Has anyone ever owned/ridden a horse trained by a famous rider? What were they like?

[DollyDoll]

So a completely random question but I was watching a Longines competition recently and as I watched Beezie Madden riding as amazing as always I briefly wondered if all her horses could be ridden the same or had something in common. Then I started to wonder if maybe all of Ben Mahers horses all had something in common, or Jessica Springsteens horses, etc etc.

So my question is, have you ever ridden or owned a famous riders horse and what were they like? Could you tell they were made/trained by that particular famous rider? Where they easy, soft, sensitive, slow, willing, etc

[Scribbler]

The rider and the trainer are not always the same person.

I would say that their horses at least in peak competition fitness are going to be pro rides.

It’s an interesting question, though. I bet the folks that could answer that are the former working students for a big trainer, if they got to lesson or catch ride or even hack out multiple horses.

My coaches schooled horses all ride similarly in terms of balance and aids, despite huge differences in personality.

[DollyDoll]

Oh yeah 100% but usually, from what I’ve come to understand (correct me if i’m wrong) but every horse any rider rides ends up with something from that rider which is why I was wondering if maybe a famous riders horses all share something in common! Like all my trainers horses tend to have the same ‘mouth’ so to speak so I wondered if that was the case for most famous riders.

I’m dying to know to be honest XD

[Scribbler]

The trainer is more influential than the rider. If the trainer is also the coach then the rider learns to ride like the trainer.

All the top riders have highly involved trainers and coaches. The percentage of real training done by the trainer versus the rider is going to vary by individual case. Some riders are really trainers, others rely more on their trainers especially earlier in their career.

Also it’s going to depend on how long a horse has been in a specific program. Some folks buy and sell horses regularly, others start horses and keep them for their full careers.

I would expect all horses from a given training program to have some similarity, but I think the trainer is a bigger factor than the rider.

[Janet]

The horse I had and rode as a junior (in the 1960s), Golden Rocket, was trained and ridden, as a youngster, by Mike Page. But I can’t tell if there were any “special” characteristics from Mike Page. He was 12 years old when my parents bought him, and had spent most of his life as a “superior” school horse, as well as competing in show jumping.

Background

Before the USET moved to Hamilton Farm in Gladstone, NJ in 1961, the USET was based at Sunnyfield Farm in Bedford NY. Mrs McIntosh, who owned Sunnyfield, was an A&P heiress, and an early breeder of Quarter Horses , and QH xTB, specifically for dressage and jumping. She employed European trainers, at lest one of whom was from the Spanish Riding School. Her daughter, Karen McIntosh (later Collins) competed on the US Dressage teams in the 1959 Pan Am Games, and the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games.

Part of the program for the USET riders training at Sunnyfield was that they trained the youngstock on the farm, and Rocket was assigned to Mike Page for training.

Both before and after the USET being on the farm, Sunnyfield ran and extensive lesson program, aligned with Pony Club. Each rider was assigned a specific horse, which they rode, in and out of lessons, several times a week, and also rode in horse shows and Pony Club Rallies. The horses got regular training from the instructors. So Mike Page wasn’t the only rider who contributed to Rocket’s training.

Many decades later (2000s) I took a clinic with Mike Page, and mentioned that I had been told he trained Rocket. He remembered Rocket, but did not have any specific anecdotes to share.

Denis Glaccum (former organizer at Plantation Field) was also training with the Three Day Event Team at Sunnyfield, and remembered riding Rocket.

[TheDBYC]

Sort of. I leased a dressage horse that had received a good portion (but not all) of his training from an internationally known GP rider/trainer. I don’t know enough about this trainer & their personal horses to be able to say if the horse had any stylistic traits unique to that trainer. He was (obviously) extremely well-schooled & very correct & a ridiculously fancy mover. He absolutely loved his job, which I think trainer deserves at least partial credit for as the horse had been highly reactive in every other discipline he’d been tried at.

We once looked at a horse that belonged to a family member of a show jumper that I’d describe as maybe not top tier famous but sought after as a trainer by other riders at the highest level of the sport. Show jumper had done much of the training on the horse & had ridden it in competition numerous times. My teenager test rode the horse, not me. Horse was just impeccably tuned, I guess is the way to describe it. If you need “out for blood take no prisoners” raw power & aggression, you got it. If you realized you needed ridability back in a hurry coming off a 1.40m line, you got it. (With voice aids if you wanted, even.) Show jumpers elementary school aged child could safely ride this horse despite it’s large size.

This trainer rides other people’s horses and not their own about 99 times out of 100. Having had the opportunity to watch them ride fairly often, I would say that the sensitivity, ridability, and quiet confidence of this horse are basic tenants of this trainer’s style, yes.

[CHT]

I wonder too, if big name riders are more choosy as to what they ride, and pick horses of a similar type, so their horses would have some consistency in how they go.

The local BNT’s I used to work/ride for, had lower budgets for their own horses, and a wide range of budgets for their clients horses, so their horses lacked much consistency in type, so needed a variety of ride types.

[Victorious]

I love this description and love this trainer without even knowing who they are!!!

[vxf111]

There is a (mostly) dressage trainer in GA named Gigi Nutter. You can tell a horse she’s made up from a mile away. BUTTER SOFT and correct in every way. Always happy to come out and work. I don’t know how she does it but she can MAKE UP A HORSE.

[Spudsmyguy]

When I worked for him I used to ride some of Barney Ward’s horses when he was out of town (okayed by him) at a show. I don’t recall them having to be ridden a certain way but it was mostly just hacking on the flat. I even rode (once) McLain’s small pony Dinah Dan, that’s how long ago this was, McLain was 8 at the time.

[SuzieQNutter]

Horses are a product of their rider.

If you have a person who sells their horse every 3 years because it does this or that. The next horse is sold 3 years on for doing the same this and that because it is actually the rider who has taught the horse to do this and that. If they have more than one horse they will also do this and that.

The rider thinks they can ride and doesn’t need lessons.

If a good rider all the horses they ride will be well trained horses, and the rider is probably still having lessons. Even Olympic riders have lessons.

[Bluey]

@SuzieQNutter

Horses are a product of their rider.

If you have a person who sells their horse every 3 years because it does this or that. The next horse is sold 3 years on for doing the same this and that because it is actually the rider who has taught the horse to do this and that. If they have more than one horse they will also do this and that.

The rider thinks they can ride and doesn’t need lessons.

If a good rider all the horses they ride will be well trained horses, and the rider is probably still having lessons. Even Olympic riders have lessons.

I cringe every time I hear someone brag they never had a lesson or they train their own horse/dog/gerbil.

Classic cases of not knowing what they don’t know and won’t learn either.

Working for BNTs, riding their horses, starting and training the horses they would evaluate all along and pick thru to make top horses, even those BNTs were continuously asking and expecting us to know very much about each horse and discuss how to proceed with them.

Riding in the same arena with these BNTs, they would ask us to watch and let them know how their horse was going and would tell us about the horse we were riding.

Now, that was before videos, maybe today they can go by videos and see there so much more than you can tell when you are riding a horse.

In top stables, attention to all details is what makes one consistently successful, everything running like clockwork, no surprises, all hands on deck.

Those are called professionally trained horses and for many of those, you really have a lovely horse to handle and ride, without holes in it’s education and some that will show you the holes in your education also.

Then, we have to remember that everyone was a beginner at one time.
What makes a difference between a fair rider and a really good one is keeping in mind how much is there to learn, that every horse is one more opportunity to learn and the willingness to always keep learning.

[No1]

I’ve ridden several horses trained by different famous riders. They were all horses. Some of them were spooky, some of them were hot, some of them were quiet, some of them were steady. One had a really hard mouth, while others ridden by the same person did not, one liked to hide behind the bit when given the chance while others ridden by the same person didn’t. One I could jump bridle-less while it never would have occurred to me to even get on others ridden by the same person without a bridle.

[Trekkie]

Horses have different ways of responding to
aids, moving and behaving based on differences in personality, sensitivity, intelligence, conformation, athleticism and handling. They are all individuals and are trained and ridden as such by most experienced rider/trainers. They mature at different rates physically and mentally and to generalize that they would all go a certain way based on a single rider or trainer seems a bit naive.

[DollyDoll]

I do want to add to this post that I was chatting to my trainer about this post and wondered if he himself had ever worked with any top rider horses and he suddenly said that he used to ride Alberto Michans horses and used to actually get along really well with him. I was shocked XD

But he told me that I was right in his opinion because all of Alberto Michans horses tended to be a bit on the hotter end, more sensitive, but could come back quickly because of their sensitive mouths. He did warn me though that sometimes riders tend to go to the same kind of horse because they enjoy that kind of horse and they fit well with them so though sometimes a rider tends to make all his horses similar it can also be that that the rider just gravitates and likes a certain type of horse more.

[MrsFitzDarcy_amp_Feliks]

I pet Rox Dene once. LOL.

[aekowner]

Intense. Every day is a clinic. Some days I would go home and just go to bed.

One thing that stood out to me was that the focus is ON THE HORSE and NOT ON YOU. If you didn’t know how to ride all ready, and like really ride, it was going to be very, very difficult. The exercises we were doing were 20x harder than anything we would ever do at the shows and would leave you gasping for air even when the jumps were set at 2 feet.

The horses were sharper, fitter and more athletic than any I have ever experienced anywhere else.

It was almost a relief to go to shows. It felt so easy and you felt more confident and prepared and you would win almost everything unless you had another top rider or rider-trained-by-top-rider in your class.

This is more of a reflection on training with a top rider as opposed to riding their horses. But when I brought my horse there he improved SIGNIFICANTLY. We were actually all shocked at the progress he made within 4 months. I think the type of training really makes the horse a lot of the time. Of course you will always have some hotter horses and more competitive horses that do it better, which is what people that can pay a lot of money like. But there are plenty of unexpected success stories due to the training at top barns.

[Mander]

@CHT

I wonder too, if big name riders are more choosy as to what they ride, and pick horses of a similar type, so their horses would have some consistency in how they go.

I think this is something that is definitely dependent on where the riders are in their career and the financial situation. I recall Richard Spooner mentioning in a clinic once that early in his career, he didn’t have much choice as to which horses he’d take on or not, which shows he went to, how hard he pushed his horses, etc. - he needed to pay the bills. At this point in his career though he has SO much more freedom to pick and choose which projects he wants or doesn’t want, how fast or slow he can bring each horse along, which shows he goes to, and so on because he’s got enough of a reputation that he’s probably got people lined up out his door with horses they’d like him to bring along. And if he doesn’t have horses to train, there’s another separate (and probably even longer) line of people wanting to ride in clinics with him. I’ve heard similar things from other riders as well.

[Pennywell_Bay]

I bought 2 horses (a few years apart) from a GP rider/trainer almost the same description as @TheDBYC stated in her post.

While one is much more talented- they are both very similar trained- which is funny to me because they are so different in attitude and personalities but his style clearly works. I watch his kids ride horses he has brought along and have seen clients ride and buy horses he has either made, re-trained or kind of both and most seem to be very similar.

The 2 I own, both have giant strides but are just has happy “doing the add” and itty bitty pony strides or as the trainer says “go get it”. I don’t know what it is - I lean to think it is the strong dressage foundation he puts on them?

What is funny is from free jumping them when they are young- he has this whistle when he wants them to pick up speed. In Ocala when I was going at a pace not conducive to the height of the jumps- he whistled that whistle and the horse just went to autopilot, you see him accelerate the 4 strides to get in and down the line. I used to think the whistle was for the clients and kids- but he told me he trains the horses like that. Anyway- I got tons of giggles out of watching the video, hearing his whistle then hearing my semi-R rated language over the jump

[widge]

I had a polo pony bred/owned/played(?) by Tommy Lee Jones. Wasn’t able to quickly identify his handicap but the mare was sweet enough to take care of high school me
OP said famous rider, not great rider