The latest addition to the Chronicle’s blogger roster is an eventer and Thoroughbred fan from Kentucky. Carleigh Fedorka caught COTH’s eye with her win in the dressage section of the Retired Racehorse Training Project’s Thoroughbred Makeover and her words on her personal blog, A Yankee In Paris.

A few months ago, dripping in sweat and battered and bruised, I came home and text messaged my best friend, telling her that I thought it was time to give Nixon back. He was as close to dangerous as a horse I had worked with, and I just didn’t see myself getting through to him. I had been catapulted into the cement, and concussed and slightly scared, I was ready to admit defeat.

Called To Serve, or “Nixon,” in one of his more uncooperative moments.

I was prepared for this, because for three months I had been struggling with this horse. I would think we would take one step forward, and he would slide three steps back. It was the most frustrating training task of my life. And for an amateur who rides alone every day, it was getting to the point of scary.

She wrote back that I couldn’t do it. That this horse was my “Rolex horse.” She started pulling up documentation of some of the greatest in our sport, and how difficult they were. She encouraged, and egged me on, telling me to give it one more week. Maybe one more jump school. One more attempt to get on that trailer. I dropped my head and said “OK.”

I knew that I was this horse’s only chance.  I was part yearling manager, part rodeo cowgirl, part full-fledged amateur eventer, but I was a whole lot of calm and brave.  

That is how I have gotten through to so many horses. I don’t have a lot of tension in my body on a horse. I enjoy exploring and meandering just as much as they do. And that was what had worked for Nixon on the track.

They got him to the Grade 1 level by letting him meander around the backside. So meander we did. I stopped treating him like a sales horse, or a horse heading to a massive show in two months, and started treating him like the ex-racehorse that he was. A horse that had ran only a few months before. A horse who had won $500,000. A horse who knew he was the champion.

He had had an interesting life. A $290,000 yearling, he had ended up with some of the best owners in the business: Marc Ferrell. He went on to win graded stakes races across the country, but found in a $5k claimer five years later, Marc had done best for the horse and claimed him, shipping him home.  

Unfortunately, Nixon had gone down on the trailer on the way and was battered and bruised from the trip. It was not the easiest transition into being a sport horse, to say the least. But we tried.

Nixon after his fall during trailering.

And it didn’t happen overnight. But slowly, and consistently, this horse, this “recusant maverick who seemed to hold a grievance against the world” as ESPN put it, started to soften. He started to get that lead. He started to load on that trailer. And suddenly, I had a horse that I craved riding every day.

Last month, I shipped him into the Kentucky Horse Park for the Retired Racehorse Makeover competition. I had zero expectations, besides the fact that I wanted him to be a good civilian.

I knew he would probably have a tense moment or two, maybe a botched lead, or a break in the free walk, but I wanted him to respect me, the fellow horses, and (hopefully) stay in the ring!

But, true to Nixon’s normal form, he had other ideas. A few months ago, I was being interviewed by Melissa Bauer-Herzog and I told her that this horse just seems to love an audience—he THRIVES off of people watching him and cheering him on. Her response? “Well, then maybe he’ll think the makeover is the Olympics and be unbelievable.”….and unbelievable he was.

This horse that was scaring me only a few months ago came into the dressage ring like he had been doing it his entire life. His head came up, his ears perked forward, and he truly danced for the judges.

Here Called To Serve, or Nixon, puts his best foot forward at the RRTP Thoroughbred Makeover. 
Photo by Megan Stapley Photography

I am not a dressage rider. I grew up doing western pleasure, switched to eventing, switched to roping, and ended up back as an eventer. My personal best dressage score at a recognized show is a 34. And yet at the Makeover, Nixon knocked 10 points off of my best. He scored a 74 percent in his test. A 26 in eventing lingo.

We went back in on Sunday for the freestyle in second place. Nixon was exhausted, I was traumatized by the audience, and I felt there was no way we could top off the performance from the previous day.

But then I realized something. I had come full circle. At the age of 12, my mother had risked divorce and bought me my first Thoroughbred. That Thoroughbred had also been scarier than expected, and because of that, I spent three or four years just learning dressage. Teaching him how to move, teaching me how to ride. He eventually became the greatest horse of my life, and I had just recently had to say good-bye to him this summer.

On Sunday at the Makeover, I felt that horse, that trainer, my mother, and every one else who has followed me on this lifelong journey and lifelong love of this breed as I trotted into the arena and a calmness came over me. I sat up straight, I kept my hands steady, and I smiled. Because I had already won.

I had yet another amazing Thoroughbred underneath me. A horse that was unrideable only a few months prior. A horse that most wouldn’t have given a chance to. And I was in the finale of America’s Most Wanted Thoroughbred Competition.

We won the dressage discipline, which gave a giggle to so many who know how much I don’t like dressage. But honestly, I’m winning every day. I own two of the most amazing horses in the world. Both are Thoroughbreds. Both raced. One successfully, one not. Both teach me how to be a better rider every day.  

My mom, that same mother that risked her marriage for my first Thoroughbred, told me after watching the live stream of the Makeover that I rode the best I ever have. I told her that Nixon had taught me how to do that. And both now come happily when they’re called. Both blow kisses in my ear when I unwrap a peppermint. And both, to me, are America’s Most Wanted Thoroughbreds.

A lifelong horse enthusiast and eventer, Carleigh Fedorka currently resides in Lexington, Ky., where she is a graduate student at the University of Kentucky studying equine reproduction. Before this, she worked on Thoroughbred breeding farms like Hinkle Farms and Chesapeake Farms. Carleigh has placed, sold, and owned a variety of horses—mainly Thoroughbreds—but currently competes on her own Dynamaker.

When she is not riding her horses, Carleigh is a racing enthusiast, and helps her boyfriend on his own farm while also enjoying their two Labradors. She doesn’t like to admit it, but she is also an avid needlepointer and a closeted 80-year-old. You can read all of Carleigh’s blogs on her personal blog site, A Yankee In Paris.