Portraits by Carrie Grant
Nadine Schwartsman can hardly believe she’s living her American dream. After moving to the U.S. in 2007 as a 19-year-old looking for a way to kickstart her professional dressage career, she eventually found herself in Idaho, where she’s built her dream farm and business, Les Bois Dressage, and transformed the dressage scene in the area.
“It all happened pretty organically,” Nadine said. “There's that saying; if you build it, they will come. They came, and we were full within three months and expanded five times to add more stalls. I think a lot of people didn't even know what dressage was, or that it was an option. And then, once they were exposed to it, they were very interested in it—there was definitely interest, and there was a need. I let anybody come with any quality horse or any breed horse, and we just trained what we had, and I still do that to this day.”
While Nadine has big goals for her career with horses like Royal Flash R, Kelli Hajjar’s 15-year-old Rhinelander gelding who recently won the CDI3* Grand Prix and Grand Prix freestyle at the HITS Del Mar National in April, she says she likes to focus on what she has, not what she doesn’t.
“I have really lofty goals: I want to go to the Olympics; I want to represent the U.S.,” she said. “But I've never waited for a big sponsor to come along who may never come. I focus on the horses that I do have, and what that is, for the most part, is amateur horses and so that's been a really good win-win situation for me and the owners.”
Growing up in Germany outside of the small town of Trier near the Luxembourg border, Nadine was introduced to riding when her mother, who’d taken some lessons as a teenager, decided she wanted to get back into horses. She bought a Norwegian Fjord and an Icelandic horse for 500 Deutsch Mark, and the family kept them in a pasture down the road from their townhouse. Nadine rode in her first show on the Fjord when she was 5 and came in last place, but was hooked.
During that time, she and her family attended a stallion show and she was awed by a Grand Prix rider showing off a stallion in the ring. “I told my parents, ‘That's what I'm going to do when I grow up; I'm going to be a Grand Prix rider.’ They told me that's only for rich people, and we were very much not rich, and that I needed to adjust my expectations.”
Unthwarted, Nadine bought a 17-hand 6-year-old warmblood jumper with her communion money when she was 10, and he turned out to be a tough ride. That horse, Piccolo, made it through about Third Level in dressage and Nadine kept him until his death a few years ago.
When she decided to find help with Piccolo, she took him to Carla Symader, who, in a twist of fate, turned out to be the Grand Prix rider she saw at the stallion show. Nadine worked for Carla until she was 19 and says she shaped her career.
“Carla took me in, she let me work off lessons and ride time, and I started riding a lot of her horses,” she said. “She gave me the ride on her retired Grand Prix horse when I was 13, and I learned so much on him. I got to ride all her young horses—I got to do Juniors and Young Riders on her horse in Europe. She gave me a lot of opportunities and a really good education. I learned to really train horses in a classical and very compassionate way, and her number one priority was always the harmony; that was really ingrained, and I maintain that to this day. That's the most important thing to me: that there's a really good partnership with the horses, and I hope that shines through when I'm training and competing because that's more important to me than winning. I definitely got that from her.”
When she was 19, Carla organized “the opportunity of a lifetime” for Nadine with dressage breeder and owner Melanie Pai in Middleburg, Virginia. Melanie gave her the ride on several horses, including the Dutch Warmblood gelding Ikaros, whom she competed in the Under-25 Grand Prix division, then in open CDIs.
“He had been beautifully trained, so he was already doing pretty much all of the Grand Prix at 8 years old, and he was just a very, very special horse,” Nadine said. “I learned so much from him and have so many great memories, and I learned how to ride very correctly at that level. Even though I didn't know exactly what I was doing yet, he did. He was the perfect first Grand Prix horse.”
Nadine knew from the moment she landed in the U.S to work for Melanie that it was where she belonged. She stayed with Melanie until 2010, after a chance meeting changed her life.
While accepting some year-end awards from the U.S. Dressage Federation at their convention in December 2009 in Austin, Texas, Nadine met her future husband, Roman Schwartsman, at the hotel bar. He was an orthopedic surgeon in town for a cadaver lab. Four dates later, she decided to move to his home in Eagle, Idaho.
“I wasn't even exactly sure where Idaho was, but I packed up everything and drove across the country to live with a man who I'd only seen four times. I probably wouldn't recommend that, but it worked out really well for us, and it's been a great love story ever since!” she said.
While Nadine described her transition from Germany to horse-centric Middleburg as fairly seamless, she said her biggest culture shock came with the move to Idaho. On the East Coast, she’d had access to good training and shows and nice horses, but there wasn’t much dressage in the Gem State. For the first two years as she worked to establish herself, she traveled to eight barns a day on average, working from 5 a.m. until sometimes 10 p.m.
“There was not a single place that could house enough horses to run my business out of, and I just rode anything that needed to be ridden, including endurance horses and Thoroughbreds and Tennessee Walkers. So I came off of doing Grand Prix on the East Coast to riding all kinds of interesting horses here,” she said. “That was definitely character-building in the beginning!”
Nadine had never owned another horse aside from Piccolo, and once she and Roman bought an 80-acre farm and started building it out in 2011, she started buying foals since they were all she could afford. She trained them, competed some at the USEF Young and Developing Horse Dressage National Championships in Illinois, and sold them on to help fund her dream farm bit by bit.
She also started what she calls “ride sharing” with her clients, even at the highest levels, which allows her and her owners to all reach their goals.
“I don't have the exclusive ride on any of these horses, and I just developed a system that works really well for us. The owners have well-trained horses to ride who are tuned up and compete regularly, and I always have nice horses to show,” she said. “That may not work for everybody but it's been a good way for me to always have quality horses to ride without having to own them and without having to rely on a sponsor. I would love a sponsored horse, but that's difficult to find. So this is a really good compromise for me and my clients, and always mutually beneficial.”
Les Bois Dressage grew to 55 horses at one point with 16-hour days. With the mortgage paid off now, Nadine has downsized a bit to around 20 horses in her program and one personal horse. In 2012, Nadine and Roman welcomed their son, Nikolai, who is now more into sports and academics than horses, and in 2015, Nadine became a U.S. citizen.
Nadine is proud to have brought 10 horses to Grand Prix in her career. A memorable one is Fivestar, a Rhinelander gelding whom she brought from 4 years old to Grand Prix before he was sold as a 10-year-old to a para-dressage rider.
“I really loved him, and he taught me so much about developing a horse,” she said. “I'm a bit of a jockey—I think I've shown well over 100 horses at this point, and I always say my favorite horse is always the horse I'm currently sitting on. I love all of them.”
Royal Flash R, aka Roy, is the most special horse she’s ridden. She found him three years ago for his owner, Kelli Hajjar, as a Grand Prix schoolmaster. Roy captured their hearts immediately when they met him in Germany. While a little hotter than they were looking for, Roy has turned out to be a safe and reliable partner for Kelli, who shares the ride with Nadine.
“She encouraged me to keep campaigning him, and then she also rides him two to three days a week,” Nadine explained. “She got her USDF Gold Medal with him, which was a huge goal of hers. He made her dream come true, and he continues to make my dreams come true. He is our unicorn.”
The pair has been a fixture on the West Coast CDI scene, competing in the US Open of Dressage in California last year and picking up three CDI wins this season.
“We're hoping to compete in the Open again this year,” she said. “The last Grand Prix test I rode on him in Del Mar, I felt like I didn't even need any physical aids anymore, I could just think it and he did it, so he definitely exceeded all of our expectations and I am really excited to see where he's going to take Kelli and me. We're just having a blast with him.”
Nadine’s personally owned horse is Kain T, an 11-year-old Dutch Warmblood gelding, who’s completed one CDI1* Prix St. Georges and is on his way to Grand Prix. “He’s not as motivated as Roy, but he's coming along,” she said. “He can be a little bit naughty, but we're getting better and better, and I really believe in him. He's a very talented horse, and so I hope that he is going to be able to do the Grand Prix in maybe a year or two. Kain does things on his own schedule; I’m just along for the ride!”
While Nadine has built her dream farm and expanded dressage in her home state, she still enjoys working with top riders like her main coach, Sabine Schut-Kery, as well as Guenter Seidel and Steffen Peters. “It's just a really great community here,” she said. “I think that's my favorite part about showing on the West Coast: It's a really tight-knit community, everybody wants everyone else to succeed and everybody helps each other. The camaraderie is outstanding.”
She’s also enjoyed running three licensed dressage shows a year at her farm for the last 13 years but ended them in 2025 due to health issues. A facility a few minutes down the road has taken over hosting the shows, so dressage riders will continue to have options to show.
“I think that helped bring more dressage to Idaho and more interest. A lot of people have moved to Boise from California, Oregon, Washington and Colorado, and they all brought their horses with them,” she said. “We have a pretty good dressage scene now in Idaho; it has definitely grown significantly since I arrived in 2010.”
Last year, Nadine was diagnosed with a serious heart condition and wasn’t sure if she’d be able to ride anymore as issues popped up when she was exercising. As someone used to riding 15 horses a day, the news was a blow, and she’s dialed down the number of horses she sits on.
“It's definitely not going to go away, but I'm learning to manage the new normal and living with it, and also it gave me a really good appreciation for every day,” she said. “I think I've been much more conscious about living in the moment and really enjoying all the little things—enjoying my family, enjoying my horses. I teach a little bit more. I still ride quite a bit, but definitely not the 15 or 20 horses that I used to ride in a day, so now it's more like seven or eight.
“I have to be a little bit careful, and when I don't feel good, I have to just slow down and let my working student, Sonia, ride the horses that day,” Nadine shared. “I think those are her favorite days, when she gets seven or eight lessons in a row on nice FEI horses. Again, a win-win situation!”
Despite her new health challenges, Nadine is staying positive and looking forward to the US Open Final with Roy later this year, as well as showing more client horses and spending some time in Germany furthering her education and competing.
“I'm definitely dreaming about L.A. 2028, so that would be the big goal. Whether that happens or not, we'll see, but that's what gets me up at 5 every morning,” she said. “Love for the horse is what gets me out there every day, and that hasn't changed since I was 5. So, even when I can't ride, I still want to be around the horses every day and the riding is a bonus. I love riding, and I love competing but just being around the horses is what gives me the most happiness and peace. It’s just always been that way.”
Follow Nadine on Instagram and TikTok @nadineschwartsman, or visit lesboisdressage.com
Photos by Carrie Grant Photography, carriegrantphotography.com
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