And how could he not aboard 22-year-old Maple Lane Kero, or “Peach,” as he’s known around the barn? 

The pint-sized Welsh Cob gelding (Mill Gate Hercules—Canterbrook Marmalade, Trevallion Royal Consort), owned by Linda Susan Krook and bred in Canada by Anne Corden, stands out in the ring, not only for his unique cremello coloring, but for his talent across two disciplines—dressage and working equitation.

The pair are competing this weekend in the childrens division at the US Dressage Festival of Champions—happening this week in Wayne, Illinois—fresh off their medal-winning appearance at the Discover Dressage/FEI North American Youth Dressage Championship, held July 30-Aug. 3 in Williamsburg, Michigan. 

Maverick and Peach represented Region 6 in the inaugural childrens division, earning individual bronze. While their three-person team was unable to complete due to one pair failing the first horse inspection, Maverick was thrilled with his first NAYC finish on his partner of two years.

“I thought all of [three tests] were really good, but I was most happiest with my individual test,” he said, which scored a 72.25%. “I think both me and my pony tried really hard. And since it was the last test there was, we had gotten feedback from the first two tests, and we really, really worked on what the judges wanted. And I think that really paid off.”

Maverick lives in Milton-Freewater, Oregon, with his parents, Kenton and Tiffany Wright. Kenton runs a training business focusing on Lusitanos and working equitation, and he also stands a Lusitano stallion. Maverick has been riding since he can remember and became interested in dressage when he in kindergarten or first grade.

“I started just moving up the levels and started training and working to be better and better,” he said. “Now I’ve [gone] to NAYC, and it’s a great honor.”

In Peach, he’s found a partner well qualified to show him the ropes. This week will be Peach’s second trip to the Festival of Champions—in 2011, he won the inaugural USEF National Pony Rider Championships with former owner Allison Cyprus. 

The senior pony has schooled through Intermediaire and has competed through fourth level with Maverick, who has earned his U.S. Dressage Federation bronze medal on the gelding and is partway to his silver.

“I think he has a really good personality, and he is always eager to go out and work,” he said.

When asked what keeps Peach happy in his senior age, Maverick said, “I think it’s part of the Welsh hardiness, their fire and their eagerness to go and just keep going. We also try to give him some supplements, but besides that, we just keep him in good work, good fitness, and just make sure he’s happy and give him a lot of treats and make sure he’s on a good work schedule.”

Peach enjoys a variety of training at home, including trail riding, where he gets to cross a river, some canters in the open to stretch his legs, jumping and working with cows. And for all of it, all he requires is a treat.

“He really likes treats,” Maverick said. “He will follow you around the barn just for a treat. And he’s very food motivated, and he has a lot of energy, and still has some spice left. Miss Susan was going to retire him, but she knows how much spice he has left, and he didn’t want to retire.”

He says that Peach has no problem switching from the dressage ring to the working equitation, which has several phases including a dressage test in a short ring, an obstacle course and sometimes events working cows.

“We’re just so grateful to have Peach with us,” Tiffany said. “He’s just been a joy. He’s super easy to have in the barn. He’s low-maintenance and just all around a good boy. We’ve been really grateful for Maverick to have the opportunity to do this level of riding with him.”

Maverick rides another pony for Krook in dressage and enjoys competing in working equitation with his father. He also helps break and back the young Lusitanos they breed. His mother is the assistant and manager of “both of us boys,” says Maverick.

The family enjoys the Lusitano breed for their minds and trainability and has around 50 on their farm, including 10 broodmares. 

“They’re just a really fun horse to ride,” Maverick said. “They’re really smooth, and they have really good movement, and they’re just a very good all-around horse as well as a really good competition horse. You can go out there and win at a top dressage show, and then go out the next day or a couple days later and go on trails, and they won’t care. They’ll just do whatever you task them to do.”

For his dressage goals, Maverick is hoping for another strong performance in Illinois this weekend, and beyond that, he has high hopes for his career.

“My goal is to get my silver and gold medal and possibly, if I have the right horse, and it’s the right time, go to the Olympics with a Lusitano,” he said.

The post Oregon Cowboy And Pint-Sized Cremello Hope To Repeat NAYC Success At Festival Of Champions appeared first on The Chronicle of the Horse.

As Raelyn Snyder and American Thunder galloped toward the last cross-country fence in the CCI1*-S at the Maryland International on Saturday, the 19-year-old had a moment of shock.

“I could hear the announcer say I had moved into first and could win with a clear round,” said Snyder, who couldn’t believe what she heard. “I jumped the last jump and then immediately broke out into tears. It was totally unexpected, but it was such an incredible feeling.”

It was a first FEI-level event for both her and “Chief,” her 10-year-old off-track Thoroughbred of unknown breeding, but far from Synder’s first FEI-level competition. The teen is first and foremost a vaulter. With numerous vaulting championships under her belt, Snyder last summer represented the United States at the FEI Vaulting World Championships in Bern, Switzerland, where she and Allegra Hart placed ninth in the Pas De Deux division.

Snyder trains with Hanna and Nicholas Hansen and manages their Roaring Creek Farm in Reddick, Florida, and Catawissa, Pennsylvania.

“I’m just so proud of her,” Hanna said. “She got into eventing later in her riding career, and it’s kind of been second fiddle to her vaulting, but in the last year, she’s really taken it seriously. They went from novice to modified this season, and it’s been very cool to watch.” 

Snyder first spied Chief in 2022, when the horse was in training with the Hansens. She had been riding with the Hansens after meeting Nicholas, an international dressage and eventing rider, as a youngster. They became friends after he began helping train her vaulting horses on groundwork and longeing.

Snyder said Nicholas learned the ins and outs of vaulting so he could longe Lightning, Synder’s main vaulting horse, when she competes. While she continues to focus on vaulting, the Hansens encouraged her to try eventing. She was looking for a second vaulting horse and thought Chief, who is 17.2 hands, might be a good fit for both equestrian pursuits. However, they had a rocky first meeting in 2022.

“I fell off him when I tried him,” Synder said with a laugh. “We were cantering over a pole, and he tripped, got mad, and ducked his shoulder. I wasn’t coordinated for riding at the time.”

Not that Snyder was graceless on the back of a horse. She started vaulting at age 4, when as a horse-crazy little girl she begged her mom for riding lessons and ended up at a barn with a vaulting program, which Snyder loved immediately. 

 “I’d train at home on an upside-down laundry basket until I got a vaulting barrel,” she recalls of her early years as a vaulter.

As she’s entered the world of eventing with Chief, she’s says she now trusts him implicitly, despite their initial disconnects. She knew he’d be a good partner after their first cross-country schooling session in October 2022. 

“It was definitely scary at first, and we were jumping the tiniest of jumps in the field,” she recalled. “But I quickly realized that Chief loved it, and he helped me out of some sticky situations.” 

Not that it was all smooth sailing. She fell off at the water jump in their first horse trials, noting that Chief, who is partially blind in his left eye after impaling it on a screw as a colt, was not initially a fan of water jumps. 

“I’m a person who doesn’t like to give up on things,” she said. “I learned to sit back and get him into water. Now it’s one of his favorite parts of cross-country. He’s always looking around for the water and leaps right into it.”

Watching Snyder and Chief’s relationship develop has been “amazing” to watch, Hanna said.

“That was their biggest obstacle moving up the levels,” she said. “He was very cautious going into water, and her position wasn’t very established yet, being a greener rider. The beginning of their career was a green rider with a green horse, making green mistakes. Now, their partnership is just amazing, and they can just rock into any water.”

Chief is now taking a well-deserved break, after a busy first half of 2025, while Synder shifts focus to her other sport. She’s planning to compete at the USEF East Vaulting Championships with Lightning, held Sept. 12-14 at the Tryon International Equestrian Center (North Carolina). She’s also developing her newest vaulting horse, Danika, a 7-year-old Oldenburg mare, while introducing young vaulters to the sport through her Citrus State Vaulters training operation.

Chief will do “lots of flatwork” over the summer and possibly some jumper shows leading up to a few events in the fall. Long-term, she says she’s shooting to compete in the two-star division at the 2026 USEF Eventing Young Rider Championships.

 “I really love this sport now. It’s so much fun,” Snyder said of eventing. “It’s entirely the opposite [of vaulting]. Vaulting is very graceful, and you want to be super flowy with your horse. You’re not vaulting in a defensive position. I had to learn how to have my heels in front of me and how to ride with my seat. It was really hard to learn the defensive position and how to see a distance to jumps. I had to learn how to be really confident on the horse, even if I didn’t know what I was doing. There’s still a lot to learn, but I’ve grown so much as a rider.” 

She said Chief is the perfect partner as she continues to learn and evolve in the sport of eventing.

 “He’s taught me so much, but I’ve got a lot of work to do and a long way to go,” she said. “I need to continue building off this win and this partnership. I just have to make sure I’m riding my horse properly so he can perform to the best of his ability.”

The post International Vaulter Scores Her First FEI Eventing Win appeared first on The Chronicle of the Horse.

Any one of those injuries could cause even the most dauntless athlete to take an extended break. Not Cole Horn.

In the past two years, the 26-year-old professional equestrian has suffered each of those injuries, with the most recent collarbone break happening just last month during a fall with MBF Cooley Permission To Land in the CCI4*-S at Stable View in Aiken, South Carolina.

After a few days off to let the bone begin to knit, Horn was back in the saddle, back at work. Shortly after that, he and “Landon,” a 17.2-hand chestnut Irish Sport Horse gelding (Cobra—Deeply Dippy K, Luidam), celebrated their first advanced completion by winning the division at the Stable View Local Charities Horse Trials, held May 4-5 in Aiken. They then punctuated their place at the level with a third-placed finish the following weekend in the CCI4*-S at the Yanmar America Tryon International Spring Three-Day Event (North Carolina).

“I do obviously try and let the bridging form [between the breaks], so at least it’s stable, and then I’m pretty comfortable getting back on,” he said. “I will start doing the solid [horses] I can trust, and I just crack on.”

Crack on, indeed. He and Landon notched their first advanced win on the strength of a 31.6 dressage score, to which they added only some time penalties cross-country—Horn credits a bitting change that helped address the issues that led to their April fall—for a final score of 42.4.

Horn, who grew up riding in New Jersey and “was always adamant that’s what I wanted to do” as a career. He earned his GED at 15 and promptly moved to Pennsylvania to work for U.S.-based Australian five-star eventer Ryan Wood. 

“It was a very special opportunity to get to see what it takes to win big events and how to be consistent like Ryan is,” Horn said. “It was incredible to work for him and be able to go along for the ride.”

It was while working for Wood that Horn discovered Landon, then a 3-year-old. 

“You go through hard times trying to find the right horse, but he never gave up, and he ended up finding [Landon],” said Wood. “It’s pretty impressive, bringing a young horse all the way to the top level and being able to win at the top level.”

Wood said the win didn’t surprise him, given Horn’s work ethic and outlook.

“He was always the first to show up and the last to leave,” Wood recalled. “He was a bit of a workaholic. He was just always a very reliable and very hard-working guy, and he’s stuck it out. It’s definitely not an easy sport, and there are more downs than ups, but if you can weather the downs and survive that, when it becomes good, it’s really good. Cole’s a survivor, and he’s always bounced back and had a good positive attitude.”

After working for Wood, Horn went on to ride for famed steeplechaser Leslie Young, which he said was “an incredible way to learn to really gallop horses and do jumps at speed,” and Ecuadoran Olympic eventer Ronald Zabala-Goetschel. In 2020, during a month-long “vacation” in England, he trained with Grand Prix dressage rider Luke Baber-Davies. Upon returning to the States, Horn set up his Will-O-Moor training business—named in honor of his equestrian great-great grandfather, Ted Williams, and great-grandfather, Rene Williams—in Ocala, Florida. 

He and Landon did well enough in 2021 that they were awarded the Holekamp/Turner Grant and The Dutta Corp. Grant through the U.S. Eventing Association to compete at that year’s FEI Eventing World Breeding Championships for Young Horses in the 7-year-old CCIYH3*-L Championship at Mondial du Lion in Le Lion d’Angers, France. It was their first CCI3*-L, and they finished 31^stoverall. 

“It’s a really gnarly event,” he recalled. “It’s very well spectated, and it was the toughest three-star I’ve ever walked. It was the biggest event I’d ever done. It was really cool to get the opportunity to run there. Just getting around and completing it, that was always the goal. When you’re on these young horses and they’re seeing things they’ve never seen before in their lives, just to be able to complete it is quite difficult.”

After Le Lion, Horn remained overseas, working for Pippa Funnell in England. In March 2022, he and Landon were competing at Tweseldown, in Hampshire, England, when they got caught up by a muddy cross-country track. 

“The footing was really deep, and he tripped on the landing of a skinny in the middle of a combo,” Horn said. “He made a monumental effort and totally saved it, and jumped right through the rest of the combo, but he got injured.

“It was a learning lesson for me,” Horn continued. “When I walked (the course), I thought the ground was not great, and that was before anyone had even run on it. But I didn’t want to be the American who chickened out. I hate that that influenced me. But it made me realize that you have to do what you think is right and trust your gut.

“It’s something I’m still working on as a person and as a rider,” Horn added. “I don’t have a fear factor. With young ones, you have to be so relaxed. They can feel nerves coming off a rider, so it’s useful not to have a fear factor and be confident that I’m not going to get thrown, and that it’s going to go great. But at the same time, that can result in a certain lack of judgement. I’ve learned that a little more self-preservation can go a long way. It’s a gift and a curse. I will get on anything, and I’ll ride some that a lot of people don’t want to ride. It’s my job, but it’s also been my downfall on numerous occasions. I’m trying to find a happy medium now.”

He returned to the U.S. in 2022 with “little money and a burning desire” to continue working with horses using what he calls a “pacificist” approach. He began working for Canadian eventer Waylon Roberts in Buckhead, Georgia, and then eventually moved Will-O-Moor to Aiken in late 2022.

At any given time, Horn has approximately 16 horses he’s training and showing.  

“Eventing is my origin sport, as it were,” Horn said. “I do dressage and hunter/jumpers because it makes me a better event rider, and it pays the bills. I spent last week with a ton of jumpers at Bruce’s Field [(South Carolina)] doing the 1.10 and 1.30 meter. It’s such a huge advantage from the show jumping side of it. It’s quite good to get out and in the ring as much as I can.

“Aiken is a great location because I can pull it off. There are huge opportunities in the hunter/jumpers and dressage, and lots of different eventing venues, too. You can show every weekend of the year. I’m in a four-week, back-to-back-to-back stretch of showing in hunter/jumper shows right now. It keeps you sharp,” Horn said, adding, “I’m a working professional. I have to take on horses for training to be able to event and have horses of my own to compete. Ninety-nine percent of the time, horses don’t come to me because they’re great. I do try to take a nice type of horse, of a certain caliber, but usually, it’s a nice horse that has a problem.”

“It’s so rewarding when you get those horses through to the other side,” he said. “I really try and teach them that they have a choice. I sit up, sit quiet, and just keep asking them the same question. It might get worse before it gets better, but I like coaxing them through it.

“Aggression and force never get it done,” he continued. “Raising the volume just teaches them to fight harder and makes them more fearful and flighty. They need to know it’s OK, and that I’m just going to keep asking but not be a jerk about it. They don’t learn when they’re scared. I like to train them to really look for, ‘What does my person want right now?’ and 99% of horses are so willing. They just might be anxious or nervous.”

In 2022, Horn suffered a devastating accident that resulted in 12 fractures in his lower leg. He had to take six weeks off and even spent some time in a wheelchair.

“That was a bad break; it was definitely my worst injury,” Horn said. “I was out hacking a young horse who was coming back into work, and some people were weed whacking, and the horse reared and collapsed on the (injured) leg. It really wasn’t the horse’s fault. And thankfully, the horse was perfectly fine. 

“I was out six weeks. Full stop. I couldn’t walk, and I had a rod in my leg and a lot of different screws,” Horn said, recalling that the injury “turned my leg into a wet noodle.”

Today, the leg is healed. The recent collarbone break is nearly healed. And Horn has his sights set firmly on the future, which he’s excited about. He can’t wait to see what more Landon has in him.

“He was born broke, and he’s never said no to a jump. He’s a cool cat of a horse and is the most willing partner and an outrageous talent,” Horn said. “I’m so grateful to this horse. He’s a freak of nature, and he’s so special to me. He’s my best friend. He’s the only horse that gets away without having bad manners on the farm, which is slightly embarrassing for someone who gets paid to fix other horses without manners. He’s my heart horse. I kind of hate it when I hear people say that because I like the idea that you can have more than one of them in your life, but, for me, he really is.”

The post Cole Horn Rebounds From Broken Collarbone To Top Placings At Advanced appeared first on The Chronicle of the Horse.

Long before Olivia Cliver ever jumped a grand prix or competed in an FEI World Cup qualifier, her sights were set on a different goal: She wanted to take her off-the-track Thoroughbred gelding, My Mitch, to the advanced level of eventing and compete at the North American Young Rider Championships. 

“When I was a kid, I saw Rolex [Three-Day Event] one year on TV, and I was like, ‘I want to go do that,’ ” she said. Cliver, whose horse showing career began in the hunter rings at local shows in Texas and New Mexico, spent six years immersed in the eventing world, working for the likes of Olympian Mike Huber, Tik and Sinead Maynard, and Heather Morris to improve her skills. 

While they did make it to the advanced level, after missing her opportunity at Young Riders due to a torn rotator cuff, Cliver started to question whether she wanted to remain in the eventing world. 

“When I sold My Mitch, I realized that I only followed my eventing dreams because I had a horse that I really loved and trusted,” she said. “The thought of doing cross-country [at that level again] did not intrigue me anymore. I’m not normally a nervous rider, and I just started to pick up that cross-country was making me anxious. So I thought, ‘OK, let’s regroup—how do I make riding grand prix happen?’ ”

Her pivot back to show jumping has paid off: Cliver, 31, now uses the skills she learned in eventing to navigate five-star grand prix tracks and FEI World Cup qualifiers. 

“I think the bravery, [jumping fences] with speed, and being comfortable jumping things on angles were the three biggest skills I learned from eventing,” Cliver said. “It was a hard adjustment at that level, going from eventing to show jumping. The difference in eventing and show jumping is that in the cross-country, it’s big, tricky and challenging, but you have more times in between fences to regroup and organize. Whereas in show jumping, it’s all technical, and it all happens very quickly, so you don’t have a lot of time to regroup. Also, the rails fall down [in show jumping]!”

After backing away from the eventing world, Cliver moved back to Midland, Texas, married her husband, Carlos Flores, and started her training and sales business, On The Mark Equestrian.

“There’s such a need in this town for a quality program,” Cliver said, who grew up in a non-horsey family and got her start with horses when her grandmother gave her a hobby horse as a young child. 

“I was that kid years ago when I first started riding—we didn’t have a program like mine back then; my mom and I traveled all over so I could ride in hunters, 4-H, polo, whatever. I wanted to start my own business here in order to give back to my community in that way.” 

Most recently, she and her grand prix partner, Connor 69, achieved back-to-back wins at the Pin Oak Charity Horse Show circuit in Katy, Texas, topping the $50,000 Southern Way Farm Grand Prix on April 5 and the $100,000 Hildebrand Family Grand Prix on April 12. Cliver also won the Tom Pickard Sportsmanship Perpetual Award. 

“I cannot believe how far ‘Connor’ and I have come,” Cliver said. “We’ve definitely had our setbacks along the way, but he’s been more than we ever thought.”

Four years ago, Cliver went on a horse shopping trip in search of a grand prix horse for herself, with the goal of competing in her first FEI grand prix classes. After trying 20 other horses, Cliver sat on Connor—and the connection was instant. Although Connor is 17.1 hands and Cliver is a petite 5’5”, Connor’s size did not intimidate her. 

“Everyone felt like Connor needed a kinder, softer, ‘take the pressure off’ ride,” Cliver said. She gathered a group of owners: Sonja Register, Becky Young, Sarah Philpy and Laura Johnson, together to purchase the then 8-year-old Holsteiner bay gelding (Connor 48—Brandy, Contender). Shortly after, Cliver began mapping out a plan for their success. 

“I wanted something that we could go all the way with; if I had Connor, I wanted to do it right,” she said. “Connor has all the scope in the world, so it was more the question of ‘will this partnership work?’ 

“Connor has two personalities,” she added. “He is the kindest horse, but he can also be a little difficult and stubborn, which makes him a great competitor. But I think all of the 1.60-meter horses have that little quirkiness about them.”

When Connor first arrived at her barn, Cliver quickly realized she had some retraining to do.

 “At first, Connor was constantly on the defense; he would have a huge overreaction to things sometimes,” Cliver said. “There were so many things Connor was particular about: He’s very ‘stranger danger.’ He likes his people at all times, he hates water on the ground, and he doesn’t like the wash racks because he doesn’t like water. So we had to figure out how to take the pressure off of him while earning his trust.

“One day Connor escaped, and my two grooms had him cornered on the bridle path,” Cliver said. “Connor was just running back and forth charging at them; he was scared and a bit overwhelmed about being in a new situation with new people. I quickly ran out with a cookie—when I worked for Tik, he had always taught me about being aware of our body language around the horses. And that was a lot of it [with Connor]; I always thought about how can I come at him from a very neutral place, so he knows I’m not threatening? That day, I just turned my body completely sideways, didn’t look at him, held my hand out, and I just played the retreat game. As soon as I was taking slow steps toward Connor and he would stop and look at me, then I would retreat and walk away. And then he would be like, ‘Wait, why are you walking away from me? You’re not coming at me?’ Then I was eventually able to get Connor to come to me. He ate the cookie, and then I put the halter on him, and I took him back to his stall. We had a couple of grooms whose eyes became wide open to how you can be nice to horses and that they will respond well.”

Cliver also quickly discovered that turnout was an issue for Connor, and she had a small paddock built for him so he could spend more time outside. “I wanted to let him be a horse as much as we could,” Cliver said. 

But six months into their partnership, she still struggled to get Connor to stay out by himself. That was when Cliver had another idea: She went in search of a miniature horse to be Connor’s constant companion. 

“When I told his owners that I was going to try to get him a mini, they were like, ‘This is going to go one of two ways: he’s either going to be obsessed with it, or he’s going to hate it,’” Cliver said. 

Apples, a 5-year-old gray mini mare, immediately became Connor’s best friend. Apples lives in the same stall as Connor and sometimes accompanies him to horse shows, but she also is comfortable being left at home while Connor travels to FEI shows. 

“Connor loves Apples; it’s the cutest partnership,” Cliver said. “It’s a nice balance: I can take him away from the mini pony, and Apples has been the most perfect thing ever because she likes him, but she’s not obsessed with him. If I take Connor away from her, she’s not screaming for him in his stall. But you cannot take Apples from Connor. If he gets left in his stall and Apples gets pulled out, the whole barn is going down.” 

As Cliver and Connor’s partnership strengthened, Cliver began working with October Hill Farm Sporthorses, located near Weatherford, Texas. Over the past three and a half years, they have helped her develop Connor and bring him up from the smaller grand prix ranks to World Cup qualifying classes. Both barns attend many of the same show circuits throughout the year together. 

“October Hill has helped shape me into the rider and competitor I am today, and I will always be grateful for that,” she said. “One saying that’s stuck with me is, ‘learning by doing.’ You can’t expect to win the first time you move up; you just have to do it, learn from it, and trust that with time and good rounds, the results will come. It taught me to give myself grace and just keep showing up.”

In September 2023, Cliver and Connor clinched their first national grand prix win in the $30,000 Brownland Grand Prix (Tennessee). The week prior, Cliver had dislocated her kneecap and torn the medial patellofemoral ligament in her left leg in a fall from a different horse, and she had been unsure if she could compete with Connor at all. 

“I didn’t ride for the entire week leading up to the grand prix,” she said. “[October Hill trainer] Nico Gamboa rode Connor for me during the week, and then I got on Connor the Friday before the grand prix. I couldn’t even get on him; the knee injury was so painful.

“It was kind of funny; I’ve had so many setbacks in my life that my mom and I always talk about, ‘Focus on the donut, not the hole,’ because I’ve had a lot of stupid things happen to me,” Cliver added. “[When I hurt my knee], I was also preparing for World Cup season—after Brownland, we were going to a bunch of different shows in the fall for World Cup qualifying classes. I couldn’t believe I had gotten injured right at that time, but we made it work.”

Cliver didn’t allow the acute injury to halt her fall season; she and Connor went on to place second in the $78,000 1.50m FEI Grand Prix Qualifier Welcome at the 2023 Sacramento International World Cup Week (California) and then finished seventh in the $226,000 FEI Longines FEI Jumping World Cup CSI4*-W at the 2023 Las Vegas National Horse Show. The pair also competed in their first five-star grand prix last fall and hoped to compete in their second five-star grand prix during the 2025 Thermal circuit, but an abscess kept them from that goal. 

“Things get going, and then we have a stupid setback like that,” Cliver said. “Such is life, but it’s frustrating! After that, I was determined to make Pin Oak successful for us. I’m a firm believer that the comeback is always greater than the setback as long as you keep chipping away at it.” 

But then a week prior to this year’s Pin Oak, Cliver reinjured her knee again. “I was shutting a drawer with my bad knee, which doesn’t sound like a big deal at all, but I dislocated that kneecap again,” she said. “I was frustrated—I had told all of Connor’s owners that this was going to be our year at Pin Oak—but I was determined to make this work. I used kinesiology tape on my knee [for the class] and I was like, ‘It’s not going to keep me down.’ It’s a weird injury; it’s really painful at times.” 

Although surgery was suggested, Cliver has tabled that, for now, in favor of physical therapy. 

“We never really have an off-season for our sport anymore,” she said. “It’s hard.” 

For the remainder of 2025, Cliver has her eyes set on competing Connor in several more World Cup qualifying classes with her ultimate goal being to qualify for the 2026 FEI Longines World Cup Final that will be held in her home state, in Fort Worth. Cliver also has been campaigning a second grand prix horse, a 12-year-old Westphalian gelding named Interactive Mortgage Cayjano, owned by Johnson Equine LLC. Her plans are to market him and then hopefully purchase a 7- or 8-year-old to develop up through the jumper ranks. 

Although Cliver has transitioned disciplines within the horse world, she has dedicated her life to the sport she loves. Since Cliver graduated high school, she has had a running joke with her stepdad, Mark Philpy, who is her biggest supporter.

“Originally he wanted me to go to college, and so I made a deal with him that I was going to take one gap year in between high school and college for the horses,” she said, “but now we’re on gap year 13!”

The post Former Eventer Melds Worlds For Show Jumping Success appeared first on The Chronicle of the Horse.

Geñay Vaughn knew from the moment she met Gino eight years ago that he was special. The striking black Dutch Warmblood gelding was originally meant for her mother, Michele Vaughn, but after Geñay sat on him when he arrived at their Starr Vaughn Equestrian in Elk Grove, California, mother and daughter both agreed he had what it took to make it to the top of the sport, so Geñay took over his training.

The pair climbed the levels, making their international Grand Prix debut in 2023, and they recently wrapped up a stellar FEI World Cup Dressage Final run with a win in the CDI-W Grand Prix for the freestyle (70.73%) and the Grand Prix freestyle (74.37%) at the HITS Del Mar Dressage Opener in Del Mar, California, held Feb. 14-16.

With wins in CDI-W classes in Thermal, California, in November (72.61%) and January (75.15%) as well, they secured their ticket to the FEI Dressage World Cup Final, which will be held April 2-6 in Basel, Switzerland. She qualified alongside East Coast-based Adrienne Lyle and Kevin Kohmann in the final standings for the North American League. 

“He’s just developed more and more,” Geñay said. “I feel like every season we go out, he gets more comfortable and more relaxed. He’s so talented, and with a horse that talented, it’s just endless. I feel like he’s using his hotness and his talent in a really good way and getting more comfortable with the Grand Prix every season, and that’s so exciting.

“I’m ecstatic,” she said of qualifying for her first World Cup Final. “Honestly, it means the world to me. It’s something that I’ve always worked for, and it just shows that you know you can do it. Just keep working; never give up, and at some point, the daily commitment to improvement will pay dividends when the time comes. I think that’s the biggest thing, is just believing in yourself and surrounding yourself with people who believe in you too.”

The pair started trending in the 70s last fall, something Geñay said isn’t due to any one change but keeping their routine in the training the same. She also opted to stay in California this season instead of traveling to Wellington, Florida, for the Adequan Global Dressage Festival so she could support West Coast shows and allow the 14-year-old gelding (Bretton Woods—Lugienna, Haarlem), bred in the Netherlands by M.F.M. Heynert-Hermans, to have more consistent turnout and a bigger stall at her farm.

“I think this year, the only thing that changed was just sticking with my mom [as my trainer] the whole way through, and that worked,” she said, adding that Kathleen Raine helped coach her at competitions since Michele helps as groom and support crew alongside Geñay’s non-horsey boyfriend, expert treat-giver Matt Wiesenfarth.

Del Mar was a new show for Geñay, 30, and she was thrilled with the outcome. “Honestly, that was the best he’s ever felt, so I was super happy,” she said. “He just had that amazing fire under him, and he showed his true quality, especially in his piaffe and passage. He gets good scores and everything, but wow, it just felt exactly how it feels at home, transferred into the ring, and he was so good.”

‘True To My Background’

Their freestyle music features Black artists, including Luther Vandross and Barry White. Geñay felt it was important to include music from Black artists in her freestyle.

“I’m one of the few African American riders in the sport of dressage that I know of, and I wanted to stay true to my background and bring a little bit of culture into dressage and keep it fun but also keep it universal and something that I think the judges like,” she said. “My intro is ‘The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air,’ which was a TV show that I grew up on, and it’s fun, and he reminds me of Gino. My trot tour is Barry White, and I think it just goes really well with him. And then my passage and piaffe is also Barry White. I chose Luther Vandross for the walk. He’s one of my dad’s favorite artists. And then the canter is Earth, Wind & Fire.”

Watch their winning freestyle, courtesy of ClipMyHorse.tv:

Asked if she feels a responsibility to be a role model to riders of color in equestrian sport, Geñay said she’s happy to lead by example. 

“I think I always try to just carry myself in a way that’s true to myself and that’s also relatable and realistic in a way,” she said. “I hope that it’s nice for young girls seeing a woman of color competing on an international stage and saying, ‘Hey, I can do that,’ because I know growing up, there wasn’t anybody that I could look up to. There was no person that looked like me. I think just, the more the better for any type of representation in this sport. You want to make it inclusive and something that everyone thinks they’re capable of doing.”

‘A Mama’s Boy’

Geñay and her mother run a large breeding and training operation at Starr Vaughn with 35 personal and client horses and just a few barn staff to help with stalls. Geñay shares a close bond with Gino and does all of his care at home and at shows, from braiding and bathing to tacking and clipping.

“He’s a total lover boy, a mama’s boy. He loves having me around,” she said. “He’s unlike any horse I’ve had. He’s quirky; he likes things a certain way. I take him from the stall to the walker to the paddock—that’s me seven days a week with him. I feel like that’s helped build our partnership a lot, just being together every day and knowing him since he was 6.”

She finds that deep familiarity affects every piece of their performance both in training and in the show ring. 

“I started out doing Pony Club, and it’s just a lot of horsemanship,” she said. “My mom has always been horsemanship first, so it’s just natural to me, and I thoroughly enjoy being a part of his everyday routine, and I think that’s a beautiful thing of our sport: Yes, he’s my teammate, but he’s also like my best friend and family first, and then it’s such a blessing that we get to compete together as well.”

Bringing Up Babies

Geñay has several youngsters coming up behind Gino, some of which are by her former Under-25 Grand Prix horse, the Hanoverian Donarweiss GGF (De Niro—SPS Highlight, Hohenstein).

“Now we have a bunch of his offspring, and it’s so fun because I get to see them with their new owners, and I have some that I’m keeping for myself and developing a bit,” she said. “My mom and I work hand-in-hand where I get on, but she’ll help me with the longeing and the desensitizing before and is always with me for the first few rides, We’re just a team in that aspect. And that’s kind of how our business is run, is through breeding, training, sales and all of that.”

She takes some to young horse classes but sometimes just sticks to lower-level classes to get their confidence—whatever they’re comfortable with.

“Our end goal is always the Grand Prix, so it’s whatever path is best for the horse to Grand Prix for us,” she said. “It’s really important for me to have longevity. I want horses to have a long Grand Prix career, or a long career in the sport, and be happy.

“I get to see them be born, and then I put the halter on for the first time, and I teach them how to walk and crosstie and longe—like every single step I’m a part of with my mom,” she continued. “It’s so fun when you finally get to take them to shows, and you’re like, ‘Oh, my God, I remember when we couldn’t even turn.’ There are so many things that are so funny and you’re so grateful for, and I think that keeps you really humble and gives you so much respect for the sport. And you enjoy the upper levels so much more too because you remember what it’s like being at training level.”

Ready For Basel

Geñay’s looking forward to time training in Germany with Wolfram Wittig this month as she prepares to represent the U.S. for the first time as a senior rider in Switzerland. She’s going to try to enjoy every step of the process, no matter the outcome.

“I’m really lucky that I have such a good support team with my mom, Kathleen, my family—they’re always rooting for me and telling me, ‘You can do it,’ ” she said. 

“Fail? You learn from your failures,” she added. “You know, it’s not the end. You keep going. All the great people fail, and at some point you learn enough, and it just clicks. And I feel like that’s what happened. It’s just each test, he feels better and better, and I feel more secure and more confident and better. And it’s like, OK, why can’t we do this? What makes us different from everybody else who’s out there?”

Her goal is to have fun with Gino and make everyone proud. 

“Tomorrow is not promised for me, for anybody, and so I don’t want to put too much pressure on because, I mean, what a blessing and what an exciting opportunity to go out there and perform on the World Cup stage and just try my best and have fun doing it,” she said. “I feel like when you have fun, that’s when your best rides come.”

The post Vaughn Books Her Ticket To World Cup Final With ‘Mama’s Boy’ Gino appeared first on The Chronicle of the Horse.

When Emily Donaldson went to look at Beaujolais 75 as an unbroke 3-year-old, she tried not to like him. She brought her mom along, hoping she’d call her crazy for even considering him. Instead, Donaldson’s mom told her she loved him. 

“I thought, ‘Well, shoot. That’s not the answer I wanted,’ ” Donaldson recalled. 

In the 12 years since she bought the chestnut gelding, Donaldson, Parkesburg, Pennsylvania, has changed her tune—for good reason. She and “Bunny” (Bugatti Hilltop—Conflora, Contucci) earned top honors in the Intermediaire II at the WEC-Ocala (Florida) January CDI3* with a 61.23%.  

Though she saw room for improvement in their score, Donaldson thought it was a positive learning experience for them both. 

“My big goal in the arena is to be able to show his talents for piaffe and passage, which he does have, but we’re both green at it in the show ring,” she said. “That’s why I’m out there doing it, to learn how to pull it off when the pressure is on. Always, when you come out of the ring, you’re like, ‘Can I just go in there, and do it one more time?’ Hopefully, next time, I will be able to have him more in front of my leg.” 

Encouraging Bunny’s forward energy has always been a top priority for Donaldson, who grew up foxhunting. Long before they were international dressage competitors, she and Bunny were regulars on the cross-country course. Their eventing journey was jump-started by a change in life circumstances. 

“I got married and moved to eastern Pennsylvania in 2014,” she said. “I was new to the area, I was starting my business, and so I had the time. And I thought, why not? I’m in the heart of horse country with the best trainers around, whom I’d never been exposed to. And I thought, ‘Geez, this is an opportunity to take advantage of.’ ” 

Her interdisciplinary approach to Bunny’s training also gave Donaldson a leg up in getting her business off the ground. 

“When I moved to the area, I was insecure about myself professionally, because I had to start from scratch,” she said. “I thought that eventing was something I could do to get myself out there, around the horse crowd, become part of the community, and earn a little respect.”

With instruction from Boyd Martin and the occasional clinic with Jimmy Wofford, they qualified for the 2015 USEA American Eventing Championships at the novice level. 

“Typical eventers, when we won, they were like, ‘Oh, you won. When are you going to move up?’ And I thought, ‘Move up? I’m winning. Why would I move up?’ ” she recalled. 

Eventing Bunny was largely an exercise in cross-training for Donaldson, whose ultimate goals for the gelding were always squarely within the white boards of a dressage arena. The pair stopped eventing after they reached training level, as the height of the fences posed a challenge for the dressage-bred Hanoverian, but Donaldson still takes Bunny out for long hacks in which they pop the occasional log or ditch. 

The variety in his training has been great for Bunny’s brain development, Donaldson said. Though their foray into eventing helped make him a reliable partner, Bunny still sometimes needs his rider to help him stay relaxed through his test. 

“He’s a ‘steady Eddie’ type. I could probably get on him bareback and ride around backward if I wanted to, and he’d be fine. He’s that kind of horse. He’s sensible,” Donaldson said. “But he’s also emotional, even though it doesn’t manifest itself in an outward way. He internalizes. I’ve had to learn not to yell at him with my hands because he gets offended. He’s like, ‘Well, I’m not gonna play with you if you’re gonna yell at me like that.’ I need the finesse as a rider to keep him listening, because he always tries. But if I get insecure as a rider and I get a little too strong, or I hold a little too long, he tells me.” 

While Bunny has now firmly established himself in the sandbox, Donaldson hasn’t lost her love of jumping in the slightest. 

“I’m a little bit of an adrenaline junkie,” she said. “I like to drive fast. I like to push myself outside of my comfort zone. I like getting up in two-point, galloping across the field. I like thinking, ‘Well, that’s a big jump, I’m not so sure,’ and then going over it and having the thrill that you got to the other side. It’s like being a kid again. I don’t want to lose that side of me, because I think that’s just who I am. Of course I’m very careful about the situations I put myself in, but I also don’t want to lose that edge.”

With Bunny working toward the Grand Prix, Donaldson knows his three-phase days are over. But she’s not ready to put away her jump saddle just yet, so when she stumbled on an advertisement for 10-year-old off-the-track Thoroughbred Mr. Bridger last November, she did the only reasonable thing. 

“I thought, ‘He’s stunning,’ and so I went down and tried him the next day, and I was like, ‘I have to have him,’ ” she said. “It was kind of meant to be.” 

Though he’d been used as a staff horse on fox hunts in Virginia, Mr. Bridger never had any formal dressage training. But once his dressage skills match his game attitude toward jumping, Donaldson looks forward to making her triumphant return to the beginner novice eventing world with him. 

In the meantime, Donaldson plans to keep developing Bunny. The Grand Prix tests are in their sights, but she wants to make sure she strikes the right balance between advancing and enjoying their partnership. 

“Bunny would be the first horse that I’ve trained to Grand Prix,” she said. “The Grand Prix pattern is going to be hard for him, but I think he can do it. Ultimately, his quality of life and happiness is the most important thing to me.”

The post Dressage Rider And Her Erstwhile Eventer Eye Grand Prix appeared first on The Chronicle of the Horse.

The 17-year-old from Clermont, Florida, will have help offsetting his competition expenses after being named in January as the first recipient of a $10,000 scholarship from the Hannah M. Serfass Foundation—the largest award the foundation has given to date. 

The foundation was established in 2023 in memory of Hannah Serfass, a 15-year-old rider from Webster, Florida, who died in a riding accident at horse show in April 2023. Donations from the equestrian community in the wake of her death helped seed the foundation, which Serfass’ family founded with the mission of uplifting junior riders who embody the values that defined their daughter.

“At that point in time, I personally decided, and I also talked to Hannah’s trainers, that it would be a good idea to start a trust and a foundation in Hannah’s honor,” her mother Janine Serfass said. “We wanted to try and help other kids that might not be as fortunate as she was to ride at some of the big venues.”

The foundation provides scholarships and awards to junior riders, helping them attend competitions, gain national exposure, and pursue their dreams. It also contributes to initiatives such as the 4-H Area West Horse Show—where Hannah first began riding—fostering opportunities for riders at all levels.

“We want to help that younger generation achieve their next goal,” Janine said. “Sometimes it’s a small show that’s right down the street, but a lot of times it’s the A-rated circuit and national shows.”  

The foundation sponsors trophies for junior riders at local and national shows including Devon (Pennsylvania), Junior Hunter Finals and the ASPCA Maclay Final (Kentucky).

The $10,000 scholarship for this weekend’s WEC Cup is the largest the foundation has sponsored to date, recognizing a class that was particularly significant to Hannah herself.

“Hannah competed in the 2023 WEC Cup and wanted to achieve a top-20 standing,” Janine recalled. “She exceeded her expectations by earning 12^th place. … She had achieved competitive status and was on her way to being a rider to watch.”

In selecting the scholarship’s winner, she said, they looked for a rider whose ethos reflected Hannah’s.

“When we look at applications, we’re looking for kids that have a love for the horses, and they’re not just there to win or be in the spotlight,” Janine said. “They’re in the barn all the time, they’re doing everything they can to learn more about horses and about riding, and they’re wholeheartedly involved. It’s just a passion for them because it was a passion for Hannah.”

That describes Hoshaw, said his trainer Will Baker, who nominated the teen, submitting a letter of recommendation on his behalf. Baker, of Coast to Coast Equestrian in Reddick, Florida, has been working with him since last April. 

“Jaxon is amazing,” Baker said. “We are very big on the working student program, and I always have two or three [students] year-round because I believe in giving back to that next generation. Jaxon always comes with a smile. There’s no, ‘No, I can’t do that’ or, ‘No, it’s too early or too late.’ He longes his own horse, takes care of his own horse, and he’s really a super young man. 

“I think and I hope that everyone sees how hard he works and how dedicated he is,” Baker added. “He’s always willing to lend a hand to anyone who needs it.”

Hoshaw learned he had received the scholarship while competing at a horse show. His phone was tucked away in his backpack, and after finishing his round, he pulled it out in surprise. It took a moment for the news to fully sink in, but once it did, he was overwhelmed with gratitude.

“I’m a working student,” Hoshaw said. “My family and I don’t have all the money in the world to show all the time, and it takes a little bit of stress off. I’m really happy and excited for the WEC Cup.”

Hoshaw has a deep admiration for Hannah’s legacy and hopes to honor it through his own dedication to the sport. 

“From what I’ve heard, she was very hard-working and kind to the horses,” he said. “I really want to try to display as much of her character as I can and keep working hard and caring for the animals and putting them above everything.”

Baker praised the foundation’s work in commemorating Hannah and helping other young people realize their dreams.

“I think it’s great to give kids an opportunity they maybe otherwise wouldn’t have,” he said. “I came from somewhere that didn’t have a whole lot of opportunity. There was a bit of financial restraint coming up, so having a foundation like this to give back to those riders and let them have the opportunity is fantastic.”

The Hannah M. Serfass Foundation recently announced two additional $2,500 scholarships, which will be awarded on May 1, open to junior riders who want to attend competitions or gain national exposure. Application information is available on the foundation’s website.

The post One To Watch: Hardworking Teen Earns Hannah M. Serfass Scholarship To Attend WEC Cup appeared first on The Chronicle of the Horse.

Oliver earned her doctorate and now teaches immunology at the University of Pennsylvania. About 10 years ago, she decided it was time to get back into riding, and she did it with her daughter, Evie Oliver, who’d inherited her passion for horses.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Paula decided she wanted to seriously pursue breeding, so she sold her home in Philadelphia and bought a farm in nearby Chester County, Pennsylvania. Her interest in genetics extended to matching mares and stallions, and she knew she wanted to start her breeding program with strong mares.

She’d purchased Shiloh, a now-15-year-old Oldenburg mare (Shakespeare RSF—Dhominica, De Niro 6), who was bred by Maurine Swanson of Rolling Stone Farm in Pennsylvania, in 2017 in hopes of finding some show ring success before breeding her. She also purchased Shading, a now-10-year-old Oldenburg mare (Shakespeare RSF—El Wyneth, Widmark) also bred by Swanson, for Evie.

Shiloh was pregnant with her third foal, and after that foal was born, Paula restarted the mare, who’d only been ridden as a 3-year-old for her mare performance test.

This week, Paula and Shiloh will canter down centerline at Kingsview Partners Dressage At Devon (Pennsylvania)—their first CDI—to contest the CDIAm Prix St. Georges and Intermediaire I classes.

“It’s an amazing opportunity, to have this so close to us and have this opportunity to come and do my first CDI on a mare that I developed,” she said. “It’s really huge. It’s my first time, but you’ve got to have a first, and I’m just thrilled to have this opportunity to get out and start this phase. I hope there are many more in the future.”

Paula gets occasional help from Olivia LaGoy-Weltz and works regularly with Lauren Sammis. She doesn’t have a huge goal for this weekend since it’s her first CDI, but the pair have been scoring in the mid- to upper-60s in national Prix St. Georges classes.

“She’s been an amazing partner,” she said of Shiloh. “In the beginning she wasn’t completely convinced that she wanted to leave her broodmare life, but she clearly just loves what she does now. It’s been really amazing. The appreciation you have for a horse that allows you to learn as you go along and tolerates the mistakes you make—which are inevitable while you’re learning—it’s hard to describe the appreciation I have for that mare.”

Evie will also be competing this weekend in the CDIYR division with Shading. 

“Seeing her have the love of horses in her blood, it’s kind of indescribable,” Paula said. “She’s every bit as into it as I am, and it’s really made for a nice excuse for me to expand my program! I can buy more horses because it’s for both of us. It’s been amazing watching her develop and her determination and challenging herself and improving her riding skills and her training skills. She takes it very seriously. She quickly became a better rider than I was, even though I had many years in the saddle. I may sit a buck a bit better, but she’s definitely the more talented rider at this point!”

The pair operate Dressage at Laurel’s Edge in Unionville where Evie, 21, rides and trains. She competed at the FEI North American Youth Championships (Michigan) this year with Shading and has shown Shiloh in the past when her mount was out with an injury. 

Paula still holds down her full-time job at the University of Pennsylvania and says eventually she’d like to expand their operation when she has more time. They currently have 25 horses which include foals, weanlings and yearlings as well as their four personal horses to ride, a sales horse and a client horse that Evie rides. They have three broodmares and also do embryo transfers. 

“We really focus on mares with strong competition records,” Paula said. “It’s an important addition to make sure you’re producing offspring who excel in competition. We’re developing a program where many of our mares are proven in competition and stallions that are often Grand Prix.”

While Paula, 59, appreciates the quality of stallions in the U.S., she says they currently utilize European stallions since there are more with proven Grand Prix and international show records.

Their first group of young horses will be under saddle next year, and Paula and Evie hope to compete them in the materiale and breed classes at Devon. They’ll keep some for future broodmares and sell others.

Evie has enjoyed growing up and sharing her love of dressage with her mother, and she’ll be ringside this week cheering her on with Shiloh.

“When she started Shiloh back, it’s a really difficult process,” Evie said. “When they’ve been broodmares for that long, they’ve lost all of their muscling, so it’s really starting a horse from scratch. It was difficult, but she stuck with it. It was a long process, but they made it through, and she made such huge progress in a small amount of time. Shiloh’s amazing.”

The post Lifelong Passions For Dressage And Breeding Usher Amateur To Her First CDI At Devon appeared first on The Chronicle of the Horse.

When Braden Speck leaves the cross-country start box for the Plantation Field CCI4*-S this weekend, he might have the biggest cheering section on course. Not only did the 21-year-old grow up in Unionville, Pennsylvania, where the event is held, but his friends and family there know exactly what he’s been through to reach this point—the last big prep event before his planned CCI4*-L debut.

Speck, who just started his senior year as pre-vet student at the nearby University of Delaware, weathered the tragic loss of three horses as a teen and now—spurred by their deaths to pursue veterinary medicine—spends part of his year commuting between Newark, Delaware, and Aiken, South Carolina, to achieve his eventing and academic goals simultaneously.

Growing up in horse country, Speck lives a stone’s throw from equestrian luminaries including Boyd Martin, Philip Dutton, Jessica Ransehousen and Bruce Davidson. He got into riding early in life, largely thanks to his sister, Kaelen Speck. 

“We went to school with Philip Dutton’s kids, and my sister was best friends with Ada Plumb, the granddaughter of [seven-time Olympic eventer Mike Plumb and Olympic dressage rider] Donnan Sharp. She got hooked on riding through them,” Braden said. “Then I got roped in.”

Braden’s introduction to eventing came aboard Rosenharley Romello, a Connemara pony his sister had outgrown. “Weasel” introduced him to eventing, carrying Braden in his beginner novice debut.

“He was built like a weasel—or maybe a stretch limo,” Braden recalled with a laugh. “He was also a saint.” 

Weathering Triple Tragedy

When Braden outgrew Weasel, he began riding Regal Dancer, a Thoroughbred mare his sister and other young riders rode in their trainer Erin Kanara’s program. “Dancer” helped Braden move up the levels, and he made his preliminary debut with her in 2017, when he was in the eighth grade. Then came tragedy.

“We were cross-country schooling at Boyd Martin’s farm, Windurra, when Dancer collapsed on course,” Braden said. The mare suffered a ruptured aneurysm and died immediately. “Boyd came out and gave me a big hug,” he recalled. 

While Braden was not physically injured, losing Dancer was traumatizing, and it put him at a crossroads.

“That was a tough time. It was a while before I could get back on a horse,” he said. “I was a hockey player, too, and after Dancer died my parents said I could go to boarding school for high school and play hockey, or I could continue to pursue riding. It was a turning point; I knew that if I committed to a new horse, I would be doing it for real.

“It was difficult, for sure, but I ended up choosing horses and riding,” he said. 

He started leasing a mare named Moondance a couple of months later. But just about a month into their partnership, she colicked. The Specks took her to the University of Pennsylvania’s New Bolton Center in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, where she spent a week but was able to recover without surgery. 

After rehabbing from that emergency and being cleared to compete again, they got back into their groove. Then, after cross-country one day, she colicked again.

“She was perfectly herself until she stopped competing, but when we brought her back to the trailer, she immediately parked out, and we could tell it was happening again,” he said. “We gave her Banamine and rushed her back to the barn, and then to New Bolton. When they opened her up, 70 percent of her small intestine was dead.” 

The vets and the Speck family knew that euthanasia was the only answer.

Despite two major setbacks, Braden persevered. 

“My sister had recently gotten a horse named American Fortitude, who we called ‘Wolf.’ After ‘Moon’ died, I started riding him when he was 5 and I was 15,” Braden said. 

The pair spent a short time together, until Wolf suffered a career-ending injury, slicing his leg open on a jump cup while schooling at home.

“He was immediately three-legged lame, and we knew it was bad because he was a really stoic horse,” Braden recalled. 

After months of stall rest, his vets said that even with an expensive surgery to his superficial digital flexor, there was only a remote possibility of recovery. Euthanizing Wolf seemed the most humane decision, although it was heartbreaking for the family.

 “It was just devastating to lose Dancer, and the other two were atrocious bad luck,” Kanara, the Specks’ coach, said. “When I’ve experienced this with other young riders—losing a teammate—they’ve often wanted to take a step back, but Braden didn’t.”

Enter ‘Liam’

Kanara was good friends with the late Annie Goodwin, and Annie shared with her and Sally Speck, Braden’s mom, that she had a horse in training to sell, “with a super-neat personality; a horse that could be great for Braden,” Kanara said. They traveled to Aiken to meet the then 6-year-old U.S.-bred Connemara-cross gelding BSF Liam (Ballywhim An Luan—Rumor Risky, Hawkster). 

“As soon as I saw ‘Liam,’ I said, ‘This is the horse I want,’ ” Braden recalled. “I could tell right away that he was a sweetheart. Even though at the time we thought he would probably top out at prelim or intermediate, after what I’d been through, I just really wanted to enjoy riding every day.”

Liam, now 11, has exceeded expectations, surprising everyone with his ability. “He just keeps chugging along,” Braden said. “Anything I ask him to do, he just does it. He’s a machine in cross-country—he fights and tries his hardest at every fence.” 

Braden and Liam started their career together at the novice level in 2019 and made their advanced debut in May at Fair Hill (Maryland) earlier this year. In 2023, they earned the USEF McKenna Trophy for being the top-performing eventing Connemara, either halfbred or purebred, at the preliminary level and above.

“They are so special together,” Kanara said. “Liam is incredibly intelligent, typical of a part-Connemara-bred horse. He can be a sporty pony when he needs to be and then grow his stride and be a horse when he wants to be. Nobody expected the two of them to do as much as they have, but they are so connected, the two of them.”

Also in 2023, Braden was accepted for the USEA Emerging Athletes 21 clinic, attending a clinic coached by Shannon Lilley at Morven Park International Equestrian Center in Leesburg, Virginia. “It was cool. I was the only guy in my group!” Braden said with a laugh. From that clinic Braden was one of two selected to attend the national camp in January 2024, training for a week under David O’Connor, Olympic gold medalist and USEF’s chief of sport.

That training came into play this year, when he successfully moved Liam up to advanced. Now, they go back and forth between intermediate and advanced, and on Aug. 11 won an intermediate division at the Fair Hill International Recognized Horse Trials.

“I just really want him to keep enjoying his job,” Braden said. “He has a heart of gold, and it’s important to me that he’s having fun.”

Braden credited his family for helping him through the series of tragedies he’s endured with horses and persevering toward his goals.

“My parents are both very supportive,” he said of his parents, Sally and Stefan. “My mom, Sally, is at every show, and although she is not a rider, she watches and knows what’s going on. After a competition she says things like, ‘I don’t know what you need to do, but he’s behind the vertical!’ ”

Braden chose pre-veterinary medicine as his college major after what he went through with Dancer, Moon and Wolf.

“Losing horses definitely has influenced my desire to become a vet,” Braden said. “I’ll hopefully help prevent people from experiencing what I had to go through.” 

“He will be a great vet,” Kanara added. “He loves animals so much, and he’s truly a whisperer with all the horses in the barn.”

Unlike many of his pre-vet classmates, Braden spends January through March each year traveling between school and Aiken every weekend to compete. 

“I wake up at 3 a.m., drive from UD to Aiken, ride, have dinner with my girlfriend Gabby [a vet tech with Dr. Ashley Taylor of Sports Medicine Associates of Chester County, whose clients are mostly eventers], then compete and drive back to school,” he said. “It’s a pretty crazy schedule.” 

That schedule, however, has laid the groundwork for Braden to move up to advanced and, he hopes, contest his first CCI4*-L in November at The Event at TerraNova (Florida) in November. After graduating from UD in the spring, he plans to take a gap year to focus on competing.

“My big goal is to go to a five-star in Kentucky in 2026, before I start vet school,” he said.

But after the work and tears that have gotten him to this point, Braden never loses sight of the importance of his relationship with Liam.

“I love the horse-rider partnership,” he said. “Liam is the perfect horse for me, and I just love going out to the barn every day. He’s probably the only four-star horse that can also go out for a bareback hack.”

The post One To Watch: From Heartbreak To Healing, Braden Speck’s Resolve Shapes His Calling appeared first on The Chronicle of the Horse.

“Honestly, ‘Palmer’ more or less found me,” O’Donoghue recalls with a laugh. 

After a spring season that saw the pair earn one of their best-ever placings at the four-star level when they took third at the Setters’ Run Farm Carolina International CCI4*-S (North Carolina) in March, instead of steering for another go at the Defender Kentucky CCI5*-L, O’Donoghue is pointing the 18-year-old gelding toward her first Badminton CCI5*-L (England), May 8-12.

Originally from Carbondale, Illinois, O’Donoghue had moved east to work for Jan Byyny, and Palmer was one of Byyny’s resale Thoroughbreds. The gelding (Quiet American—Edey’s Village, Silver Deputy) was bred by Eugene Melnyk, a successful name in racing and the former owner of the Ottawa Senators hockey team. Palmer raced 10 times, earning $9,462 with one win, making his last start as a 4-year-old in April 2010 at Charles Town (West Virginia).

“He didn’t come directly from the track to Jan; he came through CANTER Mid Atlantic,” O’Donoghue recalled. “Then he was sold to Tebogo Sport Horses [and] Patricia Vos as a sport horse prospect, and Jan bought him from Patricia, I think as a 4-year-old. He was produced through the training level by Jan and then sold to the Shipka family, and Chase Shipka rode him. She did a couple intermediates on him before I took the reins [in 2015].”

After several years working for Byyny and then for Will Coleman, O’Donoghue had just struck out on her own as a professional. She wanted to stay in the Middleburg, Virginia, area, so rented stalls at the Shipkas’ farm. Chase, then a young rider, had decided to switch from eventing to dressage, so her mom Darcie asked O’Donoghue to help with the event horses. 

“One had sustained an injury. One I actually sold for the family. And then Palmer was the other horse,” O’Donoghue said. “They weren’t really sure what they wanted to do with him. But they asked me if I would kind of get him going. And I, of course, gladly took on that job and got him going again.

“They weren’t really keen to sell the horse, so they just asked me to basically take the ride and get him going and see what happens. So that’s how that relationship began,” she said. The Shipkas maintained ownership until 2020, when O’Donoghue and her fiancé Will Duhring worked out a deal to purchase him.

O’Donoghue had moved East with another off-track Thoroughbred, Pirate, who took her to her first five-star at Kentucky in 2013, where they placed 12th. They completed Kentucky two more times and made an unsuccessful try at Burghley (England) before he sustained an injury that ended his five-star career. 

“I never sought [Palmer] out; he just found his way [to me],” O’Donoghue, 35, said. “I needed him probably more than he needed me, because I was in no position to fill that hole that Pirate was leaving [with another upper-level horse]. I got very lucky that he just happened into my life and that the family was so gracious with, one, supporting him for a long time and then, two, making it so I could continue on with him.”

Having grown up with Thoroughbreds, O’Donoghue found Palmer to be a familiar ride. “He is a different horse than Pirate, but 110% [putting] the same amount of try and heart into everything that they do,” she said. “I would say, because I produced Pirate from a young horse straight off the track all the way up the levels of eventing, it was different because Palmer came to me having been ridden and kind of produced by a couple of different people. He had a rapport with different riders, but was willing to give me a chance to kind of create this partnership, that ultimately now very much is ours.”

The pair moved up to the advanced level by the end of 2015, and did their first CCI3* (now CCI4*-L) in 2016, but then had some detours due to freak injuries. Palmer had a non-displaced fracture of his stifle at Carolina International in 2017 after misreading a ditch-and-wall and catching his hind leg. Then at Fair Hill in fall 2018, he stepped on his bell boot while trying to take off at a jump in the water, hit his head on the back side of the jump and fractured his jaw. But he recovered from both injuries without incident. “We got very lucky with both of those situations, as unlucky as they were, with the rehab side of it,” O’Donoghue said.

Palmer recovered from the broken jaw over the winter, and it was full steam ahead next season. They earned two top-10 finishes at the four-star level in 2019, placing third at the Jersey Fresh International CCI4*-L (New Jersey) and sixth at the Fair Hill International CCI4*-L (Maryland). After a COVID-shortened 2020 season, the pair made their debut at the Land Rover Kentucky CCI5*-L in 2021, six years after O’Donoghue’s last trip around the event, and placed 23rd. They completed the event again in 2022, improving their placing to 11th.

It’s been at the five-star level that Palmer has truly found his stride, O’Donoghue said.

“When he leaves the start box, if anything, I have to remind him that we have a ways to go,” she said. “So he has flourished around 11-plus-minute tracks and being at the five-star level, because it gives him a little bit more time between the jumps to actually take a deep breath and relax in his stride. Because he comes out at 200% when he leaves the start box, and he needs that time between those jumps to relax and find a rhythm that just makes the course feel like it’s quite easy.

“He has been an unbelievable cross-country horse. And, you know, I’ve looked after him, between all of those major competitions, knowing that I don’t have a lot of those [upper level] horses, so I need him,” she continued. “I would like to think that between that, and the team of people that are behind me in the barn, the vets and the farriers and the physios and all of these people, that is why he’s 18 and going to a five-star, and looks as good as ever.”

O’Donoghue and Palmer competed overseas for the first time in 2022, traveling to the Aachen CCIO4*-S (Germany), where O’Donoghue competed in her first Nations Cup, and then went on to Burghley.

Although they earned a personal best in dressage and show jumped clear over Aachen’s notoriously difficult show jumping track on the grass, they had some trouble on cross-country that O’Donoghue chalks up to a gap in her preparation, trying to balance Palmer’s longevity and her own experience.

“Maybe my management of looking after that horse at the shorter courses that I have used to prepare him for five-star level, not running him very quickly there and getting a feel for understanding him on a shorter course, at a higher rate of speed, I think that was where I had a miss,” she said. “It’s just something that I’ll take away, and I will never make that mistake again. It’s tricky when you have one top horse, and you’re trying to look after them, but also gain the mileage you need to perform on a competitive stage, like a Nations Cup at Aachen.”

They continued on to Burghley two months later, where O’Donoghue said Palmer was “incredible” but she lost her balance in the saddle turning to a question on cross-country, so they had an unfortunate 20 penalties.

“That really is not a reflection of him at all, and what an amazing cross-country horse he is, but it is what it is,” she said with a laugh. “So, I do feel that going into Badminton, having Burghley checked off my list as something that we have accomplished together, does give me some [confidence in] the fact that he is up to a track like a Badminton and a Burghley. I do feel that there is some something to be said about having done that, and he’s been around Kentucky three times and Maryland once. We have a lot going for us that way. I know that Badminton is its own thing, right? So I’m definitely not going in overly confident. But it’s something that I want for the future of my other horses; I want that experience. And it’s something that I feel he deserves on his resume, if we can pull that off, so I’m very excited.”

For O’Donoghue, developing another successful five-star partnership is a confirmation that she’s where she’s supposed to be.

“When you’re young, you’re gung ho, you get your first five-star horse—that’s a huge accomplishment, and I’m very grateful to Pirate and all the years he gave me, allowing me to learn that level and gain those experiences,” she said. “But I think until you’re in that position where you don’t have that horse anymore, and you sit back and you wonder, where is the next one? Is there a next one? You can’t appreciate that moment until it happens.

“So, I think that you have to prove yourself as a rider, that you can have a next one and form another relationship with another horse, that you can do it at that level. Having [Palmer] as that next horse that put me back on that stage to successfully do the level again, it just gives me a lot of confidence that I am doing what I’m supposed to be doing. I have dedicated my life to this sport and being a top eventing athlete, and I am where I belong, and I hope to be here on many other horses. So I think that I am indebted to him for that.”

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