By Beth Rasin
Portraits by Melissa Fuller
A very young Brian Cournane tugged and tugged at the rope until it finally released. His parents, who ran a business guiding rides near their Irish seaside village, had left him sitting on a trusty donkey, which was tied to a post. But Brian had worked his way free, turned the donkey’s head, and was on his way down the road.
It was the first of many times Brian would seize an opportunity. Soon, his father was taking him pony racing, picking him up at school on Friday afternoons and, unbeknownst to Brian’s mother, heading to the races.
By high school, Brian was getting more serious about riding, having watched show jumping on television. A local rider gave him lessons in exchange for mucking out stalls, but, Brian said, there weren’t as many opportunities in the sport as there are now. “The only show in town was trying to get into the Army Equitation School,” he said. “We didn’t have money for me to buy proper horses, but they’d teach you, give you horses and the opportunity to compete.”
The opportunity was a long shot; more than 360 people applied, and two were accepted. “To get in was incredible. It wasn’t because I was good rider,” he added with a laugh. “In the interview process they primarily look for people with good leadership qualities and who will make good army officers, as the attrition rate in the equitation school is high. Most people don’t last a year and are transferred to an infantry unit in the regular army.”
He spent two years in cadet school, which he said is similar to the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, with proper military training. Then he was sent to the Army Equitation School, in Dublin, a unit dedicated to buying Irish horses and competing them to the championship level. “It’s their mission to promote Ireland and the Irish horse,” he said.
He would spend 12 years with the equitation school, although the experience wasn’t exactly what he’d envisioned. “At the time they had a lot of event horses in the school, and they were looking for someone to ride them,” he said. “I was the most junior officer and was given the task to ride them—under duress, it has to be said.”
But Brian learned a lot from his years eventing at what’s now the FEI five-star level. “To be a really good event rider, you have to be a complete horseman,” he said. “You do so much work to get them fit and sound, learn a lot of horse management and conditioning, and I got a really solid base of dressage training. It stood me in good stead with show jumping. It also turned into the best thing that ever happened to me because I met my wife through eventing.”
Red, White and Blue
Brian met Jules (née Stiller) in 2008 when she was part of U.S. high performance eventing and based in England to train with Capt. Mark Phillips. Five years later, they began dating and were married in 2014. With Jules’ parents based in Palm Beach, Florida, the Wellington area became the ideal location for the Cournanes to both raise a family and allow Brian to compete all winter out of his Glenbeigh Farm. They arrived in 2016, and Brian, who’d become a captain and showed under the title, was firmly back in the show jumping world where he’d always wanted to be.
By 2022, Brian had decided to ride for the U.S. team. “My family is American; I live in America, and I’m an American citizen,” he said. “I had some good success with the Irish team, but I wasn’t particularly happy with the transparency of the selection procedures. With the U.S. team, there’s so much transparency. It’s all off the rankings list. Your points are based on your results, and your placing on the list determines if you get selected. Being in the military for so long, I like that black and white.”
His first appearance on the U.S. team came in September of 2023, on the Nations Cup team at Spruce Meadows in Calgary, Alberta. “It was great right from the start,” he said. “Chef d’Equipe Robert Ridland was easy to deal with; we had wonderful support—there was a physio and vet there. It was a great experience.”
While his winters are spent in Florida, Brian enjoys most of the summer at Spruce Meadows, another location where he can settle with his family for a few months and still compete against the best in the world. “It’s difficult,” he said. “I struggle with balancing family with the demands of the sport because I spend so much time away from my family, but I’ve got a good balance here in the U.S. It’s easier than it would be in Europe.”
Jules said Brian’s devotion to the sport is all-encompassing. “It’s pretty much all he thinks about or does,” she said. “He reads books about training horses. Occasionally he’s reading about cars, but it’s mostly horses. I think that’s why anyone chooses to do horses professionally, because you have to love horses and training horses and riding horses, and there’s always a new idea or something you could do better, and he really embraces that.”
He also hasn’t left that military background behind him. “He’s so organized. He likes everything so organized and clean, and sometimes it’s hard because I did not join the army,” Jules said with a laugh. “He’s methodical about everything, which in the end is really important.”
But it’s his partnership with the horses that she really notices. “He really loves the horses and is possessive of them; he doesn’t like anyone else to ride them,” Jules said. “Not even for a hack, he doesn’t like me to ride them.”
She thinks that stems from what she called his eventing mindset. “He feels it’s really important to be the one hacking them even if it’s just walking, and he has to get up earlier or be in the barn later. It’s really a priority that he’s the one with the horses, checking their legs, being responsible for the horses he rides himself. He even does night check himself a lot, which sometimes drives the staff crazy,” she added with a laugh.
Jules, who’s been recovering from an injury, plans to return to jumping and compete as an amateur up to CSI3*, and their daughter Saoirse, 6, shows in the Children’s division and trains with Charlie Moorcroft. Their 7-year-old son, Bob, enjoys golf and tennis and has inherited his father’s abilities not in the saddle but on the dance floor. “He heard Brian was a competitive dancer when he was young,” Jules said, laughing. “He grew up doing competitive Irish dancing and was talking about how he’d won a lot of trophies dancing when he was younger. Our son heard that and wanted to go dancing and win trophies. There’s nowhere to do Irish dancing, so he’s doing ballroom and tap, and he’s really serious about it, which is adorable.”
Devotion to the Sport and the Horse
As Brian enters the new year, his most immediate goal is to win a CSI5* Grand Prix. “I’ve been close so many times; I’d really like to win,” he said. In the long run, he hopes to ride on a U.S. championship team.
Brian’s biggest contender is Armik, a 14-year-old Oldenburg owned by himself and Bob and Christine Stiller, Jules’ parents. At the FEI level, he also competes Sea Plus, an 11-year-old Irish Sport Horse, and Vittorio, a 12-year-old Hanoverian, both owned by Glenbeigh Farm.
Brian loves Wellington and Spruce Meadows, but said he isn’t a fan of what he called show jumping’s “closed circuits.” “It makes shows more about your ability to pay and who can afford to be at them versus the sport,” he said. “It’s disappointing to see the sport going like that. It’s already an expensive sport without having to pay to compete, and it’s on the rise here in the U.S., too.”
He’d also like to see the horses do less showing and traveling. He said his horses typically compete 12 to 15 times a year, then return to rest in the field. “It’s a horse welfare issue, that people are doing too many shows,” he said. “There’s a lot of concern about cutting the whiskers or mane, but a fundamental issue is that people are doing way too many shows, and it’s not being addressed. A lot of horses are going to shows every second week, and with long distances between shows. We’re responsible for the happiness of our horses, and if they can rest and feel better in their bodies, that’s the rider’s responsibility.”
Brian admitted that few can replicate his path to the top of the sport, thanks to the rare experience he acquired in the Irish army. “You have to work hard and put yourself in a situation where you can ride a lot of horses to become practiced,” he said. “You’re not going to become good unless you have horses to ride. Go somewhere where there are a lot of horses to ride, and whoever is the main rider in the yard, be by their side, and ask a lot of questions: How can I be better? What am I doing wrong? Get guidance from whoever is around, and then you have to be able to get the good horses. Find people who can buy you good horses, or put yourself in a situation to buy them yourself. It’s not straightforward.”
But as he arrives at the barn each morning to check on his own horses, that partnership and commitment to the animals drives his passion. “Even if there was no competing at all, I would still love training horses and the partnership,” he said. “They become your friends, really. I’ve had Armik since he was 8, and he’s my friend, and that’s what’s most important.”
For more information, visit www.captbriancournane.com
Photos by Melissa Fuller, melissafullerphotography33.mypixieset.com
