By Hilary Moore Hebert
Portraits by Kacy Brown
Canadian eventer Becky Staden literally cut her teeth on reins. When her uncle put her in the saddle at the age of 9 months, she started chewing on the leather and the family declared, “She’s got the bug!” Since then, she has been proving them right. From her home bases of Alberta to Florida, Becky has been finding success as a top competitor and young-horse specialist, even while focusing on a career in counseling.
Becky’s first memories of riding and horses are from her uncle’s Staden Farms in Alberta, Canada. Her dad’s side of the family are ranchers, and they’ve had the farm since her great-grandparents came from England. “I remember seeing these little Western Quarter Horses,” she recalled. “They seemed so big at the time.”
After her experiences at family gatherings, Becky begged her parents for riding opportunities that were not five hours away. The family only had to look as far as her elementary school, as the gym teacher, Vickie Tait, also taught at Eagle Feather Riding.
Finding Eventing
Vickie drove Becky and other students to the farm after school from fourth to seventh grade. There was no competitive aspect to the riding; it was just bareback with a halter. Often they went into the mountains of Calgary, going through rivers and down banks. “That experience gave me a really good foundation and balance,” Becky said. “It taught me about pressure. Vickie taught me that horses learn at the point of release—if you put pressure on and the horse does what you’re asking or even thinks about it, you take the pressure off. I don’t think I quite understood it then, but now I use it a lot.”
As Becky got more comfortable on a horse, she wanted to try jumping after it caught her eye at nearby Spruce Meadows. Her dad would take her there on weekends, as she grew up watching Ian Millar and Eric Lamaze on TV. “I wanted something a bit quicker and I am quite a competitive person, so my dad and I spent a couple of days driving around the outskirts of Calgary, finding a lesson barn,” Becky said. They found a place just 10 minutes from home, Simpson’s Equine Activities. To this day, Becky’s parents are still friends with the owner, Sarah Simpson.
Becky credits Sarah with being a really big support in her life and career, sending her clients and horses throughout the years. “Sarah is the most remarkable businesswoman I have ever met and she is so smart in what she has built for herself,” Becky said. “She is one of the best, if not the best, fundamental riding coaches I have ever met.”
While at Simpson’s Equine Activities, Becky joined the local Springbank Pony Club and got her first horse: Trinity, a Quarter Horse/Arabian known for being rambunctious. “I was 13 years old and maybe 70 pounds at the time, and my legs didn’t really go past the saddle flaps,” Becky remembered. “Sarah warned me that we might not be able to go cross-country, but Trinity took me under his wing and it worked out.” The pair started winning at their first schooling shows, giving Becky the confidence to continue on to something more.
They began taking clinics with eventer Rebecca Lee in 2010. Becky groomed for her at Rebecca Farm in Kalispell, Montana, and “that was it.” Becky saw the jog and decided then she wanted to compete there. With that goal in mind, Rebecca helped Becky find her two-star prospect, PJ. Becky then went to Virginia to train with Stephen S. Bradley in January of 2013. “The big thing about the East Coast is the number of competitors and the amount of professionalism,” Becky said.
She met fellow riders who were always dressed for success and serious about the sport. Having so many people around who wanted the same thing as she did was a culture shock, and Stephen and Rebecca were instrumental in holding Becky’s hand and guiding her through the process.
“There is a lot of camaraderie, too,” Becky said. “It was intimidating at first, but I think it was also really inspiring and really neat. I tell people when they go east, to prepare to be in the warm-up with really famous people. But I was in the same boat with other people feeling the same way I was, with coaches who reassured me that I belonged there and deserved to be there.”
For six months, Becky learned to stay with her horse. Stephen also taught her to take her space in the warm-up ring. “Find your 20-meter circle and don’t go off it,” he told her. Stephen gave her the confidence to, as she says, politely stake her claim on space when she had a little bit of imposter syndrome. In 2013, Becky achieved a huge personal goal of running the Virginia Horse Trials in Lexington, Virginia, and completing a then-one-star.
Kacy Brown Photography
Florida Equestrian Photographer
Back to School
After her six months in Virginia, Becky returned to Alberta. She started riding with Canadian Olympian Sandra Donnelly and decided to enroll at the University of Calgary. She sold PJ and got a young Thoroughbred, Cora, whom Becky would haul to Sandra or have Sandra come to teach at Cora’s barn, an easy 20 minutes from school.
Though she went to school smelling stinky some days, Becky rode more in university than she did in high school because she was able to build her own schedule and enjoyed her classes. “I hated high school and the more condensed classes were better for me,” she said. “High school had felt so limiting in terms of time management; in university I was free to go to school, ride and then get the rest of my schoolwork done.”
Becky studied sociology with a focus on sports and gender, after changing her major a few times over the first few years. Then, she took a sociology of gender course and, “my whole outlook and the way I viewed the world changed,” Becky said. “It was the first time I felt really passionate about school, and excited to attend classes. I fell in love with sociology from then on and the way it made me uncomfortable and challenged my world views and personal bias. It made me more accountable to understanding the privilege I have.”
One of her admired professors was a figurehead in the field of sports sociology, and Becky enjoyed bringing her equestrian background into her studies anytime she could. “I plan to use it as I apply to my master’s degree in counseling psychology,” she said.
When asked why she isn’t planning on a full-time career as an equestrian, Becky is clear. “The honest answer is that I love riding, but the big thing is I want to be able to do this for the rest of my life and have a handful of clients. Realistically, I can’t do that without another source of income. As a Canadian, I need a visa to work in the States. The best way that I can juggle and have a full life is to have another source of income. I also have found that having another passion on the side, where I’m not ‘horses’ all the time, is best for me.”
Counseling seems like a natural choice for Becky, as she sees how similar it can be to teaching riding. “I feel like I joke with other professionals that half our job seems to be counseling!” Becky said. “It already is something I find I have a strength in, but I’ve also personally seen a therapist and found the benefits of it.”
As a counselor Becky plans to focus on helping teenage girls, knowing how difficult that stage can be for many. “I relate to that, because I really struggled through high school and my horses and coaches were my foothold,” Becky said.
Though she’s pursuing a non-equestrian field, Becky hasn’t stopped training multiple horses from green to the higher levels of eventing. Sandra, who also breeds sport horses, has encouraged her to work with young horses over the years, especially while at school.
In the last 12 years, this has allowed her to gain invaluable experience riding a lot of horses. “It has made me a better rider,” Becky said. “That has opened doors to take on diverse clients and build my business.” It has also exposed Becky to the world of sales and learning how to ride “really sporty” horses. She became knowledgeable about bloodlines, as she has seen the stallions and dams and what has come through in the offspring over the years. “Having access to such nice horses has been incredible.”
While developing horses with Sandra, Becky started spending winters with Jennifer and Jonathan Holling in Ocala, Florida. Due to travel restrictions, she has been limited to six months in the United States, so she splits her time between there and Canada. Besides her family, Becky considers Sandra, Jennifer and Jonathan her team.
After Becky developed a young Thoroughbred to a two-star-long at the 2019 Ocala International, she started a longer-term partnership with Sandra’s mare, Imastar, known around the barn as Bird. The pair completed a two-star-short twice and a two-star-long once. Becky considers Imastar instrumental in her competition career, having never had a cross-country jump fault in her whole run. “She was a cross-country machine,” Becky said. The pair did their first Canadian team training sessions together, and it gave Becky her first top-10 FEI finish with her, at Aspen Farms in Thurston County, Washington.
Thirteen years after she groomed at Rebecca Farm, Becky and Imastar completed her dream of finishing the two-star-long there. Now, with plans of a master’s degree in counseling psychology and competing at the FEI level with her own horse, Bearcat, in the near future, Becky is forging ahead with even bigger goals.
Follow Becky on Instagram @stadenequestrian
Photos by Kacy Brown, kacybrownphotography.com
