You might not have noticed Taryn Nolte and Cleverly in the stories put out about The Dutta Corp. Fair Hill CCI*** (Md.) two weeks ago. That’s because in her first attempt at a three-star CCI, Nolte finished in last place, with a three-digit score.

But she did complete, and that was her goal. And there’s more to the story. “Three years ago if you had told me I was going to jump around a three-star, I’d say you were crazy,” said Nolte.

Taryn Nolte and Cleverly on cross-country at The Dutta Corp. Fair Hill CCI***. Photo by Lindsay Berreth

That’s because Nolte, 25, was on a different career track until three years ago. “I know a lot of eventers dream their whole life to go to Rolex [Kentucky CCI****] or to go to Fair Hill, and I didn’t have those dreams. My dream was to jump those grand prixs down in Wellington [Fla.] But it’s amazing how you think you’re being given lemons and you make lemonade out of it, and now all of a sudden, the last three years, my goal is to compete at Fair Hill. It’s such a cool feeling to be able to be there, especially on a horse that I made and that’s a problem horse that someone else didn’t want. It makes it that much more special.”

Nolte’s week at Fair Hill—and a score that included two refusals and double-digit time faults on cross-country—didn’t go according to plan. A week before during her last gallop, the gelding cut his mouth while being particularly strong, so she had to ride in a hackamore and missed out on valuable training time.

Dressage is not Cleverly’s forte, but Nolte was feeling good about her goal to score below a 75. They scored a 75.4 at Fair Hill.

“When I got to Fair Hill I flatted him on Wednesday and his mouth got irritated again,” Nolte said. “I went to do dressage and I felt like I had no contact and couldn’t put my leg on and couldn’t get him to take the bridle. It was at 5:15 at night, and I just felt like nothing was going my way. We went in there, and he actually kept himself together. There were no explosions, but he couldn’t really do any of the lateral work that he was supposed to do.”

Discouraged, Nolte almost withdrew before cross-country. “I was super nervous,” she admitted. “On Saturday, everybody said, ‘I think you’ve said three words the entire day.’ I debated not going because I didn’t get a qualifying score in dressage, but everybody was like, ‘The footing’s great, you have a sound horse, go and get your first three-star out of the way and just get the experience.’”

A stumble on landing in the first water resulted in Nolte taking a circle, and they picked up another stop at the last water when they had a drive-by to a skinny chevron, but they completed with 40 jumping and 86 time penalties.

“I was so happy with him. He jumped all the hard combinations,” she said. “Everybody thought I pulled up after 6AB because I went so slow. I didn’t think I was going that slow, but apparently I was.”

Nolte said she lost a bit of concentration towards the last third of the course when the announcer said that Boyd Martin, who had started after her, was going to pass her. She kept looking back, thinking officials would pull her up to let him go, but it didn’t happen.

“I’m kicking myself for going so slow because I don’t think it was necessary,” she said. “He [recovered very quickly in the vet box]. I was worried he wasn’t fit enough because I had never gone that long, but he handled it totally fine. I’m glad I did it, and I feel good going into next year. I have a whole year to go to Jersey [Fresh] or Bromont. I feel like I can be competitive next year.”

An Inauspicious Start

Not only did Nolte achieve a goal she’d never imagined before, she did it on a horse few had believed in—a horse that changed her life.

Growing up riding hunters and jumpers, Nolte never pointed at a cross-country jump until three years ago when Cleverly, who’d she’d picked out as a free, difficult 6-year-old, came into her life and decided the jumper ring was not to his liking.

“Problem horse” might be an understatement as Nolte describes “Clever.” He came into her life five years ago when she was working for grand prix show jumper Michael Walton near her hometown of Blue Bell, Pa.

Nolte grew up as a hunter/jumper rider and her parents had various jobs in the horse industry, including a custom tack trunk business and a horse transport company. They “bargained or bartered” to get her horses to ride.

When she was 16, she began grooming Walton’s grand prix horses and started doing her high school classes online. She wintered in Wellington and helped Walton with sales horses as well. When her show jumper was injured, Walton brought her along on a buying trip to Acorn Hill Farm in Virginia.

“Michael just asked if they had any horses that either had a vetting problem or something that you can’t sell, because I was falling love with the sale horses, which wasn’t very good,” she said.

There was one well-bred gelding, Clever, cowering in the back of his stall. The Holsteiner (Contendor—Eager N Crafty) had been started, but the grooms warned Nolte about him.

“He was adorable, but terrified of people,” she said. “He cowered in the back of his stall, and all the grooms said you had to watch out for him. His reaction to things was to come after you because he was scared. Now he would sleep in my bed with me if he could. He loves people.”

Nolte was desperate for anything horse to call her own, so she took him on. During his first few rides under saddle with Walton, Clever mostly walked on his hind legs and refused to go near poles on the ground.

He spent more time escaping the ring than working in it. “Our ring doesn’t have a fence, and he did everything he possibly could not to be in the ring. He was running sideways and backwards. It was awful,” Nolte recalled. “But when he finally did go forward, he had a beautiful, balanced canter.”

Walton suggested Nolte spend a month or so trail riding him to let him decompress, and it worked—to an extent.

“His first reaction if he did something wrong was to wait for you to get after him so he could fight back. He would run off or rear or buck, so our philosophy was to kill him with kindness. Instead of getting after him, we would give him a mint,” she said. “He still has his moments. He likes to spend a lot of time on two legs, but he loves to run and jump.”

Clever moved along well enough in his training to get to the 1.25-meter jumper ring, but Nolte felt that he hated the discipline after two years of trying.

A Turning Point

One day while in Florida, a friend of Nolte’s suggested she bring him up to Ocala to school cross-country.  “He loved it. He was so happy. I was like, OK, I guess that’s what he wanted to do,” she said.

In the meantime, Nolte and Walton had moved his operation to Unionville, Pa., where they were surrounded by eventers, and they both caught the bug. Walton has primarily eventers now and has competed through the two-star level.

Nolte and Clever did their first novice in 2012 and continued up the levels steadily. “We just kept going,” she said. “He never said no to anything we asked of him. We knew he had a lot of jump and he has the gallop, so we just kept pushing along.

“[Eventing] was different for me. The first year, I went to Plantation [Field (Pa.)] and someone that was taking lessons with us was doing the two-star and I walked it and said, ‘There is no way I will ever jump any of these jumps. This is terrifying. You’re crazy that you do this!’

“That was my philosophy when I first started eventing, but having a brave horse has made me quite brave on cross-country,” she continued. “I jumped a few grand prix classes and a few high amateurs down in Palm Beach, and I never would have jumped any of those tables, but now if you set up a grand prix course, I’m like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me!’ You put up a big table and I’ll jump that all day long!”

Clever doesn’t love dressage, so on bad days, Nolte has to be flexible and change her plans. She usually goes for a hack or a gallop instead. He’s always keen for cross-country though.

“To the jumps he’s really brave,” she said. “Nothing has ever scared him. It would be nice if some things did scare him! But you can’t walk him through our show jumping arena. To go past the jumps is absolutely terrifying. The only problems we’ve had coming up the levels are the skinnies and accuracy questions because he wasn’t the most broke in the world, and he’s strong.”

The pair moved up to advanced last year and completed the Fair Hill CCI**. After a few frustrating run-outs at corners and skinnies on cross-country, Nolte got mad enough at herself to get motivated to fix the problem for real, and they finished the Jersey Fresh CIC*** (N.J.) this spring in 11th place with a clear jumping round.

“We went to Jersey and jumped around clear and something just clicked,” she said. “Now all of a sudden, he feels like an advanced horse, and I feel like we belong. He’s no longer green on cross-country. He reads all the questions. It was a huge difference since Jersey.”

Nolte is now completely converted to eventing and works as an assistant trainer and barn manager to Walton. She has another homebred mare, Quinn (Languster—Latest News, Good News Joe), by Nona Garson’s jumper stallion and out of her retired children’s/adult jumper, who competes at the two-star level.

She’s looking forward to next year with Clever after completing the biggest event of their career. “Everything was a good learning experience. I got my completion and that’s more than a lot of people could say for the weekend. It is what it is,” she said.