Debbie McDonald, who has been synonymous with U.S. dressage excellence during this century, is stepping down Aug. 1 from her post as the U.S. Equestrian Federation's technical advisor in the discipline. “After many discussions, it’s a difficult...

The fabulous dressage star Valegro marked his 21st birthday last week. Atop the Olympic multi-gold medal champion for the occasion was the daughter of his famous rider, Charlotte Dujardin. The fact that little Isabella Rose is not even six months...

The final day of the CHIO Aachen World Equestrian Festival is always emotional, ending with the aufwiedersehen tradition of the crowd and competitors waving goodbye as white handkerchiefs flutter everywhere in the stadium to the accompaniment of...

The eventers persevered today through a reversal of fortune to finish second after a demanding cross-country test, producing the best placing of any U.S. team at the five-discipline equestrian festival in Germany. Will Coleman, who won at Aachen...

Legendary Aachen has it all--pomp, an incredible sense of the occasion, an educated audience (45,000 were in the stands for the show jumping Nations Cup) that knows when to cheer and when to groan. But most important, of course, is the wide array...

The U.S. team was standing second this morning after the dressage phase of eventing at the exciting Aachen competition, but the show jumping segment during the afternoon dropped the squad to fourth. There's still hope, however, and you know how...

Buying a weanling as a sport horse prospect is a long road. But the trip has been worth it so far for eventer Arielle Aharoni, who earned the best placing of her career with the multi-talented Dutch Times at the MARS Equestrian Bromont 4-Star Long...

How many times have you heard complaints about issues in the sport and what equestrian governance organizations are doing -- or not doing -- about them? But if all the conversations go nowhere, it's frustrating. And that applies not only to those...

Ellie Wood Page Keith Baxter, the winner of the 1936 ASPCA Maclay Finals, died Monday at the age of 101. An active fox hunter who also starred with hunters in the show ring, the Virginian was inducted into the National Show Hunter Hall of Fame in...

U.S. competitors Boyd Martin and Phillip Dutton dominated the top placings in the major divisions at the Mars Equestrian: Bromont CCI in Quebec, Canada, with Phillip rising from 15th in dressage on Azure in the 4-Star Long to first after...

The biggest assignment of my fledgling sports writing career put me at Belmont Park on June 9, 1973, shadowing Penny Chenery Tweedy, the powerful chestnut’s patrician owner. I wrote what is known as a sidebar; not the main story about the most...

Not surprisingly, Hannah Sue Hollberg is a big fan of the Essex Horse Trials. It wasn't just that she won $10,000 Sunday in the Open Intermediate section, where she was the only rider to finish in a field of three, and she topped the  Preliminary...

The Essex Horse Trials  at the U.S. Equestrian Team Foundation offered the perfect location to prep for her upcoming eventing Nations Cup in Poland, according to Caroline Martin Pamukcu, who won the Advanced Combined Test Saturday with HSH Blake....

Is Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital the best place to provide treatment for Michael Barisone, found not guilty by reason of insanity in his 2022 trial on a charge of second-degree attempted murder? The dressage trainer's legal team contended in...

The home team scored an important victory in California Sunday afternoon, as the squad won the first Longines FEI Nations Cup of the USA ever held on the West Coast. It comes after a triumph in the Mexican leg of the Cup last month, and puts the...

Great Britain's Ros Canter and Lordships Graffalo led wire-to-wire to win the Badminton Horse Trials by a mile, with a mere 1.6 time penalties added as they proceeded around a show jumping course that cost rails for all but four of the 30...

This weekend's Badminton Horse Trials in England is the world's second 5-star-rated event in a row, but it has no shortage of entries--or spectators. In fact, Sunday's cross-country was sold out. Even the Duke of Beaufort's estate has room for only...

It may seem as if there has always been a Kentucky Derby, but of course, everything has to start somewhere. For the Derby, that was 1875, and its debut is the focal point of a book being published this month by Eclipse Press, "The First Kentucky...

If you weren't able to get to Kentucky for the 5 star Land Rover Three-Day Event over the weekend, there are more chances to see highlights of the event in a one-hour show. They will air on NBC on Saturday May 13 at 2:30 p.m.  Eastern Time and on...

"Thank you for coming. See you next year." Daniel Bluman, winner of Saturday night's $226,000 Kentucky CSI3* Invitational Grand Prix, greeted fan after fan from a crowd of 10,224 as they passed while he rode in a golf cart from the Rolex Stadium to...

What a surprise! Tamie Smith found herself on top of the standings Saturday at the 5-star Land Rover Kentucky Three-Day Event when world champion Yasmin Ingham of Great Britain ran into big trouble on the cross-country course at fence 6C, a narrow...

I was watching carefully Friday as Yasmin Ingham--that's Eventing World Champion Yasmin Ingham--rode Banzai du Loir around the outside of the dressage arena at the 5-star Land Rover Kentucky Three-Day Event. It was an intimidating setting, with a...

This year's Land Rover Kentucky Three-Day Event has nearly everything anyone devoted to the sport would want--stellar entries from the U.S. and overseas, a scenic cross-country course, acres of shopping and an opportunity to enjoy a world-class...

Could this be the year that a U.S. rider will win the Kentucky 5-star three-day event for the first time since 2008? It's something that's wondered annually about the championship at the Kentucky Horse Park. The prospects were looking up early this...

They were a legendary pair, Greg Best and Gem Twist. In 1988, when Greg was only 24 years old, he and the sensational grey thoroughbred earned the individual show jumping silver at the Seoul Olympics and were part of the silver medal team there....

The idea of establishing 3-foot/3-inch and 3-6 hunter divisions for adult amateurs who don't own their own horses generally got a thumbs-down reaction during a U.S. Hunter Jumper Association Town Hall on Zoom Monday night. The session, led by USHJA...

(An update on survivors and memorial arrangements is at the end of this obituary) Legendary steward, stable manager and equine caregiver Karen Golding died Friday morning after a long illness. Karen, 72, had been hospitalized recently after her...

The competition was, of course, the focal point of the FEI World Cup Finals in Omaha, where show jumping, dressage and vaulting titles were decided. (To read about the competitions, click on the "previous columns" icon at the top of the main page....

The FEI World Cup Finals in Omaha ended with an intense two-round show jumping competition Saturday night, keeping spectators in suspense until the final horse faulted. But after all that, it wound up with the most predictable victor, just as the...

Defending champion Jessica von Bredow-Werndl and TSF Dalera BB soared on a glittering wave of fluid movement and perfect harmony to take the FEI  World Cup Dressage Final last night for the second time. Although their mark of 90.482 percent in...

The deck was shuffled in the second jumping competition at the Longines FEI World Cup Finals in Omaha, with two riders on the move tied at the top, while Wednesday's leader, world champion Henrik von Eckermann of Sweden, found himself demoted to...

If you wanted to pick a winner in the opening classes of dressage and show jumping at the FEI World Cup classes, very little handicapping was required. Hours after defending dressage Cup champion Jessica von Bredow-Werndl of Germany topped the...

Show jumper Devin Ryan is, in a sense, back where his rise to the top of his sport began. The venue is different but the event is the same, the Longines FEI World Cup Finals. In 2018, longshots Devin and the brilliant Eddie Blue were a surprise...

The Adequan Global Dressage Festival, the nation's premier circuit in the discipline, came to an end last week after a run that began in early January. Going forward, there's always curiosity about what's next for exciting up-and-coming riders who...

Graeme Thom, the U.S. Equestrian Federation's director of FEI/High Performance Sport, has stepped down after six months in the post to attend to "personal obligations" with the countdown to the Paris Olympics less than 17 months away, and the Pan...

The North American League of the Longines FEI World Cup will field a bunch of heavy hitters against the best Europe has to offer when they go to Omaha for the finals next month. The League wrapped up Sunday in Ocala, where the final points for the...

Are you happy with the conditions for horse-keeping in your state? Or are you thinking of relocating to a more horse-friendly environment? It's a tough decision, but a company called Lawn Love has made it a bit easier by ranking the Best States for...

Beloved veterinarian Dr. Meg Mullin, "dedicated her life to what she did and had fun doing it." That comment, from Will Connell, former U.S. Equestrian Federation director of sport, sums up the essence of Dr. Mullin, who died Thursday after weeks...

Irish rider Daniel Coyle, who is leading the North American League for the FEI World Cup Finals, is ready for a serious shot at the global indoor jumping championship in Omaha next month. He demonstrated his prowess on Sunday in the Winter...

It came down to the wire: would Anna Buffini get the final North American slot in the FEI World Cup Dressage Finals, or was it possible that Sarah Tubman could earn the trip to April’s competition in Omaha? Although there were nine others riding to...

In her quest to qualify for next month’s FEI World Cup Dressage Finals, Anna Buffini came east from California with FRH Davinia La Douce to compete in the final qualifier at the Adequan Global Dressage Festival in Wellington, Fla. The effort paid...

I often find that the people involved in putting on an equestrian competition may be as interesting as those participating in it. Such is the case with Bernardo Costa Cabral, the 45-year-old course designer from Portugal who will head the team...

The Adequan® U.S. Para Dressage Team came through again to win the championship at the CHI Al Shaqab CPEDI3* in Qatar this weekend. The para riders were the only American team at last year's world championships in Herning, Denmark, to come away...

The Canadian team gave the best possible welcome gift to its new chef d’equipe, Ian Millar, as it handily won the $150,000 CSIO 4-star Nations Cup at the Winter Equestrian Festival Saturday night. Ian, formerly known as Captain Canada for his...

Even as the decades sped by, the dedicated alumni of Junior Essex Troop never forgot lessons learned or friends made in the cadet auxiliary of the Essex Troop, 102d Cavalry, New Jersey National Guard. As youngsters on a 13-acre farm in West Orange,...

Everyone on the show jumping circuit knows Karen Golding. She was a longtime groom for Olympian Michael Matz and the caretaker of the great Jet Run, with a reputation so outstanding that she became the only groom in the Show Jumping Hall of Fame....

From a stark orphanage in Ukraine, a country where trouble was brewing, to being named PATH International Youth Equestrian of the Year, Vika Christian has come a long way in a decade. And it was horses who helped her get there. PATH leads the...

The Essex Horse Trials is reinventing itself. Again. For the third time since its 2019 edition, when it was staged in late June at Moorland Farm in Far Hills, N.J., it has switched its date. Organizers are hoping that positioning Essex in early...

Boyd Martin has never been shy about advising people what he's up to, but he reached a new pinnacle in that regard with his new year letter (complete with photos) to friends, owners, supporters and sponsors. He touches on everything he's been up...

Take heart, working students. It is possible to make it to the top of the game with a lot of effort. A case in point is Adrienne Lyle, who began her rise as a working student for Debbie McDonald in 2005. Last night, she won the U.S. Equestrian...

As much as a new year is a time for looking ahead, it also is an opportunity to look back and enjoy a bit of nostalgia. For me, what filled the bill on the latter perspective was “The Outside of a Horse,” a book of recollections by Steven D. Price....

My headline, which I have always used for New Year’s stories over the decades, comes from a seldom-sung verse of a favorite carol, Deck the Halls. It is amazing how fast a year goes by, isn’t it? Last January, we were still feeling the effects of...

It’s a scene that resonates every autumn, set to the bright, beckoning notes of the huntsman’s horn and the music of hounds in full cry, played out against a backdrop of brilliantly colored leaves. Eager riders on neatly clipped mounts with...

In Part One last week, we talked about how New Jersey's hunt clubs are adapting, becoming more welcoming, even offering options for people who just want to walk and trot while following the hounds. Here is a link to that story. This week, we...

“Tally ho, ho, ho” a Christmas-spirited rider joyfully called out as a merry group on horseback set off to sing carols at three farms in Bedminster, N.J., today. The event was organized by the Somerset Hills Pony Club, which invited others,...

The new Channel System that went into effect this month for the 2023 season has nothing to do with TV. It’s an initiative for restructuring horse show competition licensing that takes some explaining, which is just what happened today during a...

The answer to the question above became even more obvious this evening, as world show jumping champion Henrik von Eckermann of Sweden won the Rolex International Jumping Riders Club Top Ten Final on the amazing King Edward. The excitement level was...

The Essex Equestrian Center in West Orange, N.J., where thousands of riders were introduced to horses over the decades, is closing this month. The stable, built in the early Twentieth Century, has been known by several names over the years,...

A true horsewoman with high standards and a generous soul, Judy Hofmann Richter always did whatever she could for those who crossed her path, whether they were people or animals. A great deal was lost when she died today, because, as her longtime...

All across the country, friends and families bond in several ways at Thanksgiving, whether it’s over football, watching the Macy’s parade or of course, sharing a turkey. But in New Jersey’s peaceful Somerset Hills, hundreds have adopted a different...

A horrific fall in a jump-off tragically put the brakes on professional rider Cassandra Kahle’s promising career last January. The following nine months have tested her, as she works to recover from a traumatic brain injury, focusing on therapy...

When you are spending time with your horses, it's quite possible you are being watched, whether you're showing, grooming, riding, training or engaged in some other activity. That's the way it is when everyone has access to a digital video camera,...

Irish rider Daniel Coyle got some good advice from his countryman, Conor Swail, before heading into the jump-off of the $250,000 Longines FEI World Cup at the Royal Winter Fair last night. After Daniel asked whether his main intent should involve...

El Conde told his rider, Nayel Nassar, he was up to the challenge of the $75,000 Centennial Cup speed class at the Royal Winter Fair in Toronto last night, even before the partnership entered the arena surrounded by a crowd that packed the stands...

The $138,000 Big Ben Challenge had an improbable winner last night, as international show jumping got under way in earnest at Toronto’s Royal Winter Fair. The field of 24 was star-studded, including 2021 Olympic individual gold medalist Ben Maher...

After a two-year pandemic-related absence, the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair finally is coming back to Toronto, where it will celebrate its hundredth anniversary in November. The finale of the North American Fall Indoor Circuit, the Royal has been...

The MARS Maryland 5-star at Fair Hill went from being a novelty to a real fixture last weekend in just its second edition, with riders enthusiastic about the venue and the opportunity it provides. Even so, as world number three-ranked eventer...