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Horse World Profiles

Harley Brown's Got All the Right Moves
By Erin Gilmore | Sidelines Magazine, May 2011

It doesn't take a stretch of the mind to discover why Australian native Harley Brown settled along the coast of Central California eight years ago. Any rider would kill for a thriving business, access to both ends of the state, and an ocean view, to boot.

But when Harley moved to San Luis Obispo, CA from his native Melbourne, it was simply because of a friendly connection in the middle-California, college town. Little did he know that he'd raise a family there, fill a barn, and become one of the West Coast's top grand prix riders...

Will Simpson and Nicole Shainian-Simpson
By Erin Gilmore | Sidelines Magazine, May 2011

To find out if the Simpson family is grounded, just ask Will where he keeps his Olympic medal.

He has to think for a minute before admitting that it's somewhere amongst the family collection of awards hanging from his bedpost. That the medal is a symbol of the most significant win of his career to date doesn't give it special distinction among other trinkets. A victory is a victory, and in the Simpson family, awards are appreciated, not fawned over...

Oded Shimoni Understands What Makes Horses And Riders Tick
This Israeli Grand Prix dressage rider has accumulated many accolades in the arena, but he shines just as brightly from the sidelines in his role of trainer to the trainers.
Erin Gilmore | The Chronicle of the Horse, April 25, 2011

His sits back and lets his eyes follow a student while he explains it. "Sometimes, it is more difficult teaching at a top level, because it is very difficult to change something in a top rider. Especially an older rider."
Oded Shimoni pauses, projects his voice across the vast indoor and tosses encouraging words like spare change to the event rider trotting across the diagonal...

Weston Gracida
A Name of His Own
By Erin Gilmore | Sidelines Magazine, April 2011

There are only a few more minutes of sunlight left in the day, but at the end of a long, sandy road in South Florida, Weston Gracida is still riding. Every morning he pulls on his boots and crosses the 20 yards that separate ranch house and barn, where the attention of 22 polo ponies, at least one polo game, and a pair of grooms await him. And every day, he rides...

Mark Bellissimo: Master of the Universe
By Erin Gilmore | Sidelines Magazine, March 2011

To Mark Bellissimo, the Palm Beach International Equestrian Center is a living, breathing organ. The CEO of Equestrian Sport Productions sees the country's largest show jumping competition venue as a beating heart, steadily pumping life into the communities and businesses that surround it. During high season in Wellington, Florida, the PBIEC is indeed the center of life in a humming equestrian city. The venue is host to the FTI Winter Equestrian Festival, which is known simply as WEF. For ten weeks every winter, arteries leading towards and away from WEF...

Ashley Herman-Griffin: The Young Gun
By Erin Gilmore | Sidelines Magazine, March 2011

All season long, she barely sat still. Wine glasses in the VIP tent were checked and turned just so. Ribbons at the in gate needed counting, there were riders to greet and banners to straighten. With her long brown hair swinging under a logo cap and her hand constantly flickering down to the two-way radio on her belt, 29-year-old Ashley Herman-Griffin was impossible to miss. She is manager et al of the Sonoma Horse Park, which debuted to the Northern California hunter/jumper industry with a bang last year, its first full season...

Life As She Knows It: Courtney King-Dye
by Erin Gilmore | Sidelines Magazine, February 2011

There was the before, and then there was the after. Before, she basked in the thrill of cantering down centerline at the Olympic Games. After, it was a thrill to move her own feet, one in front of the other. Before, she rode half a dozen elite horses per day. After, climbing atop a 22-year-old therapy horse was a task worth celebrating. Before, she left her helmet in the tack room. And after . . . well, we all know the answer to that...

"Introducing" Taizo Sugitani
WEG Veteran Leads Japanese Show Jumpers
by Erin Gilmore | Sidelines Magazine, December 2010

In early October, Japanese show jumper Taizo Sugitani competed in Kentucky at the World Equestrian Games, posting his best WEG finish ever when he tied for 5th in the individual final. By the following Monday, he was in Belgium at a show near Antwerp, and a week later he landed in Japan to compete in a World Cup class.

Competing on three continents in three weeks is an unusual show schedule for most riders (at least he wasn’t riding the same horse!) But for Taizo, who has competed in every Olympics since Atlanta in 1996, and every World Equestrian Games since The Hague in 1994, show jumping is truly a worldwide sport...

The Rapid Ascent of Pablo Barrios
by Erin Gilmore | Sidelines Magazine, July 2010

On one of the last cool spring evenings of the year, Pablo Barrios was once again the man of the hour. He’d just jumped over 7 feet to win a $25,000 Puissance/High Jump class, held in a circus-like atmosphere before a rap concert at the Stadium at the Palm Beach International Equestrian Center. Who knows what the crowd of 6,000 (mostly non-horse people) that had flocked to the stadium for the concert must have thought about the pre-show competition and the deeply tanned, smiling man who couldn’t help but appear diminutive next to the huge puissance wall, even when sitting on his horse. But for anyone who’d been paying even the slightest bit of attention to show jumping over the past four months, Pablo Barrios was already a household name...

In the Eyes of Rodrigo Pessoa
by Erin Gilmore | Sidelines Magazine, June 2010

If Rodrigo Pessoa’s eyes are a reflection of his actions, it is no wonder he looks so tired. They constantly flick about, landing on a horse as it jumps a fence, glancing toward a person he knows, to the glass of water in front of him, then briefly staring into space before starting the process again. Focus might be difficult to come by as he sits down for an interview, but a man so popular, so busy and so widely admired undeniably has a lot on his mind...

The Many Horses of Anne Kursinski
by Erin Gilmore | Sidelines Magazine, April 2010

Anne Kursinski’s face still lights up with all the enthusiasm of a rookie when she describes her horses, her teaching, and her life. It’s easy to discover how one of show jumping’s most successful athletes got that way; spend five minutes with Anne and her passion for the sport infects...

McLain Ward: Steady As He Goes
by Erin Gilmore | Sidelines Magazine, March 2010

McLain Ward is late. I’m waiting for him at one end of his modest barn outside the WEF showgrounds in Wellington, Florida. Around me his staff smoothly go about their business; moving supplies, washing legs. Dogs mill about at knee level, Sapphire and her full brother stare expectantly down the aisle, and the winter wind ruffles a dozen or so ribbons hanging above the tackroom doorway...

Five Questions for John French
by Erin Gilmore | Sidelines Magazine, October 2009

John French was effectively crowned king of all that is hunters at the inaugural USHJA ASG/Software Solutions International Hunter Derby at the Kentucky Horse Park in August. With the incredible 12-year-old grey gelding Rumba (owned by Tom and Stacey Siebel’s Mountain Home Farm) John led the finals from beginning to end, wowing the crowd with his smoothness, accuracy and style over a course that was dubbed “the grand prix of hunters...”

Rachel Yorke
Making Her Own Luck
by Erin Gilmore | Sidelines Magazine, August 2009

Luck split evenly for Rachel Yorke on the day three summers ago when she fell from her horse in the worst of ways. The wrong combination of balance and timing sent her catapulting through the air to land in the path of her jumping horse; bad luck any way you look at it. But although Rachel had the misfortune to fall directly where her horse would place his hoof, she is extremely lucky that her horse’s shoe struck her head in the spot it did. Had it been just a millimeter up or down in either direction, it’s a fairly certain fact that she would have lost much more than months from her riding career...

Catching Up With Gina Miles
After the Olympics
by Erin Gilmore | Sidelines Magazine, May 2009

Gina Miles is a very busy woman these days. The Olympic medalist has seen her life ratchet to high speed in the months after the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, where she logged the best American eventing performance of the games and earned an individual silver medal. Her free time now runs at a premium. She is accessible by phone only during the long drives to or from her farm, which lies hours away from major cities in the small town of Atascadero, California. As she describes how her life has changed since last summer, she speaks with the breathless style of someone who knows how to make the most of every minute...

Karl Cook
The West Coast’s Hottest Young Rider Gains Momentum
by Erin Gilmore | Sidelines Magazine, October 2008

There couldn’t possibly have been a better outcome for Zone 10 at this year’s North American Young Riders Championships, held the first weekend of August at the Colorado Horse Park in Parker City, Colorado. Placing first in team competition and claiming all three individual medals, the West Coast Young Riders simply dominated competition from beginning to end...