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FEATURE

Bibby Farmer Hill has been an integral part of the career of her daughter,

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If you look carefully in the stands at any horse show, you can see them: professional horsewomen packed together to watch their children compete, at least as nervous as the other par-ents—though they’re obviously more accustomed to watch-

ing rides from the in-gate than helplessly from the bleachers. Many of them put their own riding careers on hold to raise

and support the next generation of equestrians, and even after their kids are grown and honing their own professional careers, many still plan their own work schedules around sitting in those bleachers, riding every stride alongside their children. !ese chil-dren, in turn, have enjoyed the advantage of their mothers’ con-nections, wisdom and innate talent, but often they’ve also had to shake o" associated expectations to #nd their own success.

In honor of Mother’s Day, we reached out to multi-genera-tional horsewomen (and one young man as well) to explore the sacri#ces, challenges and joys of sharing not just genes, but a lifelong passion.

the moms who put them

Growing up as the child of a top equestrienne doesn’t guarantee your own success in the saddle. But it doesn’t hurt, either.

By MOLLIE BAILEY

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to go #nd her that minibike.”Farmer’s precocious gumption and

sense of responsibility didn’t surprise Hill. After all, she herself had had to earn money to buy her #rst saddle as a child, and she’d always emphasized that same self-reliance to her daughter, in and out of the barn.

“I grew up knowing that my mother had instilled in me that work ethic,” says Farmer, 39. “I knew that just because I was a good rider, that didn’t make me a trainer or able to be an accomplished professional. She taught me that when I turned pro, I wasn’t going to walk into a riding job. She did everything possible, everything known to man, to give me a better oppor-tunity or a better ride. Everything I have is because of her.”

Farmer grew up in Miami, where her mother worked managing barns and teaching lessons, and the connections she made through Hill have echoed through-out her storied riding career. Farmer’s #rst saddle was a hand-me-down from David Burton Jr., and when Farmer was too small to protest, Margie Engle would get a kick out of dunking her in the water trough at her Gladewinds Farm.

In tough times the horse world also provided support, like when Farmer’s father, tennis pro Carl Richard Farmer, battled leukemia. For a time Hill jug-gled raising her daughter, caring for her sick husband and working in the barn. When Rich’s health went downhill (he died when his daughter was just 7), Kel-ley brie$y moved in with Jennifer Beiling and her four sisters, joking that she was the sixth Beiling.

Hill used her connections and eye for horse$esh to make sure her daughter always had something to ride, albeit often unbroken ponies or very green mounts. But people started noticing when their ponies came back better than they’d left, and Kelley got a big break at AHSA Pony

FEATURE

LEADING BY EXAMPLE:

Bibby Farmer Hill and Kelley Farmer

Bibby Farmer Hill

hen Kelley Farmer was 11, she asked her mother, Bibby Farmer Hill, for a minibike just like all her

friends at the horse shows had. But Hill couldn’t a"ord one, so she told her daugh-ter if she #gured out how to earn the money herself, she’d track down a used one.

“She found this guy with a mango

grove,” Hill recalls, “and she and a friend made him a deal that they’d take his man-gos and sell them, and they’d pay him half and keep the other half. So every day in the summer, the girls would go ride in the morning then go gather mangos and set up a mango stand on the side of the road, and all the people coming home from work would stop and buy mangos. Sure enough, she earned the money, and I had

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Finals (Va.) when she was 14. !e Lind-ner family lent her a fantastic pony in Change Of Heart the day before the #nal, which she won. It was the springboard that would catapult her to the top of the ASPCA Maclay Finals (N.Y.) and help her #nish second at AHSA Medal Finals (Pa.) and the Washington International Equitation Championship (Md.).

Meanwhile Hill encouraged her daughter to explore opportunities that took her far from home. Kelley served as a working student for Bill Cooney and Frank Madden at Beacon Hill (N.J.) and spent a month in California training with Jimmy Williams at the Flintridge Riding Club. When Havens Schatt aged out of the juniors, Kelley headed to Ocala, Fla., to ride for Don Stewart Stables, and when the farm needed a new barn manager, Kelley called her mom and told her to come help. !e timing was right, and Hill headed to Ocala to begin a 20-plus year partnership with Stewart.

Even now that Kelley’s worked her way to becoming a decorated rider and the #rst hunter professional to earn a million dollars in the sport since the U.S. Hunter Jumper Association started keeping records, she and her mother have stayed very close. When Kelley broke her collar-bone right before the 2014 USHJA Inter-national Hunter Derby Championships (Ky.), her mother was there to nurse her through her surgeries and provide moral support, just as she was when a green pony $ipped 10-year-old Kelley, breaking her pelvis.

“Anyone would do that for their child,” Hill, 64, says with a shrug. “After the collarbone we really had to get on her case and hold her down. It was really frus-trating, because she was second the year before and had a great horse [in Mindful] that was going well and looked like they could win.”

While their careers have diverged,

The first person to congratulate Kelley Farmer

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“She did everything possible, everything known to man, to give me a better opportunity or a better ride. Everything I have is because of her.” —KELLEY FARMER

with Kelley focusing on high-end open hunters at Lane Change Farm and Hill training many of the top pony hunt-ers in the country out of Don Stewart Stables, they’re still intertwined. Hill invests in horses her daughter rides, hav-ing owned part of Scripted, Certainty and Mindset, along with one of Kel-ley’s newest rides, In Private. And Kelley occasionally hops aboard one of Hill’s ponies for a tune-up, counting 2013 USEF Pony Finals grand pony hunter champion Sassafras Creek as her favorite.

Hill also never misses a chance to watch her daughter ride if she can possibly get there—in theory. She’s so superstitious that she can’t always watch Kelley compete in real time.

When Kelley was a junior, Hill tried to keep herself calm by needlepointing but often ended up poking #ngernail holes into the arm of fellow hunter guru Linda Hough, whose daughter Lauren was often in the same classes. During Kelley’s big-gest classes or with certain horses, Hill still can’t bring herself to watch and has to walk away.

“She went to the barn the year Mythi-cal was second at Derby Finals, and she couldn’t watch Round 2 of the Maclay Finals when I won,” Kelley says. “It’s

always been a certain horse or a certain place. She couldn’t watch Scripted for a long time, but she’s getting better. By Capital Challenge [Md.] last year, she could peek around the corner and watch part of it.”

Kelley describes their relationship hav-ing nearly transcended the mother-daugh-ter role. !ey’re best friends, and at the end of the day, Hill is still the #rst one Kelley calls when she has big news.

“She still calls me when she’s excited about something and says, ‘Mom I just got a new horse! You have to see it! You’ll love it!’ ” Hill says. “To me, that’s why she’s so successful: because she has so much com-passion for the horse and what it takes to get there. If you ask me, she got the knack and talent from her dad, and I hope she learned the compassion and responsibility from me.”

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FEATURE

FORGING THEIR OWN PATHS:

Jessica and Missy RansehausenThough she grew up in the shadow of dressage legend Jessica Ransehousen (standing, with Hugh Knows),

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n some ways, Missy Ransehau-sen’s résumé clearly echoes that of her mother, Jessica Ranse-hausen. Both have ridden for

the $ag in international competition, and both served as chefs d’equipe for the U.S. Equestrian Federation.

Both women even achieved the same result at their #rst Pan American Games: dressage team silver and individual #fth for Jessica in 1959, and eventing team sil-ver and individual #fth for Missy in 1995. And Jessica watched her daughter win team silver in person, as she was serving as the dressage chef d’equipe at the time.

But Missy, 45, knew from the start she wanted to #nd her own way rather than stay her mother’s shadow. When Jes-sica moved the family to Europe to train with Reiner Klimke in the 1970s, 7-year-old Missy learned to jump aboard Ingrid Klimke’s #rst pony. Shortly thereafter she announced to her mother—a #ve-time national dressage champion and three-time Olympian—that she had no interest in perfecting circles for the rest of her rid-ing career.

Luckily Jessica had helped plenty of eventers with their dressage, so she knew where to get her daughter started once they returned to the United States. Bruce Davidson got Missy hooked on the sport by pairing her up with a schoolmaster he’d spotted in a clinic in Rhode Island. !at mare, Nina, took her through training level and helped her earn her C-2 rating with the Cheshire Pony Club (Pa.). As she moved up the levels, her mother’s dressage expertise suddenly became a major asset, especially with her #rst upper-level horse, Druid.

“He was an amazing jumper, thank God, because oh my God was he awful on the $at!” recalls Missy. “It was so frustrat-ing. I remember we would get into these huge #ghts over him, and for the life of me, I couldn’t do it. And of course I was a hot teenager, and I’d mouth o" and say,

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‘Well then, you get on and do it!’ And she would.”

By the time Missy started moving up the levels under the tutelage of Karen O’Connor, Wash Bishop and Grant Schneidman, she and her mother both had packed training and competition schedules, and they rarely watched each other compete. Even if Missy could have traveled to her mother’s competitions, she stayed home to care for the family’s Blue Hill Farm in Unionville, Pa. Both were working toward championships that hap-pened within days of each other—Jessica the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul and Missy toward the FEI North American Young Rider Championship—so they couldn’t support one another in person.

Jessica’s voice still swells with pride as

Despite her passion for dressage,

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´,W�ZDV�P\�ÀUVW�WLPH�FRPSHWLQJ� internationally against all these people, and here’s my mother, who everyone knows, in her classic American accent calling me ‘Pumpkin.’ I just about died.” —MISSY RANSEHOUSEN

she recalls the phone call from her daugh-ter reporting that she’d won NAYRC. But of course, once the dust settled, she couldn’t resist a chance to try to convince her daughter to move back toward her sport.

“After she won, I said, ‘Now just think, we could branch out, and you could do a little more serious dressage,’ ” says Jessica, 77. “She just looked at me and said, ‘Bor-ing!’ ”

After her third Olympic performance, Jessica focused on her new role as chef d’equipe for the U.S. dressage team and became a regular presence at her daugh-ter’s competitions. She was there in Eng-land in the early ’90s when Missy debuted at the Blenheim CCI***.

“My whole life my mom has called me

‘Pumpkin,’ ” says Missy. “And I’ll never forget, I’m in the warm-up area at Blen-heim on dressage day, and my mother yells across the warm-up area to me, ‘Oh, Pumpkin!’ I just about died. It was my #rst time competing internationally against all these people, and here’s my mother, who everyone knows, in her classic American accent calling me ‘Pumpkin.’ ”

Missy circled back to dressage in her 30s, competing two horses at Prix St. Georges but still balancing it with event-ing. And she attended more than her share of pure dressage shows with Criti-cal Decision—her mount for her third-placed #nish at the 2008 Rolex Kentucky CCI****—to help him settle in during that phase.

By then she’d also settled into her role as the coach of the U.S. para-dressage team, which she held for 13 years starting in 2000. She became involved with the sport thanks to student Hope Hand, who suggested Missy apply to coach the team.

While Jessica supported her daugh-ter, she wasn’t expecting her to tackle that

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role. After #nishing third at Rolex, Missy was on track for a spot on the short list for the upcoming Olympic Games in Hong Kong, but she declined to pursue that opportunity because of her commitment to the team at the 2008 Paralympics.

“For me, that was disappointing,” Jes-sica admits. “She should have done that. It would have been a perfect development of everything she’s done in the past. But I think she was very brave in her choice.”

Missy and Jessica still help each other

FEATURE

As children Doug and Holly Payne learned the basics

fter every cross-country run, siblings Doug and Holly Payne have an extra task, almost as important

as cooling out their horses and checking their time.

“!ey have to text me, as soon as they’re o" cross-country,” says their mother, Marilyn Payne. “Either they themselves or a groom has to text me to tell me how it went. !at started as soon

as I learned how to text.” Her insistence is understandable.

!ere aren’t an awful lot of parents with one four-star event rider as a child, let alone two.

A well-rounded horsewoman with a special interest in the #rst phase of event-ing, these days Marilyn, 66, serves as a busy four-star eventing judge and USEF S-level dressage judge. She’s o%ciated at the likes of the World Equestrian Games

JOINING IN THE FUN:

Marilyn, Doug and Holly Payne

and the Olympic Games—when she’s not running her Applewood Farm in Califon, N.J., with her husband Dick Payne. She plans her judging calendar with Doug’s competition schedule in one hand and Holly’s in the other, so she never misses a major competition, and a few long-time favorites like Millbrook Horse Tri-als (N.Y.) and Stuart Horse Trials (N.Y.) serve as annual family reunions.

One of the most stressful days of her life came when Doug, 33, and Holly, 31, made their Rolex Kentucky CCI**** debut together in 2012. As luck would have it, a random draw sent them out on cross-country back-to-back.

“I had a heart attack,” Marilyn recalls. “I was glued to the TV, because that’s the best place to be, but all the riders around me were laughing. Here I am screaming and laughing. Both of them got around safe, and it was great.

“I’m not scared [at big events],” she continues. “!ey’re both good riders, and

with students from time to time and #ll in when the other is out of town.

“For the longest time I’d always been Jessica’s daughter,” says Missy. “Every now and then she can be my mother. She’s a phenomenal person, and it’s great to be related to her. At times, when you’re younger, you want to stand on your own two feet, and you can’t. But I’m sure there have been times that it’s helped me when I’ve gone down centerline. I’m lucky to have her.”

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they have good horses, and they don’t push them beyond what they can do. I know they’ll take the time to get around safe. But of course you still worry some, and you want them to do well and be happy.”

Marilyn never anticipated both her children running at Rolex the same year; she didn’t even think they would turn out to be professional riders. Sure, she put a crib in the barn when Doug was born, and for a few years she always taught lessons with a child strapped to her back. But her kids were driven by friendly sibling rivalry more than a pushy mother. Doug eschewed $at-work until his little sister started beating him at competitions, and Holly used to set increasingly di%cult lines to practice over.

Marilyn supported them as they earned their A ratings from Somerset Hills Pony Club (N.J.) with instructors like Roger Haller and Sally Ike, then went on to com-pete at the FEI North American Junior and Young Rider Championships. But she wasn’t going to actively encourage them to

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follow in her footsteps.“From the time we had our #rst pony,

we knew that after we graduated high school, we’d sell whatever we had, and we were going to college to focus on that,” says Doug, New Hill, N.C. “Beyond that, it was our decision. If we were going to do it, we had to #gure out how to make it happen.”

A few years into earning their degrees—Doug in mechanical engineering from the Rochester Institute of Technology (N.Y.) and Holly in #nance at the University of North Florida—they both started schedul-ing time in the saddle around their classes. After graduation, Doug planned on becom-ing a forensic engineer in a police investiga-tion unit to #nance riding as an amateur. But as he waited for the bankrupted state to fund an academy class, he found himself out-earning his fellow graduates thanks to horses. And shortly after graduation, Holly was back in the galloping lanes, too, train-ing and riding in Gladstone, N.J.

Once they’d decided to dedicate them-selves to the sport, Marilyn became their biggest cheerleader, encouraging Doug to get his dressage judge’s license at just 26 and lending a hand to Holly at events.

Holly’s remained an important asset

to her mother’s business, riding at the farm nearly every day and #lling in when she’s out of town judging. And before a big event, Doug always tries to ride his dressage test for Marilyn to see where he can save a point or two. In turn, the kids inspired Marilyn to end her hiatus from competition.

“We were driving home after an event, and they were laughing and joking about all the fun they’d had,” says Marilyn. “I said, ‘You know what? I’m sick and tired of you having all the fun. I love to compete. I’m going to get my own horse.’ ”

!at decision has brought the family even closer. A few times a year all three Paynes now compete at the same event together, most recently in March at the Carolina CIC, where Marilyn rode Safe Harbor to second behind her son in a sec-tion of opening training.

“Neither of us went to our college grad-uations—sentimental things most parents would care about,” says Holly. “But at com-petitions she can get emotional, especially during the jog. I remember this fall at the [Dutta Corp.] Fair Hill CCI*** [Md.], when I was there riding [Never Outfoxed] around, she was tearing up.”

“Neither of us went to our college graduations—sentimental things most parents would care about. But at competitions she can get emotional.” —HOLLY PAYNE

While Dick and Marilyn Payne (standing) encouraged their children

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ack in the late ’90s, DiAnn Langer had a rather di%-cult employee: her daughter Kirsten Coe.

After aging out of the juniors, Coe had come back to work at Langtree, her moth-er’s Burbank, Calif., show stable. She’d built up an impressive résumé, including a win at the USEF Talent Search Medal Final (Calif.) on her mother’s grand prix jumper, Hearts Of Fire, and had big dreams for her future in the saddle.

“She tried to take over my business, and I had to give her a half-halt or two,” recalls Langer, 67. “I think I #red her every week.”

But Coe kept showing up anyway, get-ting her professional education while put-ting in long hours learning how to run a 50-horse operation.

When Coe was born to Langer and her then-husband, western professional Matthew Coe, Langer quit horses for a year to focus on motherhood. When Kirsten started toddling around, Langer was determined to give her daughter a taste of life outside a barn, and so she duti-fully drove her to gymnastics, tap dance, ballet and swimming lessons (where she sunk like a rock), but it was no use: Kirsten never imagined a day out of the tack.

When it was clear that her daugh-ter would be following in her footsteps, Langer made the conscious decision that she wanted to be Kirsten’s mother, not her trainer.

“I strongly believe in that,” Langer says. “I’ve dealt with a lot of kids and their parents. I don’t care if it’s a professional’s child or anyone else’s. !e parent must remember that they’re the support, and the

trainer is the one who at that moment is in charge of what’s going on. !e professional has to deal with the victories and defeats.”

With that in mind, Langer shooed her daughter o" to trainer Karen Healey when she neared her teenage years, but soon Kirsten began looking beyond California. For her last junior year she loaded a few horses on a trailer and headed east solo to create her own opportunities, riding for Andre Dignelli at Heritage Farm as well as Tom Wright, Missy Clark and McLain

Ward. !en she decided she wanted to ride in Europe, so she moved to Germany to work for Markus Beerbaum and Meredith Michaels-Beerbaum.

And in 2006, after an eight-year stint at her mother’s stable, Kirsten headed east again to work for Heritage Farm, going from a barn with 50 horses to one that took more than twice that many to every major horse show. She relished the opportunity and called home regularly for support over her #ve years there.

Kirsten Coe got her start

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“She tried to take over my business, and I had to give her a half-halt or two. I think ,�ÀUHG�KHU�HYHU\�ZHHN�µ�—DIANN LANGER

FEATURE

GIVING ROOM TO GROW:

DiAnn Langer and Kirsten Coe

DiAnn Langer decided that she wanted to be her daughter’s mother,

“I came from grooming my own horses and making my own horses and trying to make them work, so I had no problem lis-tening to how hard she had to work,” says Langer. “I didn’t care how many hours a day she was at the barn, how many days went by without a horse to get on. It’s a di%cult time for all riders.”

Kirsten started donning a pinque team coat in 2008—just as her mother had a few decades earlier—riding in Nations Cup competition and at multiple FEI World Cup Finals. Langer now serves as show jumping young rider chef d’equipe and technical advisor, and she’s chefed senior Nations Cup teams as well, though never for her daughter.

“It’s not that the team was the goal,” Langer says. “It was, ‘Let’s try for [FEI North American Junior and Young Rider Championships],’ and once we did that, we’d say, ‘Let’s try to do the national

junior jumper championship.’ As she achieved one goal, we’d set another one. It never occurred to me to be thinking about riding on the team before we’d done these other things.”

Like Hill, Langer was never a calm customer watching her daughter compete, and also like Hill she’d frequently #nd her-self ringside with Linda Hough, jumping every jump with their daughters in equita-tion classes. (!ey reunited in a box last year at Holiday and Horses [Fla.] to share in the stress as their daughters jumped in a grand prix.) !ese days Langer’s job with the USEF often requires her to leave her Red Acre Farm in Johnson, S.C., to attend many of the same shows as her daughter, so she gets to watch her compete regularly.

“It takes time to develop the role that each of you play in the relationship,” says Kirsten, 34. “!ere are still days when I have a bad round, and she says something

that will irritate me, but she almost always knows when to step back and when to push.

“I still do everything like my mom,” continues Kirsten, who’s now based in Royal Palm Beach, Fla. “She taught me what hard work is. Sometimes my groom throws me out of the barn because I’m try-ing to do too much. We had a new groom who was freaking out because I was clean-ing. It’s just how I was raised.”

But tidy tack trunks aren’t what keeps mother and daughters close enough that they talk on the phone several times a day.

“I’m most proud of the person she’s become,” said Langer. “She’s principled, she has integrity, and she’s just a good per-son. I’m proud of her when she wins, and I think every parent is proud of their kid when they succeed at what they’re trying to accomplish. But the best part is that she’s a cool person.”

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