FOR HORSE PEOPLE • ABOUT HORSE PEOPLE
SIDELINES NOVEMBER 2013 25
Jamie helped bring home the team bronze in dressage at the
2013 NAJYC.
really nervous,” she said. “I was going to have to step away
from eventing for a while to focus on dressage. He thought it
was a great idea.”
Jamie wanted to qualify her Thoroughbred and former event
horse, Wild Tiger (Tigger), in dressage. “It was an opportunity I
had to take if I wanted to keep riding,” she said.
She would have to qualify in six shows to make the NAJYRC
team. She asked dressage trainer Diane Ritz from Monroe,
North Carolina to teach her everything she could in the short
time frame.
Just two weeks before the championships, Jamie received
the call to say she’d made the team. She had succeeded and
earned a team bronze medal. “I was so proud of him,” she said.
“It was his first time at that level as a dressage horse.”
Future Plans
Nicole plans to continue working hard to move up to
intermediate and qualify for the NAJYRC 2* next year. She’s
also going to begin riding Lexi in dressage. “Lexi is half-sister
to Carl Hester’s Utopia,” she said. “She’s a beautiful horse.
I’ve been really intrigued by Jamie’s experience and all she’s
learned in dressage. This is my opportunity with Lexi. I had high
hopes for her – and still do.”
Jamie is in her freshman year at Queens University in
Charlotte, North Carolina, and continues to ride. She’ll show
Tigger at dressage regionals and will take the spring semester
off from school to train from the family’s farm near Ocala,
Florida. She has two event horses she’ll be showing and is
adamant, “I am not done with dressage. I’ve enjoyed it and I
want to do a true freestyle.”
About the writer: Sheryl Kursar is a communications, public relations and
nonprofit consultant living in Charlotte, North Carolina. She has ridden most of
her life and enjoys the company of her two Thoroughbreds, Aurora and Jackson.
She is active with local animal rescue groups and serves on the board of the
Equestrian Aid Foundation, which assists horse people who are catastrophically
injured or ill.
