

High-jumping horses dashed in and out of the sunlight Sunday in the show ring at Joan Irvine Smith’s training stables in San Juan Capistrano.

For the sixth year, Smith’s two-day Oaks Classic brought championship horses and riders from around the country to compete for prize money totaling $100,000. And for the fifth year, Susan Hutchison of La Canada won the Grand Prix jumping event.

While the thoroughbreds were put through their paces, friends of the hostess and her mother, Athalie Clarke, mingled ringside under a white tent--enjoying the perfect weather, open bars and buffet cornucopias.

Tent City

The VIP tent--with invitation-only seating for 450--shaded a full complement of local notables. Though Smith eschews the dress-up balls and other fetes that fill high society calendars, her annual horse show party always draws the circuit’s big guns.

Henry and Renee Segerstrom watched the Grand Prix class from a front row table with Maria del Carmen Calvo (who painted the impressionistic oils decorating the tent’s interior) and her husband, Dr. Walter Henry. Also seated with the Segerstroms were the consuls general of Turkey and Spain and their wives.

Peggy Goldwater Clay lunched at a sunny table with Blynn and Dr. William Bunney, chairman of UC Irvine’s department of psychiatry, and Sherry and Dr. Monte Buchsbaum, director of UCI’s Brain Imaging Center.

Aissa Wayne attended with her mom, Pilar Wayne, and Roy Hulse. Aissa recalled “dabbling” with horseback riding while hanging out on movie sets with her rough-ridin’ dad. Pilar remembered winning a horse in a lottery as a teen-ager in Lima, Peru.

Championship table-hoppers Lois and Buzz Aldrin wended their way through the narrow aisles between the plentiful buffets and the brightly clothed luncheon tables.

Sights and Sounds

Besides the first-class food under the tent (mountains of jumbo shrimp, scallops, shredded crab meat and oysters on the half-shell, plus Mexican specialties, roast beef carved to order and hot-fudge sundaes), guests strolled past a mini-mall of booths on the show grounds’ perimeter.

Equestrian-outfitters Hermes--which underwrote the $10,000 junior Grand Prix class--set up shop with an assortment of high-ticket accouterment (including scarves for $195 and riding crops for $175).

Tucked between booths selling jewelry, clothing and framed prints, the Hubbs-Sea World Research Institute offered pamphlets on its ongoing projects (saving Mono Lake, global warming and how whales communicate, among current studies) and a chance to pet Pete, a 6-month-old Humboldt penguin. (Smith has promised a $100,000 donation to the institute, said executive director Frank Powell. “This is something she has always been interested in,” Powell said, “and we are very grateful for her interest.”)

Several hundred high-rolling horse fanciers paid $150 per ticket for VIP treatment during the weekend event. Another 300 or so ponied up $8 for general admission bleacher seats.

Mother’s Day Redux

Among guests were two of Smith’s sons, Morton Irvine Smith and Jim Swinden, and daughter-in-law Carol Penniman (whose husband, Lt. Comm. Russell Penniman, is stationed on a ship off the coast of Iraq).

Before the Grand Prix jumping began on Sunday, the siblings and in-law presented the hostess with a silver trophy “as a loving thank you from the children,” the ring announcer said.

Smith--comfortably chic in an animal-print Hermes pantsuit and sandals--looked thrilled as she held the shiny bucket above her head for the crowd to see.

The Last Word

Through legal thick and thin, Smith’s fate has been harnessed to a long-running lawsuit with the Irvine Co. and its CEO, Donald Bren. Soon their financial destinies will part--possibly as early as later this month. She is completing final contracts and negotiations for the company’s payment to her of more than $250 million dollars, she said.

“I want cash,” she added, with characteristic bluntness. “When Donald pays me, I’m gonna buy a new horse.”