Didn’t supershorty stop riding while she concentrates on her career and getting a PhD? Seems like she is doing just the opposite of the OP which I think is a much smarter decision than life as a pro. And I believe she competed as an amateur although she did compete in the smaller Grand Prix classes against professionals. Certainly PNWjumper sounds like a good example based on her posts.
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My understanding from COTH is PNWjumper is a lifelong rider who schools, shows, and sells project horses at a professional skill level but remains an amateur by doing no training for other people.
The OP has only been riding 3 years. It is possible he is one of the fit athletic men with a talent for speed and risk, and will fast track in the jumpers with the right coaching. But fast track as a rider.
None of these athletic attributes necessarily mean he will fast track as a trainer or as an all around horseman.
Thats why I’m saying that if he wants to really focus on the jumping he needs to do so as a rider, picking up of course the training skills and horsemanship as he progresses.
Do I think some young men could make it to the big jumps much faster than seems fair to the rest of us? Yes.
Do I think that same young man could also do a great job of starting a green OTTB over fences after 3 years of lessons? No, I do not.
So if OP wants to go big, he needs to ride made horses for the first ten years. He needs to learn everything he can at his entry level barn. Then he needs to figure out the coaches in his area that go higher. And he will need his own horse or lease because there are no 3 foot 6 lesson horses.
At least around here, the Grand Prix trainers and riders are invisible until they come out of hiding for TBird or Spruce Meadows. The big rated shows tend to top out at 3 feet, and the barns taking loads of kids to these shows don’t go much above 2 foot 9. Two different worlds.
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I didn’t realize that PNWjumper is an ammy, thanks for pointing that out.
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Do you have a career where you make $200k+ and allows you to work remotely 50 weeks of the year?
Do you have access to a 7 figure trust fund?
Is your last name Gates, Jobs, or Bloomberg?
If the answer to any of those questions is no you’re going to have a much harder time. Our sport takes MASSIVE amounts of money to get to the top levels.
Do you have a SO? Do you want kids??? If the answer is yes you may want to reconsider. Like RAyers said it takes a massive amount of sacrifice. This isn’t a sport that you can show up, spend 2 hours at the barn, and go home when you’re competing at the top level.
TL;DR- it is possible? Of course. Anything is possible with the right amount of talent, dedication, and money. Is it likely? No.
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For OP, can you lease a horse that you can start jumping higher on? If you want to move yourself up, it will take a series of finished horses to step you up. Leasing is a better choice until you gain the skills for those bigger jumps and more complicated courses with less time allowed. You need to master multiple jump combinations and much greater spread fences.
By leasing one step at a time you can make slow but steady progress towards your eventual goal. If you or the horse get hurt or find you really don’t like jumping that big that fast? You can walk away or stop where you are without huge financial penalty.
You might also find you will outgrow some of your trainers as you step up. Be sure whoever you are with is capable of teaching you at your next level, do that by seeing how their other students at that level perform.
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Here’s where I’m at with horses:
I grew up on them. And as a teenager, I was good. I mean, really good.
Fast forward many years, and the horses had been piecemeal. A couple lessons here, short term jobs at barns there, nothing really stuck for want of a bad marriage and moving a lot, and my own issues to work through with how to be a complete person.
I’m in a good position now to do something really big with horses. I own my land, have an excellent trainer who rode upper levels for many years, have some stinking talented horses, a top notch vet and farrier, and some extra spending money. My kids are a little older, and I’ve got some free time.
But you know what really speaks to me? To be a farrier. It’s not glamorous, it’s not glitzy, it gets very little external recognition. You can get hurt very badly. But it’s something I really want to do, and I think I would be sad if I got old and looked back and had never done anything about it.
To ride at the very top, you need to decide if being “successful” or being good with horses is your ultimate goal. To be at the very top of the horse game, you’ll need to sacrifice everything to the cause. Home life, relationships, other careers and pastimes, and yes, even horses, to “being the best”. you’ll lame horses, and fry them out, and you’ll have no choice but to throw them aside and just keep going.
To me, it’s not worth it, but to you it might be. the nice thing about horses is you can decide if that’s someplace you want to go 10 years from now. The prep work from being a guy that used to ride sometimes to get there will more than likely take you that long.
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Realistically if you want to progress fast, you probably need to ride at least 5 days a week, and if possible more than one horse a day.
You can’t jump any horse 5 days a week so that’s where access to multiple horses is useful.
Young working students and assistant trainers often progress quickly when they are in a position to ride multiple horses a day, compared to having one horse on a set weekly regimen of jump work one day, flatting the next, hacking out, etc. Even if they only jump each horse twice a week they can schedule it so they themselves jump every day, maybe multiple horses in a day.
Thats not so likely for an ammie with a job. Also once you get to a certain competence level relative to your millieu you might start getting offered free rides. But up until that point you need to pay your way and pay your dues.
OP, where are you now in your riding progression?
I would suggest that you stick with your current level of lesson until you can ride a credible course at the two foot nine local jumpers level. Those classes can be huge and are often won by fireball large ponies or QH who can make tight turns, so I don’t necessarily say win the class :)! But some ribbons would be a good sign.
You will probably need to lease a horse to do this.
Once you are competing nicely at two foot nine and schooling at 3 foot courses in lessons, you can start asking your coach and others about the next step. By this point you will also no doubt be familiar with the roster of local players and the smaller teir of barns at the next level up. Your coach may well have their own coach they can bump you up to.
Some where in here you might want to spend your summer vacation doing a one week or two week boot camp at your coach’s barn, doing a lesson a day on different horses.
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“Hey guys the exercise was a little easy so I decided to level up”
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Yeah, PNW explained the situation on some discussion about going pro or staying ammie. Selling project horses doesn’t violate ammie status for USEF, so PNW made the choice to keep a good day job and I believe train and compete and sell OTTB. This being an example of someone who has pro level skills, but works within the rules to stay ammie.
Not too many ammies have that big a skill set (heck, neither do many low level pros either) so it was impressive to hear about this.
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THANK YOU FOR ALL THE AMAZING ANSWERS!
I wasn’t expecting such great feedback, you’ve given me some great food for thought.
I’m going to go through this one more time and then I’ll get back to you all with answers to your questions to help clarify where I am in terms of riding, finances, relationship status (lol), etc.
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That’s very interesting, and IMO the smart decision to keep the high paying day job and do horses on the side while legally maintaining her ammy status. Based on her posts she seems quite successful and has the best of both worlds. Something the OP might want to consider, especially if he has a successful non-horsey career that pays well.
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Glad to hear we are helpful!
Also the thing about horses is that it is one of those sports that has a competition stream, but also is just totally fun on its own, and can provide lots of challenges outside of a competition setting. Also you always keep learning.
Sports that only exist in a competition context include most track and field, and team and ball sports. You wouldn’t learn the skills of shot put or hitting a baseball without having competition or a game in mind.
Sports that are pure pleasure in movement include skiing, sailing, cycling, snow boarding, surfing, skate boarding, skating, kayaking. You can compete in these, but most people do it for the pure pleasure of the act, and may score their own personal bests solo with no audience.
Riding is in this category. If you haven’t yet, start getting out of the arena and doing some trail rides. Galloping outdoors or doing gnarly mountain trails or getting off into open rangeland are all exciting.
And if you have chops in dressage and jumping, have you ever considered 3 day eventing? You compete in arena jumping and dressage but the big deal in eventing is the cross country phase where you jump at speed over jumps in a huge field with hills, water, etc.
Even at the beginner levels it has a clear adrenalin rush. If you like the outdoors and tend to extreme sports, you might love it!
Plus the costs seem to be a bit lower than stadium jumping.
It’s called 3 day eventing because it used to be spread over 3 days, but now it can be condensed into 1 or 2 days at the schooling show levels, or they might offer a “two phase” just dressage and cross country.
Go watch if you can. Some venues let you go sit in the field next to the biggest jumps with a picnic lunch 
and watch the horses thunder by at 3 minute intervals.
If you love being in the back country but need a competition focus there is endurance riding or competigive trail.
Nothing to do with jumping.
But you are just starting out on your horse journey, and there are many many other ways to enjoy horses than just Grand Prix international show jumping.
And there are many many levels between where you are now, and the top rated world 30 riders who are invited to Longines. They have already been competing internationally for years to make the points to qualify.
Indeed, Longines as a kind of traveling international championships is harder competition than the Olympics.
Think about it. The Olympics pits the best athletes in each country against each other. For a country like Britain, Canada, Germany, the best jumpers in that country are probably in the world top 30. But for other countries, their best riders might be down at 100 in the world rankings. So Olympic competition is not the world’s best against each other. It is the world’s best against a bunch of also rans.
Indeed some of the jumps and eventing courses are modified to reflect that.
Canada until last week at least had the top show jumpers in the world ( they both retired) but the top dressage riders are down below 100 in the world rankings and get clobbered in the Olympics by Germany, Britain, the Netherlands, whose Olympic riders are in the world top ten rankings.
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I should add that the sport can be so incredibly enjoyable and fulfilling at the lower levels. Even if you decide your big Longines dreams aren’t attainable for whatever reason (finances, career, family, etc) you can still have a long and fulfilling riding life without it! There’s nothing like the feeling of winning a class on a horse you developed from scratch or the feeling of jumping around with a long time partner that you know like the back of your hand.
The vast majority of us will never reach the upper levels and we’re ok with that. At least I know I am, anyway. 
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Yes, and you actually have to be pretty good to let’s say win a two foot nine amateur jumpers class at a local rated show.
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She actually has a source in Europe for well bred young horses and has done very well importing them, finishing them out and has the contacts and marketing skill to get them sold.
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If I am not mistaken, I believe pnwjumper did give up the day job along the way and just does the horse thing now.
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I know a guy (former barnmate) who started riding as an adult in his early 30s or so. Within about 18 months, he was jumping the meter tens and having some success. That’s not the GP of course, but still pretty impressive. I think he does the meter thirty now.
He was able to move up quickly because he could afford (and had the connections) to lease a truly amateur friendly GP schoolmaster. The horse was fabulously competitive at these lower heights and was perfectly fine covering up the typical amateur mistakes when necessary. The rider is ballsy, fit, and had top notch coaching as well as a program that kept them both tuned up and ready to go. He was having a blast.
IIRC, the lease on the horse was about $6-7K a month, and the training program we were in at the time was $2K/mo. That is before you factor in any show fees, travel, shipping etc. The rider owns his own business and was able to arrange his schedule to take 3-ish lessons a week and show a lot. If you have those kinds of resources, my guess is you can go as far as you like.
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Yes, this is what I had in mind. Though didn’t know the price tag was that high on the lease! Though if a jumper lease is calculated at 1/3 market value of the horse then that’s just a $200,000 horse :). Couldn’t even buy a studio bachelor condo here for that money.
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Super cool horse - he was $350K to buy. But older, thus the lease option.
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I had a short stint as a pro and realized it was not the right choice for me, then reinstated as an amateur and showed for a few years before the vet school + PhD thing. Never jumped an international standard prix (do they still call them those? Jeez I’m out of the loop) but sure had a lot of fun jumping the 1.50s.
OP, it’s certainly doable to get to the top top level starting late, but it takes a lot of money, a lot of time, and a lot of luck. Even if you don’t get there, though, you can still have a ton of fun along the way!
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