Olympic event rider Karen E. Stives died after a long battle with cancer at home in Dover, Mass., on Aug. 14. She was 64.
Ms. Stives was born to Lillian M. Maloney and Russell Wennberg on Nov. 3, 1950. She began her equestrian career in the pony divisions at hunter/jumper competitions before focusing on dressage and then eventing. She trained with Bill Begg and then participated in Dana Hall School’s (Mass.) riding program. She graduated from the school in 1968 and later created the Karen Stives ’68 Equestrian Center to provide opportunities for riders at her alma mater.
Ms. Stives competed at the World Championships in Luhmühlen, Germany, on The Saint in 1982. It was at that competition that she and her mother found her future Olympic horse, Ben Arthur. Ms. Stives and the 17-hand gray gelding won individual silver and team gold medals at the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. They went on to compete at the Badminton Horse Trials CCI**** (England) in 1985, where they finished eighth.
Throughout her career, she prioritized high quality horse care and was deeply involved in the daily management of her horses.
After retiring from competition in 1998, she took over her parents’ shoe sales company and became an FEI eventing judge. She was inducted into the U.S. Eventing Association’s Hall of Fame in 2006. She also chaired the U.S. Equestrian Team Three-Day Event Selectors’ Committee for 10 years, a position she had a knack for thanks to her eye for competitive horse-and-rider teams.
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“She was just a dynamo,” said Jim Wolf, a former U.S. Equestrian Federation coworker and longtime friend of Ms. Stives. “She was incredibly smart, very organized and a terrific horsewoman. She really was the ideal chairman of selectors, and she was a fierce competitor; she was very competitive when she rode, but I think she was equally competitive as part of the U.S. team structure.”
In 2014, Ms. Stives donated $1 million to the U.S. Equestrian Team Foundation as the Karen E. Stives Endowment Fund for High Performance Eventing.
“One interesting thing is we just did well over in Aachen; she died this morning, and they were bronze in the Nations Cup,” said Wolf. “Two of the riders who were over there were over there on grants provided by Karen, so she was still helping teams win on the day she died. She was just a bigger than life personality in a very small body, and she’s going to be sorely missed by a lot of people. I think the world’s just a little bit of a smaller place today.”
Ms. Stives is survived by her significant other, Bob Hutchison; her sister Linda McCabe; and three nieces and nephews.
