Moments of glory with horses usually are fleeting, but the disappointments too often seem to come like clockwork.
Kim Herslow actually enjoyed more than few of those splendid special moments with Rosmarin, a Hanoverian she bought in Germany as a three-year-old and developed to the FEI level.
Kim and Reno at the 2015 Pan American Games. (Photo © 2015 by Nancy Jaffer)
During her best year with the son of Rosentanz, known as Reno, she emerged victorious in the Small Tour at the Munich show before going on to the 2015 Pan American Games in Toronto, where teams were composed of both Small and Big Tour riders.
In Toronto, her score of 77.15 percent in the Intermediare I was just 0.02 percent behind the total earned by her teammate, Laura Graves, on Verdades in the Grand Prix Special, clinching gold for the U.S. squad and a spot on the podium for Kim.
Kim Herslow on the podium at the 2015 Pan Am Games with gold medal teammates Steffen Peters, Sabine Schut-Kery and Laura Graves (Photo © 2015 by Nancy Jaffer)
After that, she was pointing Reno to Grand Prix and all kinds of possibilities. But in January 2016, he underwent surgery for a cyst that was inside his stifle joint above the cruciate ligament. After he recovered and was being brought back to fitness, he had a suspensory issue, so she decided to semi-retire him.
“If you own horses, it is pretty much guaranteed that you will deal with an injury at some point that will sideline them in their training,” she knows.
“What a heartbreaker, but he’s happy; he owes me nothing.”
Kim enjoys hacking Reno around her Upper Creek Farm in Stockton, where he is the first horse she rides every day.
Kim hacking Reno around the farm. Photo © by Nancy Jaffer
“I’m letting him enjoy what he wants to do and not what he has to do,” she said of Reno, now 15.
“He was a great partner and we had a lot of harmony together, so the bar is high.”
But his problems put her upper level career on hold. She had some rides that kept her in practice, at least, but nothing that she could develop the way she had done with Reno.
Then she met Elvis.
No, not that Elvis. This one is Elvis HI, a Lusitano. She owns him in partnership with Ailene Cascio of Mountain Lakes, who trained with Anne Gribbons. A median score of 70.881 has Elvis ranked first in the U.S. Dressage Federation standings for Prix St. Georges horses registered with the International Andalusian and Lusitano Horse Association.
Kim competing Elvis at the Red Tail Farm show in Bedminster this summer. (Photo © 2020 by Nancy Jaffer)
“That’s pretty darn good for his first time out showing PSG,” said Kim, noting she had just moved him up to that division in June.
Elvis, by Travesso SC out of Quizumba HI, was purchased as a three-year-old coming four from Jorge Gabriel, a Brazilian based in Florida and Massachusetts who trains Elmo Santana, another nice Lusitano.
Kim, 49, has been riding Elvis for four years. She notes people can’t figure out what breed he is while watching him go, because he doesn’t have what many consider the typical Lusitano look.
“I took my time bringing him through the levels,” said Kim, who is schooling Grand Prix with the 12-year-old.
He’s already exhibiting a “classical and correct” piaffe, she reported.
“As he gets stronger and more supple and understands how to use his body better, it gets better and better.”
She showed him this summer at the HITS facility in Saugerties, N.Y. Because of the venue’s large size, she sees it as a good place “to get a horse’s feet wet” in practice for heading to new locations as his show career progresses.
Riding a Lusitano requires different techniques than riding a warmblood, she found.
“His walk used to be lateral and now I’m getting 8s and 9s on his collected walk. It involves teaching them (Lusitanos) to use their core and not just brace their neck and run really fast. That is the trick for that breed, I think.
Linda Zang, an international judge who has officiated at the Olympics and gives clinics at Kim’s barn, helped with Elvis. The guidance enabled Kim to improve Elvis and “bring it up to the level that it is now, with a feel that is really solid and controlled in a nice contact, where he’s always on the vertical and always going out to the bit.”
Although Kim usually spends the winter in Florida, competing at the Adequan Global Dressage Festival, she notes that as questions about Covid keep coming up, “it’s not the best year to head down to Florida.” For next season, she plans to train at her own stable, with its insulated indoor arena.
She can get coaching via the internet with a Pixem video system (she is grateful for the help of her fiancée, internet technology specialist Lenny Neugarten in making that work.) So Kim has been able to benefit from lessons with U.S. dressage technical advisor Debbie McDonald and Ali Brock, a member of the USA’s 2016 bronze medal Olympic team, even though they’re not within 1,000 miles of New Jersey.
“It is nice to see she has another horse going down centerline,” Debbie commented.
Ali mentioned, “I had the wonderful opportunity to compete alongside Kim and Reno starting in 2015 at the Nations Cup in Wellington, followed by the Pan Am short list tour in Europe, the Gladstone Pan Am training camp, and all the way up to team gold in Toronto.
“You really get to know someone when they are under the pressure of competing, and there was a tremendous amount of pressure to achieve team gold in Toronto. Kim is one of my most favorite people ever–she is an amazing horsewoman, teammate, barnmate and friend who is honest, trustworthy, supportive, caring and kind,” Ali added.
“She is a heck of a competitor and exactly the kind of person who you’d want on your team. I am so happy to see her bringing on new horses, and have enjoyed helping her with Elvis. He is a very-hard working, serious, sensitive guy who has really bloomed under Kim’s training and nurturing. I fully expect to see them in the Grand Prix ring in the next couple of years.”
Kim gives Elvis a pat after a good test. (Photo © 2020 by Nancy Jaffer)
Hard work is also Kim’s hallmark. After the former hunter/jumper rider discovered dressage at Delaware Valley College in Pennsylvania, her father, John Herslow, gave her the opportunity of having her own farm, but required her to be involved in building it.
When Upper Creek first opened, Kim did all the work because she couldn’t afford to pay for any help. The business progressed, but she noted, “All the horses I produced I had to sell as they started getting good, so I could pay my bills. I appreciate everything more because I’ve worked that hard for it.”
In addition to Elvis, Kim is bringing along a five-year-old, Feymar (Furstenball X Weltmeyer) who has “a super brain” She was second in the ranking of the Bundeschampionat for Oldenburgs as a three-year-old. But it was the fact that she reminded Kim of Reno which made a connection.
“That’s one of the reasons I bought her,” she explained, noting the mare is on a slower track than Reno while he was developing. Even so, “She’ll be a powerhouse, I think. We’ve just got to see how it plays out.”
She knows that patience is the only was to make things happen with her horses.
When it comes to Elvis practicing piaffe, “I’m being careful to keep it fun. Grand Prix isn’t that far off for him. He’s going to be one of those horses that wants to do it. He’s trying really hard for me, and that’s a good feeling.”
She’s willing to spend “whatever time it takes to give him the confidence and make him super consistent. If he shows potential that he’s going to step up to that plate, for sure we could think about doing some bigger things.”
