“I just always went in for practice—no pressure, no expectation, no nothing—and he always delivered,” she said. “So I was like, ‘Havens, just because it’s a big class, you cannot ride him more. You cannot try to get a rub [in warm-up]—don’t do any of that stuff. Just ride him the way you’ve always ridden him.’ So that was a little bit hard for me. I had to keep telling myself, ‘Easy, easy.’ ”

As they walked into the ring, “CB” certainly took notice of the bigger atmosphere. His head came up, and he eyed his surroundings, so Schatt took her time before picking up the canter, making a bigger courtesy circle than she normally would for a class of this caliber, but her primary goal was giving him a good experience.

“The first probably four jumps, I felt like I kind of needed to hold his hand a little bit and just be a little bit not as brilliant as sometimes you would want for a class like that,” she said. “But I think his jumping style was covered up a lot, and by the in-and-out to the last two lines, he was just in the groove then, and I could let go of his head a little bit and just kind of get to the jump and let him explode over the jump.”

Schatt was first in the class and had to wait for remainder of the competitors to go to see whether their scores could hold up. Initially she figured they’d get pushed down the leaderboard given the quality of horses in the field, but one by one they failed to catch her, and her hopes soared. By the end of the 15-horse class, Schatt was thrilled to find herself atop the final standings.

“That class, on that day, at that time of the month or the year, suited that type of horse perfectly,” she said.

Schatt first purchased CB last September off a video with the idea that he could be an equitation horse. Though he had a beautiful jump, he didn’t have the daisy-cutter movement of the complete package for a junior or amateur hunter.

“He’s just like a big puppy dog,” she said. “He’s really, really tall, so he’s always got to put his head down for you to pet him or whatever, and he’s always more than willing for you to pet him and feed him treats. For the most part, he’s quiet and he’s super, super willing, like he didn’t even think twice about going in there and doing exactly what I told him to do.”

Watch their winning round, courtesy of ClipMyHorse.TV:

Since he was still green, and it’s so expensive to keep horses in her winter base in Wellington, Florida, Schatt decided to send him to fellow hunter rider Tim Maddrix in Ocala, Florida, to get his initial show miles. When it was time to head back north to Lexington, Kentucky, Schatt took him back and later sold part-ownership to Caroline Oliver with the idea of making him Oliver’s equitation horse. Schatt showed him sparingly, but she found that judges were often scoring him in the 90s.

Nonetheless, at the beginning of last week, CB wasn’t her intended mount for the classic. Initially she thought she’d ride Julia McNerney’s Cascartini, who she’s ridden in USHJA international hunter derbies and on whom she’d qualified for the ClipMyHorse.TV Hunter Classic earlier in the year.

Though Schatt competes in Wellington at the Winter Equestrian Festival over the winter, she made a pair of trips up to HITS Ocala in order to qualify for the classic to support her friend, HITS Chief Customer Officer Joe Norick, who asked if she’d consider participating. HITS hosts six qualifiers across the Ocala and Saugerties series, and riders must place first through third in one of those classes to qualify for the classic, where they are limited to one horse.

On her first trip to Ocala, Schatt entered three of her green hunters, but the conditions weren’t favorable for their education level, with the class taking place in the early evening on a rainy, windy day. While they went well, mistakes kept them out of podium placings. On her second trip north, she tacked up the reliable Cascartini with the goal of putting in a solid round. They finished third, cementing Schatt’s spot in the final.

“It was a little bit more nerve-wracking to know if you wanted to go for that big money [in the final], you had to make this happen,” she said. “And like I said, we spend our winters in Wellington, so it’s a lot to ask the clients to go up there to qualify for the class.”

But “Marty” made the trips to Ocala worth it, and Schatt’s team arrived in Saugerties planning to enter him in the classic.

CB had come to Saugerties primarily to go in equitation classes with Oliver, who is a working student for Schatt. But when the 7-year-old Oldenburg (Chacoon Blue—Coquista PS, Balou Du Reventon) won a 3’3″ performance hunter class with Schatt, they started considering entering him instead. After Marty took second in the $40,000 USHJA International Hunter Derby, which was intended to be his warm-up, they all sat down to make a plan, ultimately deciding McNerney’s horse had done enough for the week, and that the classic could be a good experience for CB.

Schatt thinks CB’s relative inexperience benefited him in the ClipMyHorse.TV Hunter Classic. The one-round class featured more classic hunter fences, and she felt that, while more experienced horses might not find the jumps interesting, CB still did and would maintain his expressive jump.

“I think you need a fresh horse that hadn’t been everywhere, seen everything, to think OK it’s another round, but you need one brave enough and solid enough to go in there and deliver,” she said.

The post Last-Minute Horse Swap Pays Off For Schatt In Saugerties appeared first on The Chronicle of the Horse.

Since Cristalline’s retirement in 2023, Sternlicht has been building up her group of international horses and representing the U.S. on several Nations Cup teams with Starlight Farms 1 LLC’s Benny’s Legacy.

Now, she’s got another up-and-coming star in the barn in Origa V/H Zuid-Pajottenland, an 11-year-old Belgian Warmblood gelding (Thunder VD Zuuthoeve—Kwinta V/H Zuid-Pajottenland, Ogano Sitte) also owned by Starlight Farms 1 LLC. 

Sternlicht first paired up with “Rigi” in fall 2022, about a year after he’d moved up to the five-star level with Sweden’s Jonna Ekberg. A freak accident where he broke his hip at Sternlicht’s farm in Wellington, Florida, meant he was out of jumping at the top level for almost a year.

The pair spent the latter part of 2023 and most of 2024 campaigning at the five-star level in Europe and the U.S. before a leg injury last fall meant Rigi had to sit out the winter season. Since coming back to competition in June, he and Sternlicht have been working up to the five-star level again, and they topped the $340,000 Grand Prix CSI5* at the RBC Ottawa International Horse Show on Aug. 17 in Ottawa, Ontario. Sternlicht also won the $35,000 1.45-meter Grand Prix CSI2* the same day on Starlight Farms 1 LLC’s Corablue Z, a 9-year-old Zangersheide mare (Corydon Van T&L—Linsey, Los Angeles).

We caught up with Sternlicht, 32, of Greenwich, Connecticut, to learn more about Rigi’s journey to his big win and her plans for the future.

Congratulations on your weekend! Tell me about winning the big grand prix with Rigi. You were one of only three riders to make the jump-off.

It had rained earlier in the day, and it was the last class on the field after having been jumped on all week. So, I think [the small jump-off was the result of] a combination of the ground and Marina Azevedo built a very difficult track. She built a proper five-star grand prix. Even though the entries were limited [there were 24 that jumped], she was not messing around, which personally I love.

I love when the course is difficult, because I also think it’s really important that the level in the [North America] stays as comparable to five-stars in Europe as possible in order for us to feel adequately prepared when we go over there for championships and Nations Cups, and not just in Florida.

You’ve had Rigi since 2022. What’s his journey been like with you?

I thought he was a horse to jump any class in the world. And then, my third ride on him, he broke his third trochanter, which is basically his hip. 

He’s really sharp. He’s a funny horse because he seems quite relaxed—a bit like a golden retriever—but then he actually has a lot of blood, and he’s quite sharp outside of the ring. I remember in that ride, he had actually broken a draw rein bucking after a cavaletti. … I could feel that I was about to get hurt, so I jumped off, and he ran back into the barn, and at that point there were still some stone pavers, and he slid and slipped and fell on stone pavers when he took off. He ended up being on stall rest for about 45 days, then I spent the whole winter in Florida just rehabbing him.

[When he came back], he moved up really quickly during his 9-year-old year, I think in six months he went from jumping 1.45 to 1.55 meters. I think as any partnership does, it ebbs and flows a bit, especially as horses move up the levels. 

In the fall of 2023 he was already doing four-star grand prix. And that was not only because of his character—he’s incredibly brave and scopey—but also just my horse situation. I haven’t traditionally had three or more horses; I’ve traditionally had one or two horses to jump the bigger classes, because I’m always trying to produce horses a little bit up to the level.

[After his leg injury in the fall of 2024], he feels actually better than he did before. It’s been a bit of an off year for me, really. The past couple of years I haven’t been jumping so much on the world stage. I’ve jumped some five-star classes and things like that, but not in a super competitive manner. This winter I really took my time bringing him back.

Watch their winning round from the RBC Grand Prix CSI5*, courtesy of Horse Network:

What’s he like to ride, and what’s he like in the barn?

He’s lovely on the ground. He’s probably the sweetest horse I’ve ever had. He will lick anything. He’s kind of like a golden retriever to ride. He has a fair amount of character. He’s quite opinionated, and he knows how strong he is. He’s built like an ox. He’s not huge, but he’s quite stout in how he’s built, and he’s a horse who, honestly, I’ve had trouble connecting with at certain moments. Sometimes it’s hard to read him and what he wants.

In the past year, I did the majority of his rehab myself. I think any time that you take that down time to spend with a horse, and also whenever a horse is out from sport, [it is valuable].

I always go back and watch videos and reflect on previous rounds. And during that time, I know I also grew a lot as a rider, because I learned new fundamentals from working with [Dutch Olympic gold medalist and former world champion] Jeroen Dubbeldam. Being able to apply those now, I feel like I have so much of a better understanding of the horse, and I’m able to serve him better in the ring. 

He’s always a bit distracted—like he often lands on the wrong lead. He’s not a horse who’s super focused and honed in, because I think everything is quite easy for him that he’s been presented with thus far in his life.

My mental approach to him has been that I don’t really like to grind on the horses. I ask him a question, and then when he does it, I leave him alone. Like, I rode him for 10 minutes before the grand prix just to make sure he was listening to me. And once he was listening, I give him his peace. Every horse has their own way. Many riders would work their horse for 40 minutes before the grand prix. But for him, I found that’s not what works.

McLain Ward has been an important mentor in your riding career, but you’ve made a change in trainers fairly recently. Tell me about working with Jeroen Dubbeldam.

McLain and I stopped working together the end of 2021. It was very mutual. We had been together for many years, and he and I both felt it was important that I went on my own for a bit. I think as riders, it’s one of the most amazing things about our sport that you never stop learning, and I was eager to learn from somebody else. I think when horses are your life, you spend so much time at the shows, and you kind of get glimpses into other systems and other methodologies. I knew that it was important for my own personal growth that I go out on my own. 

I was on my own for a year and a half, then during the fall of 2023, I wasn’t training with anyone specifically, and I ended up reaching out to Jeroen Dubbeldam. Obviously, he’s one of the most respected horse professionals—he’s a legend, and I have an insatiable quest for knowledge in every aspect of my life. I really wanted to learn a new system because I felt like I knew the American system quite well. 

When I moved to Europe in April of last year, [Rigi] was my only horse jumping big classes at that point in time. I stayed there for four or five months. During that time, I learned the nuts and bolts of Jeroen’s system, which as I was there, I realized how much different it was from what I knew.

What are your goals for the rest of 2025 and looking into the future?

For the remainder of the calendar year, my focus is really on getting my [FEI] ranking up so that I can ride on teams again. I will definitely make a bid for the world championships next year, but I believe in breaking down a goal. 

I have one horse who hasn’t jumped a five-star grand prix yet. His name is Los Angeles De La Cense [an 11-year-old Westphalian gelding (Los Angeles—Lancley, Lancer III) owned by Starlight Farms 1 LLC], and I think a lot of him, so to move him up to the five-star level this fall, just to be consistently jumping at the top level and be quite competitive, so that I set myself up to have a big year next year.

You are a 2016 graduate of Brown University (Rhode Island) with a degree in public policy, and you earned a master’s degree in human rights at Columbia University (New York). As an equestrian, how important is education and a broader worldview to you?

I do a bunch of things. I don’t just ride at the minute. I’m working on a political project that isn’t something I can speak publicly about yet, but I’m really excited about, and that’s quite a serious time commitment. So, I spend a fair amount of time working with a small group of other passionate, kind of young, politicized people. I also work a bit in finance. I keep myself super busy, which I feel incredibly lucky to be able to do. I know how privileged I am to be able to ride the way that I do. And I know that I always want to lead a multi-dimensional life, and I don’t feel that that interferes with my commitment or my dedication to my sport. And I’m really, really lucky to have a really good team around me.

The post Adrienne Sternlicht Is Back In The Big Leagues With A ‘Golden Retriever’ appeared first on The Chronicle of the Horse.

“It was a really great two weeks there,” Keith said. “Sometimes I think everyone thinks I don’t do hunters anymore because I spend so much time in the jumper ring now. But I think riding the jump-off rounds really helps me in the handy hunter rounds, with the inside turns and planning them out. I think if you have more of a jumper background and you do lots of jump-offs, then it’s almost easier to make the turn inside than go around [in the hunter derbies].”

For this particular hunter derby though, the handy round was more about carrying a good rhythm than finding the tight turns. 

“The handy course was really open, and the course designer used some of the colored standards from the jumper ring, which gave the class a different feel,” Keith said. “When he’s on it, ‘Cubez’ is so smooth, and everything just came up so nicely on him, including the hand-gallop jump.” 

In the classic round, Keith chose to jump only one of the high options, and she made the same choice in the handy round, which paid off for the pair. 

“In the final line [of the handy], I chose to jump the low option because the high side was very delicate, and it was coming home so I didn’t want to risk having the last rail,” she said.

Watch their winning round, courtesy of Thunderbird Show Park:

Keith occasionally tacks up Cubez up to help the 10-year-old Dutch Warmblood gelding (Coronet Obolensky—Cartouche Z) prepare for the large junior hunters with Tupper, showing in the occasional hunter derbies. Tupper plans to take the gelding to the Adequan/USEF Junior National Hunter Championships—West, coming up July 24-27 in Del Mar, California.

“With Cubez, he always jumps very well,” Keith said, “so if you can find all the jumps, he’s the winner. Cubez is very honest and kind; you never have to worry about something happening when you go in the ring with him.” 

Keith and her mom, Cheryl Keith, operate their Keepsake Farm out of Shadow Ridge Stables in Langley, 20 minutes from Thunderbird Show Park. Kassidy, now 27, learned to ride before she could walk, and developed a reputation as professional junior rider as she grew. 

“I started catch-riding a lot,” Kassidy said. “We had a lot of really nice horses at the time, and I could be found showing in the professional hunter classes and then I would go to the jumper ring after that.” 

Kassidy made her way up the ranks in all three rings. In 2015, she won both the Canadian Equestrian Team Medal Final and the Jump Canada Equitation Final at the Royal Winter Fair (Ontario). 

After her junior years, Kassidy went straight to the professional ranks and briefly worked for former Canadian show jumping team Chef d’Equipe Mark Laskin before she and Cheryl opened Keepsake Farm in 2019.

The Keiths do not have full-time grooms—they do all the work themselves along with their assistant, Paige Bedborough. Their clients will take care of their horses at home and at the shows, and Paige, Kassidy, and Cheryl do the rest, hiring show grooms for extra help when needed. On average, the Keiths have 20 to 25 horses at any given time. During the past two weeks at Thunderbird, they had 36 horses to keep the team busy. 

“Paige and I tack everything up ourselves, and we ride and bathe and do everything,” Kassidy said. “At home, we could have 15 horses to ride on any given day. It’s more of family-type atmosphere—we all do it together. I love spending time with my horses. The three main horses I own, I spend a lot of time with them. I feel their legs; if anything is off, we know right away. If you don’t know your horses so well, then you cannot catch things right away.”

Her top jumper is Havana, a 13-year-old Canadian-bred Dutch Warmblood mare (VDL Cardento 933—Zenobea, Judgement), with whom she contested her first five-star competition last year at the Split Rock Show Jumping Tour (California) where she competed in the Longines FEI World Cup Qualifier. During her most recent trip to Thunderbird, they notched back-to-back 1.40-meter wins in the $20,000 Odlum Brown Grand Prix and the $20,000 Langley Grand Prix.

The mare came to the Keiths as a 5-year-old, and Kassidy has brought her up the jumper ranks. 

“Havana jumps really high, and she gets really careful, so there were a few times when I got jumped off of her,” she said. “It’s just been a learning process with her, working with her to figure out what works best for her. You can’t ride Havana harder when she’s jumping high because then she jumps even harder. But now that we’ve jumped so many classes together, she’s leveled out a bit. Sometimes she knows the occasion and you can feel it, but I know how to ride that now.”

Kassidy hopes to get more five-star mileage under their belts this year, with an eye to competing in the 2026 Longines FEI World Cup Finals, to be held in Forth Worth, Texas, if things progress well.

“We will see how things go,” Kassidy said. “I have to get more experience jumping at the five-star height. Havana gives me so much confidence in the ring, but it’s about putting all the pieces together at a higher height now. That’s where I’m currently at with my learning.”

One Kassidy’s favorite parts of being a professional rider is working with green horses, like her 6-year-old homebred Oldenburg out of Havana, Statement. “Sabrina,” who is by Sir Shutterfly, was born on the farm, and Kassidy did all the firsts with her. Now the mare is jumping in 1.25-meter classes and the 6-year-old young jumper classes. 

“For me, it’s very fulfilling because you get to see their progress,” she said, “especially when you are working with them every day and there is no one else riding them. When I have quirky ones, I like to find what works best for them versus just giving up. Some of them might need a morning hack, or they might need to see the jumps before they jump around, etc. I treat them all as individuals. Every horse is so different—if you just put them all in one box, they don’t all fit there.”

The post Kassidy Keith Earns Hunter And Jumper Wins At Thunderbird appeared first on The Chronicle of the Horse.

“I’m like, ‘You’re kidding; there’s no way I won. What are you talking about? I had a rail, I had a conservative [dressage] test. That’s crazy!’ ” Bienemann, 35, of Lothian, Maryland, recalled. “So yeah, it was very cool, very surprising. And it might be the first advanced win I’ve had, because I’ve been in the top bunch plenty of times over the many years. But I’m not sure I’ve ever won an advanced.”

The pair topped a division of seven at the soggy event, which was just “Newt’s” second start at the advanced level. They were sixth after dressage with a 37.7, and Bienemann found herself wishing she had pressed for more brilliance. “I came out of the ring, and I was talking to [Matthews] about how pleasant the test was but not flashy. And I was like, ‘Well, you know, I need to be able to ride a winning test, not just a pleasant test.’ So it was an ironic day to pick up a win,” she said.

Newt also lost two front shoes in show jumping and got those hastily tacked back on before heading out to jump clear cross-country with the fastest ride of the day, adding just 6.4 time penalties—and losing one more shoe—on the muddy track.

“He went out on cross-country and just tore it up, piece of cake. Didn’t mind the mud. We had one little blip … I may have almost fallen off in the first water,” she said with a chuckle. “It was very close to a pretty good swim, but the rest of it was much better, I swear!”

It’s an outcome that might have been hard for Bienemann to envision in the early days of her partnership with the quirky off-track Thoroughbred (Mucho Macho Man—Shehaseyesforyou, Is It True), whom she brought home as a 3-year-old in 2019 on the suggestion of an old Pony Club friend, racing trainer Jacqueline Savoye.

“[She] randomly Facebooked me a picture and said, ‘I have this acquaintance. He’s got this horse. He’s free. Do you want him?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, sure. I’ll go get him Tuesday,’ ” Bienemann said. “So I went over with my dollar and my little two-horse trailer to Delaware Park and scooped him up.

“They seemed pleased to be rid of him,” she added wryly. “I did have them jog him for me first, just in case.”

Newt didn’t look like much, Bienemann admits. In the photo Savoye sent, “He kind of looks like a pony. He’s got no tail, he’s got this really round rump. He’s a little bit croup-high, definitely not what you’d picture as a future four-star horse,” she said. “But sure enough, he came home and his first couple rides, he was exceptional. I was like, ‘Wow, this horse is so cool. He’s so simple, he’s so easy.’ But then some of his quirks started to come out. By ride five, he had developed, or probably already had, a very serious, dangerous rearing problem.”

Bienemann said when he’d start rearing, they’d get stuck in a corner of the arena and would need someone come lead them out. For the first year and a half, she wore an air vest whenever she rode him. She didn’t take him on hacks, because if the rearing started out on a trail, she’d be trapped. At his first few starter events, her groom (and Newt’s “emotional support human”) Katherine Holzrichter would have to lead them around the warm-up a few times, then later lead them from the warm-up to the arena or start box. Bienemann didn’t dare enter a recognized competition with him until she’d had him three years.

“It was quite a production, figuring out how to work with his little mental quirks, and he’s still very quirky,” she said. “I wish I could say he has grown out of it, but that horse is still in there.

“Sometimes in these bigger atmospheres, I have to be really conscious of where I warm him up and how I get him from the warm-up to the ring,” she continued. “I have to make sure he doesn’t get a really good look at the crowds or anything. He can get very, very upset, very easily. He’s been an adventure, that’s for sure.”

The key to overcoming Newt’s quirks was mostly time and building a partnership, Bienemann said. “A lot of it was just building confidence, building the toolbox on him. Like, what does leg mean? What does connection mean? How can we function together in a forward direction and not a backward or upward direction?” she said.

She would even take him along to big events where she was competing her other horses, like the Kentucky Three-Day Event and the USEA American Eventing Championships, just for the additional exposure.

“Lots of schooling shows, as much exposure as I could take him on to try to get him comfortable in the atmosphere,” she said. “That was, of course, once I started being brave enough to really take him places!”

While Newt’s eventing journey was a little slow to get off the ground—he did his first novice as a 6-year-old in 2022—he and Bienemann had built so much confidence in each other that he moved up relatively quickly through training level and preliminary.

“I don’t always assume, even if a horse is very scopey or very fancy, that they’re going to really make it to the top levels, because it takes such an exceptional amount of grit, and you don’t always know if they’re going to have that until you get out on one of those bigger courses,” Bienemann said. “The first time I felt him really blossom was probably last fall at the Maryland 5 Star [where they competed in the CCI3*-L]. That course was eating people alive, and I had a tough go of it on my other one, Menlo Park. We got around it, but man, it was tough, and ‘Melon’ was the more experienced of the two. But [Newt] went around that like a walk in the park. And it was like, oh gosh, there’s a lot more in here. That was probably the moment it was like, this is the real deal.”

Bienemann said that Newt is quite talented in the dressage, especially for a Thoroughbred, and she believes that he can be competitive at the upper levels, even against the warmbloods. But in both dressage and show jumping, he can struggle a bit with tension.

“His biggest weakness right now is probably in the stadium jumping, because he’s super scopey, but he’s got a very elongated stride and sort of a deeper-necked way of going,” she said. “The show jumping is tough for him because I’ve got to really be able to keep him uphill and balanced while not losing the stride length. And he likes to jump very across and not a whole lot up. So the show jumping has been our toughest phase.”

The next outing Bienemann has planned for Newt is the Bromont International CCI4*-S (Quebec) in June, and she hopes to possibly tackle a four-star long later this year and see just how far her “free” Thoroughbred can go.

“I really want horses like Newt to inspire people to keep bringing Thoroughbreds out for the upper levels,” she said. “It’s faded out so much because people think that they can’t be competitive on the flat and they think that their tension level is going to be too high to jump clean on a Sunday, you know, but with the right training and the confidence and the time invested, there’s nothing else I’d want to sit on, that’s for sure.”

The post Tracey Bienemann And Venezuelan River Earn ‘Ironic’ Fair Hill Win appeared first on The Chronicle of the Horse.

When Belgian show jumper Emilie Conter and her partner Portobella Van De Fruitkorf landed from the last in-and-out and headed to the final fence in Saturday’s jump-off for the $500,000 Bainbridge Companies CSI5* Grand Prix, Conter started to press the mare forward but then paused. 

“I wanted to see if I should take the leave-out to the final fence,” Conter said. “And suddenly I heard my trainer Helena Stormanns yell, ‘Go get it!’ and then I saw the long [distance]. So I went for it, and ‘Bella’ was right there with me and jumped it. When I looked up at the screen, I saw that I was leading the class. I couldn’t believe it.”

Once Conter dismounted in the schooling ring, she had to play the waiting game. Conter had been the third rider to go in the seven-rider jump-off and had set the pace in 42.43 seconds, but there were still four riders left to compete: Ireland’s Jordan Coyle and Darragh Kenny, Great Britain’s Harry Charles, and American Katie Dinan. “That was a stress moment for me—I had to wait to see what happened next,” she said. 

The final rider on course was Kenny, and when he had a rail at the second-to last fence, Conter’s victory in the feature class of Week 9 of the Winter Equestrian Festival in Wellington, Florida, was sealed. 

“I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t know how to react,” Conter, 24, who has been riding at the five-star level since 2022, said of her first five-star grand prix win. “It took me two days to realize it wasn’t a dream, and that it actually happened. My dad [Stephan Conter] called me on Sunday and said, ‘Do you know that this was real?’ and I laughed and said, ‘I know!’ ”

Being in the jump-off with six of the world’s top riders was an exciting moment for Emilie. 

“When I was clear [in the first round], I was so happy,” she said. “In the jump-off, I felt like I could go fast. Usually I don’t like to risk as much, but this jump-off had more long approaches so I could land and keep moving. Bella likes to keep going and maintain a fast speed, so it worked out in our favor.” 

Belgian rider Stijn Swinnen, who rode and showed Bella in her younger years, and his wife were in the audience for their big win. “It was really cool that they were here for that,” Emilie said. 

The show jumper has spent her entire life in the saddle, growing up in her father Stephan’s Stephex Stables training and sales business, based in Belgium. When Emilie was younger, she used to travel to horse shows every weekend with her mom, Evi Saerens, and her sister Zoe Conter. Emilie’s successful junior career included winning a team silver medal at the 2014 European Championships for Children (Italy); a team gold medal at the 2016 European Championships for Juniors (Ireland); and a team gold and individual bronze medal at the 2021 European Championships for Young Riders (Portugal).  

“We had so many great times,” Emilie said. “When I was 8 years old, I tried playing tennis and dancing. But I didn’t have the talent for those sports, so I always went back to riding.” 

After finishing university two years ago, Emilie started to take more of a role at Stephex Stables: She now rides and shows full-time, with a current string of 10 horses from the two-star to the five-star levels. She loves to develop young horses and bring them up through the ranks of show jumping. 

“I really enjoy building a partnership with my horses,” Emilie said. “Most of the horses I get when they’re 6 or 7, and I can develop them for several years. You feel like you’ve accomplished something when you take them to the highest levels. You need to know the horses like the back of your hand to jump successfully in the bigger classes.”

Emilie also has become more involved in the business side of buying and selling horses, and she is helping to organize the family business’s 10^th annual horse show, the Brussels Stephex Masters in August. Since 2018, the Conter sisters have spent their winters competing at WEF in Wellington, Florida, and they bring a string of five to 10 horses each to show throughout the circuit. 

“It’s good for me to get into the ring every day and every week [at WEF] with different horses,” Emilie said. “It makes me a stronger, better rider. It’s also nice to be able to show outside in warm weather. Belgian winters are cold!” 

For the past three years, Bella has been an integral part of Emilie’s top string of horses. The 10-year old Belgian Warmblood mare (Bamako De Muze—La Bamba, Nabab De Reve), bred in Belgium by Willy Blocken and owned by Stephex Stables and Paul Swinnen, got her start with Stijn, who rode and showed Bella as a young jumper before Emilie took over the reins in 2022. 

“The first time I jumped her, it was not love at first sight,” Emilie said. “She was strong and a bit cold [to my leg]. But my dad really believed in Bella, so Helena and I started to develop her. When Bella was 7 and 8 years old, she was a bit bored and careless at the smaller fences, and she would have one or two rails down. But even from the beginning, I knew Bella had a lot of scope. I wanted to take my time with her to let her grow and learn to focus; I think that’s paid off.” 

Emilie has built up a strong partnership with Bella over the years, which has helped the mare to thrive. 

“At the farm [in Belgium], Bella gets bored, but at a horse show, Bella is on it—she loves being at the shows and she’s all business there,” Emilie said. “The first day of the show, we always do a smaller class, like a 1.40-meter. She just steps over those jumps; they are her warm-up to get her ready for the weekend. Bella loves the big jumps; she knows when she has to perform and she’s fully on her game.”

As Bella and Emilie were building up their experience in the 1.50-meter classes near the end of 2023, they had an unexpected fall in the warm-up ring of the Sunshine Tour in Spain, and Emilie gave Bella a three-month break. 

“It was scary. I was nervous that it would be the end of Bella’s career,” Emilie said. “[When Bella was cleared for riding], I brought her to WEF 2024 with me and spent the winter building her fitness back. I love it in Wellington. I could work her at the farm and take my time with her. Near the end of that circuit, Bella was fourth in her first WEF four-star. Bella was stronger after she came back from that fall; it proves how strong she really is.” 

Next on Emilie and Bella’s radar is competing on the Belgian team at the Longines League of Nations Ocala, being held March 22 at the World Equestrian Center-Ocala (Florida). From there, Emilie plans on taking some downtime in April back in Belgium, and then she will resume showing in Europe for the remainder of the year. 

“A year or two ago, we were thinking of selling Bella,” she added. “Luckily it never happened. I’m never going to have another horse like her again in my life; it’s really hard to find that. My dad gets so much joy from seeing me ride and win at the top level, so he wants to keep Bella for me now. Hopefully he keeps his word!”

The post Raised In The Show Jumping Business, Emilie Conter Earns Her First Five-Star Win appeared first on The Chronicle of the Horse.

Much like the eponymous buckskin protagonist of “Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron,” Come Back De Massa has a spirit that cannot be broken, his rider and co-owner Denielle Gallagher says. But as the pair have proven, their previous personal best Grand Prix freestyle record most certainly can be.

Dancing to freestyle music from the hit animation movie, Gallagher and “Come Back,” a 13-year-old Lusitano gelding (Galopin De La Font—Xantilly SM, Quixote SDS) who she owns with Ellen Lazarus, clinched the win for Canada on Saturday with a 72.94% at the World Equestrian Center-Ocala February CDI3* (Florida), besting their previous top score of 71.47% which they set just a few weeks earlier at the venue’s January CDI3*. In fact, the Ocala, Florida-based pair has gone undefeated in all four of their international starts this year. 

“Come Back is really coming into his own and getting better and better,” Gallagher said. “I’m so happy with him and enjoying our journey together.”

Come Back is a buckskin, making the movie’s Hans Zimmer soundtrack an obvious choice for his freestyle. She designed the floorplan with her longtime trainer Ashley Holzer, using music put together by Boy de Winter of Music-Motions.

But Gallagher, whose two kids are also fans of the DreamWorks Animation classic, said her “Spirit” music pick was not merely an aesthetic decision based on Come Back’s coat color. 

“For me, I just love the message it sends, because it’s really about bonding and being friends with your animal as much as it is a partner,” she said of the movie. “Come Back has a lot of personality, he’s a little bit cheeky, and he knows he’s the king in the barn. I feel like his character is a lot like Spirit’s, in that he has let me in. I’m super lucky.”

More broadly, Gallagher believes that her freestyle comes at an important moment for the future of dressage sport. 

“With the way the dressage generally has been going, and all the hate everywhere, and I feel like we need to remember why we’re all doing this,” she said. “We were all once that little kid on a horse or a pony when we were younger. Riding is about that kind of friendship between horse and human. I am connected with him, and I wanted to emphasize that in music.” 

Watch their winning “Spirit”-themed freestyle, courtesy of USEF Network, powered by ClipMyHorse.tv:

From the moment she set her foot in the stirrups, Gallagher felt that connection with the gelding. She found him three years ago in France, while trying horses for clients at breeder Sylvain Massa’s stables. Gallagher agreed to ride him on a whim, even though he was out of her budget. 

“I fell in love with him the first ride,” she said. “I speak a little bit of French, so I literally was going around, like ‘J’adore, j’adore, j’adore!’ ”

Without the support of Lazarus, a longtime client of Gallagher’s, their partnership would not have become reality. Gallagher and the Lusitano spent the first two years of their relationship getting to know each other while campaigning for Olympic team selection. The pair ultimately did not get picked for Paris, but Gallagher has big plans for Come Back in the year ahead. 

After the winter season in Florida ends, Gallagher and her family will relocate to France for the summer, in hopes of competing with Come Back at some of the big-name European venues. Gallagher’s husband, hunter/jumper trainer Bertrand Legriffon, and their two daughters will accompany her across the pond. 

“There’s no timeline,” she said. “We would love to try [CHIO Aachen (Germany)], if we could get in, and I want to do a few shows in France, because my husband is from France. But what we’ll do depends on how he feels. In the end, it’s just about having fun together.”

As such, preparation for their big trip has included lighthearted competition between Gallagher, who began her riding career in eventing and show jumping, and her husband. 

“We were doing poles on the ground the other day, and my husband was on his jumper, and he said to me, ‘OK, how many strides can you do? I can do nine and then four.’ So I said to him, ‘OK, I’m going to try.’ I went and I fit in 10 strides between the poles. So I was like, ‘I beat you!’ ” she recalled, adding, “But then I had to gallop to get the four strides, which was hard.” 

Gallagher and Legriffon run their respective businesses out of the same facility in Ocala. Occasionally, coexisting peacefully with show jumpers is a challenge for the sensitive dressage horses in Gallagher’s program—like the time recently that her husband decided to school a jumpers over a tarp in the arena while she was working her dressage horses. 

“I was in there with him trying to go around the ring, and my dressage horses were all snorting and spooking at this blue tarp,” said Gallagher. “My husband was like, ‘You know, it’s good training for them.’ I was like, ‘I know, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it!’ ” 

Still, channeling her inner jumper during schooling sessions has paid dividends for Gallagher. Exposure to her husband’s jumping competitions has changed the way Gallagher thinks about the cloistered virtue of dressage horses. 

“You go to the dressage shows, and if everything’s not perfectly in place, people complain. Meanwhile, if you go to the jumper shows, they’ve got dirt bikes going up the horses’ rear ends, and the horses don’t care,” she said. “For me, seeing that side of it, I’ve relaxed about a lot of stuff. It’s been very beneficial for me, mentally.” 

Once they get back to home turf, if all goes to plan, Gallagher hopes to contest the inaugural U.S. Equestrian Open of Dressage to be held in Thermal, California, in November. Both the January and February WEC-Ocala CDI3*s were qualifiers for the final, so with those two wins already under their belt, Gallagher and Come Back are well on their way to punching their ticket to the West Coast. 

“I’m always serious about it, because it’s my profession,” Gallagher said. “And I want to always do well, but I’m excited to go this year and just have fun. Everything’s not riding on it, so if I make a mistake, or I have a little less power, or if I feel like I want to just play with it, I can. I’m excited about the future with him.” 

The post Denielle Gallagher’s Winning Freestyle Is About Partnership With Her Buckskin ‘Spirit’ appeared first on The Chronicle of the Horse.

For Claudia Szidat, dressage has been more about the journey than the blue ribbons since she took up the sport in 2020.

German by birth, she grew up riding sporadically but got serious about showing—riding hunters on the Quarter Horse circuit—when she moved to the United States in 1999 for her husband Michael Szidat’s job.

After having her son, Christopher Szidat, Claudia and Michael eventually made their way from Mexico, New York, to Fayetteville, New York, and Claudia connected with dressage trainer Kimberley Asher at Canterbury Stables in nearby Cazenovia.

“My heart was always with dressage,” Claudia said. “I always thought that one day I would give it a try, and that was in fall 2020 when my son went to college. I sold my hunter and started taking lessons with Kimberley. I enjoyed every single minute of it.” 

After learning the basics of dressage on lesson horses, Claudia was ready for a horse of her own. While her parents had allowed her to take riding lessons as a child, it was never consistent, and Claudia said they didn’t take her passion seriously. But her father, Helmut Scheffler, offered to help her as a gift when it came time to find her own horse in 2021. 

“Before he passed away, he said he felt so bad that they never took it seriously and supported me, and he said he’d love for me to fulfill my dream and buy myself my dressage heart horse,” Claudia recalled. “Shortly after that he passed away, and it was like, ‘OK, this is it. Let’s start looking.’ ”

It took a year to find Fial, a now-7-year-old Westphalian gelding (Fuerstenball—Bellina, Belissimo M), but he’s turned out to be the perfect partner for Claudia. She was a bit nervous thinking about showing him, but a group of friends at the barn encouraged her to dip her toe in last year.

“I really loved it. It was fun,” she said. “I’m surrounded by some really great friends. We show together. We’re five girls. They didn’t give me any chance not to do it! They took me under their wings and said, ‘This is what we do.’ It’s been a great experience.”

This year, Claudia and Fial headed to the GAIG/USDF Region 8 Championships, held Sept. 19-22 in Saugerties, New York, and won the adult amateur first level championship on a score of 70.06% ahead of 51 other pairs.

“He is such a good horse,” she said. “I think he really likes to show off. We’re both still fairly green, so we still have a lot to learn. He takes care of me. Once I go in the ring, I don’t feel nervous anymore. I just love to ride a test. I think knowing what I do next in my ride, I just love it. It makes me feel good. I wasn’t even that nervous about my ride. I like to go in there and show him off and try to be as good of a rider for him as he deserves.”

Claudia hopes to continue moving up the levels with Fial, largely by working on herself. She takes clinics whenever she can from coaches like Gary Rockwell and JJ Tate to complement her training with Asher.

“He has so much potential and so much to offer,” she said of Fial. “My goal for myself is to be able to make him shine. I have to work hard on me, but I’m totally determined to do this. It’s not about the blue ribbons, it’s to give him justice because he’s such a beautiful horse. This is my goal, and let’s see how far it gets us. I’m open for everything.

“My biggest regret is that I didn’t do it 20 years earlier! I feel like my time is running out and running away from me, but I’m 54, so I can still do it,” she added with a laugh. “I’m a perfectionist, so if I do something, I really want to learn it. I always said one day I was going to start learning [dressage] from scratch. It’s a beautiful thing—it’s full of harmony. It’s like dancing with the horses. I always admired everyone who did it and wanted to one day learn it. I think it was always in me, it just took a while until I finally fulfilled my dream.”

The post GAIG/USDF Region 8 Champion Claudia Szidat Is Fulfilling A Dream Deferred appeared first on The Chronicle of the Horse.

“I go to Rebecca Farm every year,” said Brannigan, who is based in Coatesville, Pennsylvania. “It’s been a really big staple in my horses’ careers to kind of tell me when they’re ready to step up, and being able to handle the travel and whatnot, it’s huge. And we just love this event.

“It’s special for me, too, because I lived in California, and I’m very close with [organizer] Sarah Broussard and so many people that run it, like [event secretary] Christina Gray and all the California people. It’s just really fun for me to feel like I’m coming back home to the West Coast, even though it’s nowhere near the West Coast.”

This was just the fifth start at advanced for Pascal, a 9-year-old Holsteiner gelding (Pasco 17—Z-Corrada I, San Patrignano Corrado). The handsome gray made his debut at the level this spring at a very tough Stable View (South Carolina), followed by outings in April and May at Fair Hill (Maryland) and then a ninth-place finish at the Bromont CCI4*-S (Quebec).

“I thought with how he jumped around [at Bromont] that he would be ready for Rebecca,” Brannigan said. “And I really wanted to go because it’s Ian Stark’s last time designing [the cross-country course] there.”

The pair began tied for first with Karen O’Neal and Clooney 14 on a 33.8 in dressage. They added just 2.4 time penalties on cross-country, despite it being unusually hot—temperatures climbed as high as 98 degrees, just 1 degree shy of the record for Kalispell on the date.

“I think the cross-country and the length of it and the heat was definitely [a test] for him,” Brannigan said. “Towards the end of the course, I was glad that we were closing in toward the end. He really showed a lot of heart.”

Only two of the five combinations jumped clear, so Brannigan held the lead going into show jumping with a 10-point cushion ahead of second-placed Ashley Adams and Charly. Pascal left all the rails up and added just 1.6 time penalties.

”He show jumped brilliantly, so I thought that was really fantastic,” Brannigan said. “He’s only 9, so he’ll definitely be doing more four-stars. I let the horses tell me when they’re ready to do something. I had a gut feeling he was ready to do this, and I think it’s a great step in his career. He’s done two [CCI3*-L events]. I think he was ready for it, but I don’t think I would have wanted to do it any sooner. I think it was the perfect place. Obviously, Ian’s a great designer, and it was certainly challenging enough. I think I learned a lot about what kind of horse he’s going to be because of the heat. I kind of thought at 8.5 minutes, 9 minutes, ‘Oof, is he going to still want to keep going here?’ And he did. I was just relieved that he came back and jumped so well on Sunday.”

Brannigan has only had the ride on the gelding since early 2023, as he was originally purchased for her former assistant, Alexa Lapp.

“ ‘Pasco’ was a 4-year-old in Germany when I was on the Nations Cup team for Boekelo [in 2019] with Stella Artois,” Brannigan said. “We were looking for a horse for [Lapp] and one of my business partners’ place in Germany was quite close to where the team was doing their pre-training at in Holland. So we went to go look at young horses, and Pasco was one of them.”

Lapp developed Pasco through the CCI3*-L level before deciding to take a hiatus from riding. “So I rode him to sell him, and luckily Erik Duvander helped convince my owners that I needed him,” Brannigan said with a laugh.

The horse is owned by The Pascal Syndicate, which includes Lapp, Tim and Nina Gardner, Brittany Rhodes, Beth Lendrum, Norma Murray and Brian Murray, chairman of the board of directors of Montana Equestrian Events, Inc.

In a post on social media the Monday after the event that celebrated Alexa Thompson’s win in the CCI4*-S with Just To Be Clear, Brannigan noted that she always encourages people to make the trek west to compete at Rebecca Farm because it’s such a special event. This year, she added, she enjoyed the event even more because she catch-rode a horse in the CCI2*-L (Mia Edsall’s True Story, who finished fifth), volunteered, and gave a talk to young riders. “It’s taken me a long time to figure out how to compete and be comfortable enough to enjoy these things,” she wrote.

“I really feel like, as time has gone on and obviously I’m getting a bit older, I’m in my late 30s, and with that comes with maturity,” she elaborated after the event. “With the experience, you just kind of learn to relax. I feel like I’ve become a better and better human at these competitions, and I really support my fellow riders. And I really mean it. It’s not fake. At the long formats, I used to kind of freeze and not want to talk to anyone and go into a little bit of a hole, which is really the opposite of what my personality is like, at the normal competitions. I think I’m my true self now.”

Brannigan also noted in her post that over $1 million has been raised by the event to help fight cancer through the Halt Cancer at X program, which Broussard established in 2012 in memory of her mother—and the event’s founder—Rebecca Broussard, who died in 2010.

“A huge thank you to everyone that puts on Rebecca Farm, and the Rebecca Farm travel and training grants I think are really special,” Brannigan wrote. “I’m glad we’re trying our best to live up to [Rebecca Broussard’s] image of what this event was supposed to be.”

The post Different Level, Same Result: Brannigan Repeats Rebecca Farm Win appeared first on The Chronicle of the Horse.

Fergusson and “Tali” (Brynarian Brenin Ap Maldwyn—Dream Contessa, Royal Chocolate) climbed from the bottom of the pack to the top on the strength of a clear show jumping round and a clear but slow cross-country to win the Maryland International CCI4*-S on a hot summer weekend in Adamstown, Maryland, that saw no four-star pairs pushing to make time.

“I think it’s exciting because, with a horse like Tali, you don’t expect to win because he doesn’t like dressage,” said Fergusson, 41, who operates North Star Eventing in West Chester, Pennsylvania. “Now, there’s enough good horses putting in good dressage tests that they can still make errors on cross-country and win. Cross-country just happened to be weighted heavier this weekend more than it sometimes can be, and show jumping, as well. 

“I was definitely not expecting it, but it was a nice surprise,” she added. “He came out and did his job like the reliable cross-country horse he’s been his whole career. I just let him cruise around at the speed he wanted. He was so happy out there. He just cantered around and jumped everything, and he was super great. He made it all feel super easy.”

They were at the bottom of the division after dressage with a score of 41.1. But they posted the only double-clear round in show jumping on Saturday morning and added a slow, steady clear cross-country. 

“It is special to have that on his record because I think he’s a great horse,” she said. “He’s been my longtime partner, and he’s taught me a lot, and I’ve achieved a lot of firsts with him. And especially because my last win at this level was on [Uni Griffon, who has the same sire as Tali],” she said. (Uni Griffon, Fergusson’s first five-star horse, is also by Brynarian Brenin Ap Maldwyn, and her last win at the level was at the 2007 MCTA Horse Trials, also in Maryland.)

Maryland was the pair’s first competition since before the Defender Kentucky CCI5*-L in April, where they fell at the coffin near the end of the course.

“In his career, that’s the first fall we’ve ever had. I’m just chalking it up to a lot of unlucky,” said Fergusson, adding that she wasn’t nervous to get back out on cross-country at Maryland. “I kind of just went, ‘You know, after 18 years, you’re entitled to a mistake, and I guess we’ll see if it’s one he learned from.’ He hasn’t been on a cross-country course since then. He’s not a horse that I cross-country school, so that was his first time to see a start box since then.

“When other people are getting nervous for cross-country, I’ll be eating a breakfast sandwich, and everyone’s like, ‘You have to be nervous.’ And I reply, ‘You’re not sitting on what I’m sitting on,’ ” she said. “They haven’t built a course he can’t do. What he’s taught me in the last 14 years is that it doesn’t matter what I put in front of him. He’ll figure it out. I know with that horse that if I show him what I expect, he’ll do it. Half the time, he reads it before I tell him, and he hunts flags. He’s just a horse you can go out on and have a really good time.”

At Maryland the duo posted 34 time faults as they cruised around cross-country. However, of the six finishers in the CCI4*-S, no one had fewer than 27.2 time faults. Tali and Fergusson won the division with a final score of 75.1, with Courtney Cooper and R River Star second (78.5) and Jessica Phoenix and Aeronautics third (78.7).

Given their dressage placing and their slow cruise around cross-country, Fergusson was not expecting to win. She was getting another horse ready with her friend Jennifer Babcock when she heard the news.

“We were both extremely shocked. It was not the goal for the day,” Babcock said. “She was taking [Tali] out to see what he wanted to do and see where he was at. They had a brilliant show-jumping round and brilliant cross country, but we were pretty shocked.”

Fergusson bought Tali, sight unseen, as a 4-year-old. At the time, she was competing his full brother, Smart Move at the advanced level. She purchased Tali from Carol McDonald, a Langley, British Columbia, breeder whose daughter was one of Fergusson’s Pony Club mates. She had previously gotten “Smarty” from McDonald, whom she’d worked for before moving to the U.S., helping to start and compete McDonald’s young horses.

When Fergusson found out Tali was for sale, despite knowing he had bone chips in three ankles and wouldn’t pass a vet exam, she purchased him and promptly shipped him to Washington State University in Pullman, Washington. He underwent surgery on those three legs at WSU’s Veterinary Teaching Hospital, but then while recovering from the surgery, he developed an infection, so he ended up spending a month at WSU before Fergusson finally laid eyes on him. The duo began training together, embarking on their competitive career at the novice level. However, not quite a year later, a kick from Smarty left Tali with a fractured radius, so he had to spend another three months on stall rest. He wasn’t happy about it.

“Tali does not like stall rest. He does not like stalls, period,” Fergusson said. “He’d live out 24/7 if you let him.”

Fergusson is a huge fan of Tali’s lineage, having owned and competed four horses by McDonald’s Welsh Cob stallion Brynarian Brenin Ap Maldwyn through the upper levels, including Smarty, who was competing successfully at the four-star level when he died after getting loose in Wellington, Florida, and being hit by a car; and Uni Sprite (Brynarian Brenin Ap Maldwyn—Better B’Leavin), a full brother to Uni Griffon who’s now 19 and still competing at the training level with Brenda Jarrell. Uni Griffon was Fergusson’s first five-star horse and competed at the advanced level until, at age 10, he collapsed and died just after finishing advanced cross-country at the 2009 Maui Jim Horse Trials (Illinois).

Fergusson has experienced her fair share of grief, enduring the deaths of two of her horses in their prime, as well as her mother, Bonnie, in 2021. She competed in the 2022 Kentucky Three-Day Event, her mom’s “favorite show”,  in honor of Bonnie, finishing 19^th in the CCI5*-L.

For a horse whose age indicates he’s surely nearing the end of his exceptionally long upper-level career, the Maryland win was an unexpected reward for an atypical event horse.

“Lots of people have big, fancy movers who are built for the job,” Fergusson said. “[Tali] goes in, and he’ll do the things and try to cooperate, but he just isn’t that big, fancy, picture-perfect dressage horse. And he doesn’t like it, so he doesn’t try to be that big, fancy, picture-perfect horse. That’s just not him. He loves to jump and run.”

Fergusson is aware that Tali might not have much more competitive time on his side. But much like she was at the Maryland event, focused on the task at hand rather than on the leaderboard, she’s taking things day by day with him, letting him tell her what’s next, while bringing along a number of younger horses in her string. She’s not sure whether Tali has another five-star in his future.

“The obvious option is Maryland, and if he’s feeling good and fit and up to it, I think it’s a possibility,” she said of the Mars Maryland 5 Star at Fair Hill in October. “He’s at a phase in his career where he doesn’t need to do it, and maybe it’s a little selfish to ask him to do another one. I’m going to see how he’s feeling and make the decision as it gets closer. I’m not going to rule it out, but I’m also not going to count on it.

“He doesn’t owe me anything,” she added. “I want to be mindful to not be selfish and make sure everything we do with him is in his best interest. Now we’re just in a different phase. I’m assuming I’m going to take him to Plantation, and I’m going to really enjoy it if he gets to go to that one. And then we’ll just add on the next logical one after that.”

For now, she’s just relishing Tali’s success last weekend and enjoying every moment with him. And she’ll keep enjoying those moments as long as he is.

“Good luck teaching that horse to be a pasture ornament,” she said with a laugh. “He’s not going to go quietly into pasture life. He is a busy boy. He’s not one who likes to go out and not work. He gets so upset when the trailer leaves without him.

“He’s getting older, and I don’t want him to not enjoy what he’s doing,” she said. “It’s a lot of not pushing him and letting him tell me what he wants to do. We had a good amount of time faults at Maryland. In his younger years, he never had time faults unless I insisted. But he has no need to run off with me anymore. Right now, we’re not at the stage where I’m pushing him to go faster. We’re working on our show jumping, we do the minimum amount of dressage that we can get away with, and then we hack and play in the river. I’m not galloping his legs off. I’m letting him enjoy it as long as he wants to.”

The post Worth The Wait: Fergusson And Honor Me Honor Lengthy Career With CCI4*-S Win appeared first on The Chronicle of the Horse.

Trewin, 66, who was on the U.S. eventing team for the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, last competed at the international level in 1995, running the Kentucky Three-Day Event aboard his Olympic partner, the New Zealand Thoroughbred Sandscript. Last weekend—three decades later—he returned to the FEI level with a splash when he topped a field of 19 to win the CCI2*-S division at the June Aspen Farms Horse Trials, held June 14-16 in Yelm, Washington.

Trewin and Cooley High Society finished on their dressage score of 30.3. They started the weekend in fourth, and added nothing to that score with a clean show jumping round on Saturday. 

On Sunday, after a clean cross-country run on the horse Trewin calls “Newton” and his wife Tracey Trewin, who owns the horse, refers to as “Newt” (after Newt Scamander from the Harry Potter universe), Todd headed back to the barn and was trying to pry ice out of the freezer for the Irish Sport Horse (Rehy High Society—Forans Sunny Hogan) when he found out he had moved up into first. 

“Everybody just assumed he had held fourth,” Tracey recalled with a laugh. She told him, “Oh my God, you won.” 

Todd called Morgan Rowsell’s cross-country “quite a stiff course” and praised the excellent footing at the popular Pacific Northwest venue, which also ran its first CCI4*-S last weekend.

The couple purchased Newt, now 10, for Tracey as a 5-year-old. Kelly Prather had imported the “chunky” chestnut, and he had only two events under his belt when Tracey went to try him in Florida. 

“We had tried like 16 horses, and he was on the second day,” Tracey said. As soon as she jumped him, she told Todd, “I’m pretty sure he’s my horse.” 

Watching Todd get on and jump him over a “big prelim table,” Tracey asked Prather, “Has he jumped that before?”

“No,” Prather replied, “but I guess he can.”

Newt is now a barn favorite at the Trewins’ Rimrock Equestrian in Fall City, Washington. “We call him our golden retriever,” Todd said. 

Tracey competed the horse through novice, but Todd took over the ride in 2021 when it became clear that as Newt (now 16.3 hands) got wider and taller, he was not as suitable for her to ride on cross-country. (It was not— despite what Todd likes to tell people, Tracey said with a laugh—because the horse bucked. Aside from kicking up his heels in excitement over fences in the cross-country warm-up, Newt had already stopped that.)

It’s been 30 years since Todd has competed at the FEI level. After the 1992 Games, he continued competing Sandscript until 1995, when the horse semi-retired to teach his lower level students and Todd switched his focus to training. 

“His focus has definitely been on developing his clients and their horses,” Tracey said. “He loves to teach people at all levels and see both horses and riders grow and improve.”

In addition to competing and training through the couple’s business, Todd is the president of the board of the Washington State Horse Park, a nonprofit near Cle Elum, Washington, that he’s served on the board of for nearly 20 years. The horse park hosts horse trials, hunter/jumper shows, western competitions, driving and more and is something he’s been working on since he competed in the Olympics, he said, testifying before the state legislature in the early 1990s about the recreational, competitive and tourist opportunities a horse park would bring. 

With Todd in the irons, Newt moved up to training and then preliminary level. Todd and Tracey say riding with Todd’s fellow 1992 Olympian, Erik Duvander, who teaches clinics in Washington, has been a key to Newton’s development. 

“After all this time, you never stop learning in this sport,” Todd said of his rides with Duvander.

Todd also praised his work with dressage trainer Debbie Dewitt, who he says helped get Newton more up in front. “He doesn’t want to work that hard, let’s put it that way,” Todd said, laughing.

For Todd, who last rode internationally on a Thoroughbred, bringing out the best in his quirky Irish partner has been part of the process.

“The thing that’s been the coolest,” Tracey said of watching Newton and Todd’s partnership develop, is that for many years Todd “just didn’t make it a priority” to bring along a horse of his own.

“I think that what’s been fun for me is there is a whole generation of riders who have never seen him ride cross-country. And he has groupies now,” she added, recalling a group of teenagers she heard gushing over seeing him ride at Aspen Farms.

And although Todd and Newt had already worked their way up to the preliminary level when Rachel Brickman joined the team at Rimrock last fall, she was the one who pushed him to consider entering Newt in a CCI2* when told him she needed an “FEI buddy.” It was perfect timing, as Todd and Newt were winning at the preliminary level and wanted a new challenge, but he worried intermediate might be too big of an ask for the horse.

Soon Tracey and Todd found themselves rushing to renew Newton’s expired FEI passport. “This better be fun,” Tracey said as they got everything together for Todd’s return to the international level. 

When Brickman found out about Todd’s win, she told him, “Way to go, FEI buddy.” 

Todd’s groupies will have a chance to watch him go FEI again, as the duo is aiming for the CCI2*-L at Rebecca Farm (Montana). He will be going with Brickman, who has entered the CCI4*-S on her horse, Finally DG.

“After not doing it for 30 years and going back to it,” Todd said, “it was fun to do.”

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