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"  The first thing you will want to consider about any horse sport is that the basic item of equipment weighs more than half a ton, has a biting end and a kicking one, and can handily dispatch you to your maker with a well-aimed hoof. This seldom happens, of course. But it is worth keeping in mind, generally and perhaps particularly in an Olympics season, because of all the athletes from all the countries gathered in London this summer, equestrians seem least likely to attract the degree of admiration and awe they deserve \u2014 except, possibly, from My Pretty Pony types, cable insomniacs tuned to the games at 4 a.m., and me. It is sad but true. To the uninitiated and most prime-time viewers, horse sports are roughly on a par with curling for sheer mystifying oddity. Yet while any boob can grasp the basic physics of shuttling a kettle-like disk down an ice lane, it takes work to unravel the balletic complexities of, say, dressage, with its slo-mo pacing and such arcane requirements as flying changes and turn-on-the-haunches. Or the hell-for-leather rigors of three-day eventing, a hardy and perilous discipline with origins in the cavalry. Or the fine points of show jumping, an activity the average spectator might be forgiven for thinking of less as a test of athletic prowess than as an excuse to dress like someone in a Ralph Lauren ad.  Because the gear worn by the humans participating in certain horse sports on view at the Olympics \u2014 swallowtail coats, top hats, calf-hugging boots of burnished leather \u2014 looks tony and elitist, it&amp;#039;s easy to overlook the reality that the competitors are serious and occasionally even death-defying athletes. There&amp;#039;s something else that gets in the way of crediting their skills and daring: Many are mere girls. In no other individual event at the games do members of both sexes vie as equals, and in few anywhere can the competitors&amp;#039; ages span generations. Although final selections for berths on the United States teams had yet to be made at this writing, by May, Reed Kessler, a 17-year-old originally from Armonk, New York, and now residing in Lexington, Kentucky, had claimed both first and fifth place on the Olympics&amp;#039; long list for American show jumpers with her horses Cylana and Mika. At the 2012 U.S. National Show Jumping Championship, held in Wellington, Florida, Kessler tied seasoned rider and Olympic hopeful Margie Engle, who is 53. The minimum age at which riders are permitted to jump at Olympic heights \u2014 over five feet \u2014 is 18. Competitors must reach that age at some point during the year the Olympics are held. Kessler&amp;#039;s 18th birthday falls 18 days before the start of the 2012 Olympic Games, whose equestrian phase begins on July 28. &amp;quot;These kids riding now are courageous; they want to get out of the comfort zone and compete and push the envelope,&amp;quot; says Katie Monahan-Prudent, a renowned international show jumper and Kessler&amp;#039;s coach. She was referring to the crop of young women \u2014 many of them pictured here \u2014 who are now pushing into the highest ranks of horse sports. &amp;quot;A lot of them are growing up with a lot of money,&amp;quot; Monahan-Prudent says. &amp;quot;But it takes not only money. It takes a certain type of person who wants to rise above.&amp;quot; That claim can be taken literally. The obstacles toward which riders like Zara Phillips, who is the daughter of HRH Princess Anne and 14th in the line of succession to the British throne, find themselves galloping during international three-day eventing competitions might include massive suspended log jumps, yawning ditches justly termed coffins, and deceptive upright brush hedges that to horse and rider alike appear all but impenetrable. And while show jumpers guide their mounts around tidy arenas rather than miles-long cross-country courses, the obstacles they face are just as daunting. Take an oxer, for instance, a spread fence that at the highest levels of show jumping competition can be five feet, three inches in height and more than six-foot-five across, roughly the dimensions of a Jeep Grand Cherokee. Even &amp;quot;the least of the best among the young riders today is excellent,&amp;quot; says George Morris, chef d&amp;#039;equipe for the United States Equestrian Foundation and for decades a ubiquitous presence as a show jumping trainer and coach. He means an impressive field of young amateurs like Kessler, or Jessica Springsteen, the Boss&amp;#039;s daughter, or Caitlin Ziegler, from Mequon, Wisconsin, who made a kind of equestrian history last July, when she became the youngest rider ever to win an International Equestrian Federation event, in the International Ring at Spruce Meadows in Calgary, Canada. She was 16 at the time. Later that month Ziegler claimed victory over 70 other entrants in the Prix Sports Equestres in Chantilly, France, where her closest competition was Nicolas Delmotte, a Frenchman twice her age. She beat him with a strategy that smacked of X Games bravura, angling over jumps to save time and taking out strides as she vaulted across huge fences aboard Butragenia, her 10-year-old Belgian Warmblood mare. &amp;quot;It really takes tremendous motivation,&amp;quot; says Monahan-Prudent, a brilliant athlete who attributes her own rise through the equestrian ranks \u2014 when she turned pro she was not yet 20 \u2014 equally to passion and necessity. &amp;quot;When I was Reed&amp;#039;s age, I didn&amp;#039;t have money, so I turned professional and rode for many different barns,&amp;quot; she says. Like most utility riders of her era \u2014 she is now in her fifties \u2014 Monahan-Prudent earned her stripes riding horses that were occasionally faultless but more often ornery or balky or so green they spooked at shadows. &amp;quot;I used to say that some days the only time my feet touched ground was to trade horses,&amp;quot; she says. Many of the young women athletes now on the circuit are not burdened with making a living \u2014 people like Charlotte Casiraghi, the daughter of Princess Caroline of Monaco and the current face of Gucci (the label has designed equestrian collections exclusively for her), or Athina Onassis Roussel, the shipping heiress married to a top Brazilian show jumper, or Georgina Bloomberg, whose billionaire father happens to run a little city on the Hudson. They can handily manage the six- and sometimes seven-figure sums required to obtain the world&amp;#039;s most talented horseflesh (many riders favor Warmblood breeds, though the only requirement, as one rider says, is &amp;quot;a horse that can jump high&amp;quot;) and to campaign their mounts on an international circuit. &amp;quot;Sure, a lot of kids are growing up with a lot of money and ride only the best horses money can buy,&amp;quot; Monahan-Prudent says. &amp;quot;And I try to make life a little difficult for them.&amp;quot; That young women athletes from the top economic stratum might also be tough and talented still surprises some people, says Cornelia Guest, a former competitive show jumper and scion of an Old Money clan (her father was the 10-goal polo legend Winston F.C. Guest, and her mother the best-dressed socialite C.Z.) whose type once dominated many equestrian sports. But it shouldn&amp;#039;t. &amp;quot;Not all kids with a lot of money have the gift or the guts,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;You can&amp;#039;t jump more clean rounds than anybody else at 17 and fake it. If you don&amp;#039;t really know the horse end of things, you&amp;#039;re going to wind up on your ass.&amp;quot; You cannot, in other words, do as 18-year-old Katie Dinan did last January at Wellington, and she beat some of the most recognizable names on the international show jumping circuit \u2014 Beezie Madden, Nick Skelton, and Cian O&amp;#039;Connor \u2014 in a 15-horse jump-off in your first year out of the juniors, without true horsemanship and grit. &amp;quot;This isn&amp;#039;t about being push-button at all,&amp;quot; guest says, countering an often-heard critique of rich-girl riders that they saddle million-dollar mounts and turn the ignition key. &amp;quot;These kids have a lot of talent and courage. And they have to, given the international competition.&amp;quot; Whether or not comers from this new generation make headlines at this year&amp;#039;s Olympics, theirs will unquestionably be the names to watch. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/sporting/a842/famous-equestrians/>