Jonathan Cowan didn’t quite know what to do. He was all set to compete at the Festival of Champions in June 1993 at the USET headquarters in Gladstone, N.J. He was entered in the USET Show Jumping Talent Derby—a class reserved for under-25 aspiring grand prix riders—but the horse he’d brought, Flintstone, wasn’t 100 percent.

Luckily, he was friends with McLain Ward, having competed against him from the pony hunters on up to the junior jumpers. McLain and his father had just imported a talented horse from Europe, and they offered Cowan the ride for the class.

Minka had been a grand prix horse in England with Nick Skelton and Marie Edgar, and the Wards had imported him to sell. Cowan rode Minka for the first time in the morning before the qualifier for the Talent Derby, and hours later they won the qualifier.

Jonathan Cowan riding Minka at the 1993 Festival of Champions. Photo by The Book LLC

Cowan was so impressed with Minka that he bought the horse, and they had a great career in the amateur-owner jumper division for about a year and a half. In 1994, they were the high amateur-owner jumper circuit champions at the Winter Equestrian Festival (Fla.). “He was an amazing horse. We got along really well. He was a horse that liked soft hands. You had to get him to the right place and let him do his thing. We just clicked immediately,” said Cowan.

Cowan ended up selling Minka at the end of 1994 to Elisa Haas, who went on to do very well with him in the junior jumper divisions.

Cowan had come up through the pony hunters, skipping the juniors hunters and heading straight to the junior, amateur and grand prix ring. “Over my career I rode with Tim and Michelle Grubb, Michael Matz, Buddy Brown and Norman Dello Joio. Michelle Grubb and I had a business for a while where we worked with Henk Nooren importing horses and selling them,” Cowan said.

By the mid-90s, Cowan had a great grand prix horse to ride—Hairos. The gray stallion was a winner right away for him, but he was quickly offered quite a bit of money to sell him to Europe. (Interestingly enough, Hairos returned to the United States a few years later with another new owner, a new name and a new career—picking up numerous amateur-owner hunter tricolors as St. Nick with Caroline Moran riding.)

“When I sold him, I was around 25 years old, and I was thinking, ‘I’ve been riding for so long, I wonder what else there is.’ I ended up having a lot of injuries in my back, herniations and things, and I never really got back into it,” he said. “My family is very involved in race horses, so I’m still around the horses, just not riding.”

Cowan, 41, went on to a career as a DJ and event promoter, traveling the world. He’s still in that line of work today, but he’s considering getting back in the tack.

“It was definitely some of the best times in my life. I still have my saddles in my garage and I’ve been missing riding. I’m thinking about getting on a horse again for sure,” he said.