Amateur show jumper Gigi Moynihan has been riding horses since she could walk. She grew up foxhunting and riding hunters and jumpers, competing at the FEI North American Youth Championships when she was 15. But when she threw a leg over a dressage horse she was trying toward the end of 2022, she felt like a beginner again.

“It was so embarrassing,” she said. “I’m trotting around, and I just cannot pick up the canter.”

It wasn’t her first time trying dressage, but it was one of her first times on a properly trained dressage horse. But she stuck with it, and now she competes at the Fédération Equestre Internationale level in both show jumping and dressage.

Moynihan’s introduction to the sandbox came while she was in Europe showing jumpers with Darragh Kenny. British dressage rider Louisa Eadie was helping Kenny flat horses, and Moynihan asked of the rider’s help with her own horse, Erle, whom Moynihan described as “a real freight train.”

“I couldn’t flat the horse for the life of me,” said Moynihan, 21. “I had a lesson with her, and I cried a bit afterward. It was miserable, and I was thinking, ‘I can’t do this.’ ”

After another lesson or two, as Moynihan grew frustrated, Eadie suggested she hop on the mare herself.

“Within two minutes the horse was in the most beautiful frame, and it looked so soft,” Moynihan recalled. “I got back on the horse, and it was soft in the bridle. I said, ‘Oh my gosh, I think you’re onto something here.”

‘Are You Sure I Can’t Post?’

Moynihan described that first summer working with Eadie as “life changing” as she learned about connection and getting a horse to engage in a way she’d never learned in flat lessons with hunter/jumper trainers. She also noticed a huge change in her mare’s topline after a few months, and eventually Erle became her favorite horse to flat. She continued to work with Eadie—who also trained show jumper Lillie Keenan when she dabbled in dressage—after returning to the States at the end of that summer.

Riding Erle and her other jumpers in a dressage saddle was a schooling exercise for Moynihan, but she eventually decided to take it a step further and try her hand at dressage for its own sake. Her first competition was at the 2023 Adequan Global Dressage Festival (Florida)—she showed the same week in the high amateur jumper division across the street at the Winter Equestrian Festival—scoring 66.50% and 66.62% at third level aboard Reverie Sport Horse LLC’s Dinamico. 

“It’s so different,” Moynihan said. “I remember I was terrified. I was like, ‘You really want me to sit the trot for six minutes straight? Are you sure I can’t post?’ I was so out of breath I thought I was going to die at the end of it. I’d never had to sit on a horse for that long without any break. It was stressful, but also not, because I’d worked a lot at home.”

She found a welcoming community in the dressage world.

“It was told to me, but I didn’t believe it until I was living it: Everyone understands how hard dressage is. No one is pretending that it’s not that hard,” she said. “I think that’s a bit of a different dynamic than in the show jumping community. For jumping you can have a completely push-button horse and go do it. You can’t really do that in dressage. You have to actively participate every single second. And everyone really does understand that. So if it doesn’t go well, no one’s looking at you going, ‘Oh God, you’re an idiot.’ They’re like, ‘Yeah, it’s hard, right?’ ”

Moynihan, who rode in her first CDI at Devon (Pennsylvania) in 2023, keeps her show jumpers and dressage horses at a dressage facility in Wellington during circuit, as she rarely jumps her jumpers at home. She takes a lot of dressage lessons on both her dressage horses and her jumpers, reveling in how much more broke her jumpers have become. She was hoping to make her U25 Grand Prix debut during AGDF with Reverie Sport Horses LLC’s Volare (Vivaldi—Unieta II, Jazz), but a recent turnout injury means they’re delaying that plan.

A True Cross-Discipline Rider

With an aunt, Jazz Johnson, who is a master with the Essex Fox Hounds (New Jersey), and an uncle, Tucker Johnson, who won two team silver medals and one individual bronze medal in four-in-hand driving at the FEI World Equestrian Games, in a lot of ways Moynihan was destined to become a multi-disciplined horsewoman. She grew up focused on hunters and jumpers, jumping to third at the 2020 ASPCA Maclay Final (Kentucky), while hunting was on the back burner. But that sport’s values were never far from her mind, and she’s become a bigger fan as an adult.

“Our grandparents instilled in us the importance of conservation of the land; that’s been super important in our family,” she said. “When we were little we’d have family meetings, and we’d go out with the [property manager] and learn all about [caring for the land].”

While she’s hunted a few of her jumpers—her brother, a novice rider, took her equitation horse Quantico out hunting on Thanksgiving—she hasn’t tried it with her dressage mounts. But she appreciates the skills each discipline has taught her. She said the foxhunting has made her a much braver rider and given her the mindset that horses need to be horses.

“I feel like with the dressage and the foxhunting and the jumping, the toolbox I have is huge,” she said. “I have one 6-year-old I’d been having so many problems with. We have some issues so I was like, ‘OK no more jumping, just going to work on dressage for the next three weeks.’ We had a dressage lesson every day, and within one week the horse is a completely different animal.

“When we’re in the ring and there’s no jumps, we’re flatting; we’re not going to go toodle around the ring,” she continued. “If we’re going to have a light day, we’re going to go outside. All of the horses I’ve ever had go outside and jump logs, and they go jump cross-country. Their chance to be successful is so high because you’re giving them all the opportunities.”

Moynihan is a full-time student at University of Miami (Florida) majoring in art history, and she’s based out of Wellington during the school season. In the fall she flies home to Bedminster, New Jersey, when she can to hunt on weekends, and the rest of the time she splits time between her dressage horses and jumpers, whom she trains with Hardin Towell, and she shows an occasional hunter as well. She’s been focusing on young horses, which have become her passion, but hopes to work her way back to the grand prix jumping arena.

Despite her growing passion for the dressage, Moynihan sees her future in the jumper ring. This summer, after she graduates, she’s hoping to turn pro and go work in Europe

“I find now having dressage lessons and riding dressage horses, I really enjoy the process,” she said. “Show jumping is quite binary: Your horse has a rail, or you don’t have a rail. You’re jumping jumps, and that’s the job. In dressage it’s so much finesse, such a drawn-out process. It’s a six-minute test and the whole thing you’re working on minute details. You learn to enjoy the process over the end result.”