When Andrea Leatherman set out to dust off some cobwebs at the Poplar Place Farm March Horse Trials, she didn’t expect to find a blue ribbon lurking underneath them.

But that’s just what happened on March 25-27 in Hamilton, Ga., as Leath-erman cruised to the top of advanced, division 1, on her Mensa G. “It’s always great to win, but I really just wanted to go out and have a good solid ride in all three phases and not worry about the placing,” Leatherman said.

Leatherman started the year feeling a bit rusty, as she hadn’t evented since July of 2010. At the end of July, she was jogging a horse for the veterinarian when it pulled away and double-barrel kicked her in the back. She suffered a few broken ribs and a lacerated liver.

The doctors told her to take three months off and warned her not to be a typical horseperson and rush her recovery.

“They wouldn’t even let me run for fear that my liver would rupture,” Leatherman said. By the time she was ready to get back in the saddle, the fall eventing season was done. So Leatherman got to work at getting back in shape.

“It was my first time ever taking more than maybe 10 days without riding, and I was shocked how unfit I was. When you ride your whole life, you have a high level of fitness that you just get used to, and during that three months, I was really unfit. You realize how much you take for granted about all the things that were easy for you,” she said.

While she was recuperating, Buck Davidson, Leatherman’s trainer and boyfriend, rode her horse in one intermediate and two advanced events, just to keep him in form. Leatherman’s first event back was an intermediate run at Rocking Horse Winter I (Fla.) in January. She followed that up with an advanced go at Rocking Horse Winter II, where they had one stop, and competed in the CIC*** at Red Hills (Fla.).
Red Hills didn’t quite go their way—Mensa glanced off the second corner of a combination, and Leatherman couldn’t find a good approach to attempt it again, so they were eliminated. She was glad to finally put a clean, quick round on the board over Tremaine Cooper’s course at Poplar Place.

“He’s felt the best he’s ever felt, but I had to dust off some cobwebs. Overall, he’s a much stronger horse, and I think he understands the level a lot better. It’s just trying to put all the pieces together at the right time on the right weekend,” she said.

He Is That Horse

At Poplar, Leatherman and Mensa were fourth after dressage and then recorded the fastest cross-country round of their division.

“I wasn’t trying to go fast, but he’s an easy horse to ride. He doesn’t pull, so you can gallop faster on him. I just wanted to get a good rhythm, and we did,” she said. They went into show jumping in the lead, and they were far enough ahead that two rails didn’t affect their placing.

“It wasn’t our best weekend, even though we won,” Leatherman said. “In dressage, I felt like I kind of threw away a lot of easy points because I didn’t ride the test as well as I should have. It’s good when you don’t have your best weekend and you win. It gives you encouragement that when it does all get where you want it to be, it’ll be great.”

Leatherman’s success with Mensa comes after eight years of partnership. She bought the Thoroughbred gelding (Colonial Affair—Fire The Secretary) off the track as a 5-year-old when she was just 17, but Mensa wasn’t intended to be around long.

“I wanted to go to the racetrack, buy a horse and train it and resell it, and then eventually make enough money to buy a really nice horse. But he turned out to be that really nice horse!” she said.

They worked their way up the levels together, debuting at advanced in February 2009. Leatherman fell off at their first three-star at Jersey Fresh (N.J.) that spring, then headed up to the Bromont (Que.) CCI*** the next month and placed sixth.

“He’s a tremendous athlete, but he has such a great temperament to go along with it. He’s been my first upper-level horse, and he has handled so many mistakes with me learning. Every time he just keeps going; he’s so forgiving. He’s an easy horse to go around advanced on. He’s quiet, and he fixes my mistakes,” Leatherman said.

Leatherman, 25, grew up eventing in South Carolina and graduated from the University of South Carolina in 2007. She spent 11⁄2 years working for Michael and Nathalie Pollard, then moved to Davidson’s barn.

She rides and teaches at Davidson’s, in Ocala, Fla., and Riegelsville, Pa., helping out wherever she’s needed. Though she and Davidson have been dating for years, they do a good job balancing their work and personal lives.

“You always have your difficult moments, but it does work well for us. When he’s a coach and training me, we have that mutual respect for each other. It makes that part easy. I want to hear what he has to say; I know he’ll make me better,” said Leatherman.

“Then, we have a mutual agreement that at the end of the day, we don’t talk about the horses at all. We have our normal relationship,” she added. “It’s fun to be able to be with someone you share that passion with.”
Leatherman is tentatively aiming Mensa at a spring three-star but isn’t sure which one. “We’re kind of taking it event by event, seeing how things go,” she said.

Self-Confidence Is The Key

Kim Severson has been patient for a year, and it’s paying off in spades now. She rode Wiley Post to the win the CIC** at Poplar Place—a result that showed the talented bay gelding is back on track.

“This is huge for us,” she said. “I’ve always thought he could be a horse for the future—the question has been if he thought he was going to be that horse. At this point, he seems to think so, so I’m very excited for him.”

Severson got the ride on Wiley Post, or “Max,” in early 2008, after she spotted the off-the-track Thoroughbred as a 5-year-old in a clinic she was teaching.

“He’s incredibly athletic. When you look at him just standing there, he kind of looks like [Severson’s three-time Rolex Kentucky CCI**** winner Win-some Adante]—he’s about six different horses put together. We certainly didn’t buy him off his conformation! But when I watched him go, I just couldn’t help but like him,” she said.

Owner Lisa Darden bought Max for Severson, Scottsville, Va., and they spent 2008 earning good ribbons at
preliminary. Max won his first intermediate event, at Fair Hill (Md.) in April 2009, and they were 12th at the Richland Park CIC** (Mich.) in August of that year. But Max started to worry, so Severson dropped him back down to the preliminary level for all of 2010.

“I’ve had to really go back and take my time with him and re-school him. I got a bit ahead of myself [in the CIC** at Richland Park],” she said. “He jumped around, but he was a little too young and green at the time, and I made some mistakes. I needed to go back and solidify his confidence in general. He really didn’t think he could jump a big jump.

“I just kept running him—he can jump around preliminary all day long with no worries,” she continued. “At the Virginia Horse Trials last fall, I finally felt like, ‘OK, I think I’ve got him back,’ from the tone of how he went around. And six months ago, his body all of a sudden just bulked out, and he looks like a completely different horse. He feels like he has all the confidence in the world now, so I’m very excit