For my first time going to Europe, it was very exciting. Hidden Creek’s Alvaretto won in Arnheim and I was leading rider at St. Gallen, so that really helped give my career a boost. The experience became even more special when I got back to the States and Sports Illustrated published a big article on me. Even in my wildest dreams, I never imagined being on the cover of that magazine, and there I was. My mother still has a copy of it to this day.
Hidden Creek’s Perin won the Olympic trials for the 2000 Games in Sydney, but he had only been jumping Grands Prix for three or four months. He just did everything out of sheer scope and ability because he had such a huge heart. Although he was very, very green, he got better and better during the Olympics. I was the anchor for the Olympic Nations Cup and finished in the top 10 individually, the highest-placed U.S. rider at the Games.
Although I was focused on my business, I did what my parents wanted and got a degree from Florida International University. I liked being a student, whether of equestrian sport or at school. I started out taking a complete schedule of courses at the university while working part-time but ended up getting mononucleosis. I was in school from 7:00 a.m. to noon, then went straight to the barn. After that, I came home to do my studies and grabbed what little sleep I could.
The last few years at the university, I took fewer credits so I could work full time. My parents didn’t know this was something at which you could make a living, so they wanted to make sure I had a backup plan with an education.
A lot of what is involved in having a show stable is running the business end of it—that’s the hard part: organizing the help, managing entries, the hay, the feed, and the billing. Having a father who was a certified public accountant certainly helped.
People always ask me, “How did you get through injuries?” I don’t think about it, you work through it. When I was young, whatever I did, I tended to overdo, whether it was practicing throwing a baseball through a tire, or swatting a tennis ball against the garage door for hours. So everyone would have to tell me to back down when I did physical therapy. Whatever I’m told to do, I’ll go home and do it double the time they specify. Like me, most riders just do whatever they have to do to get back riding as soon as possible. Of course, it’s more important for me to work out now that I’m older. When I was younger, I rode 60 or 70 rounds in a day and did the hunters as well as the jumpers.
A lot of kids who get scared when they fall off write to me and wonder, “How do you get over it?” I answer as many of those letters as I can.
I think you almost learn to fall off and then you’re not afraid of it. Most of the people who have the worst injuries are those who never fall off. At Gladewinds, when I started riding, the trainers taught all of us kids about emergency dismounts, which helped us to learn to land better when coming off a horse or pony. I think the more anxiety people have about falling off, the more it works against them, so when they do come off, they are not sure how to land.
When people ask me about retirement, I say that won’t come until I’m not competitive and it isn’t fun anymore. But whatever happens, horses will always be part of my life.
Kent Farrington
From Pony Racer to World
Show Jumping Number One
Always ambitious and a goal-setter, Kent is a top-notch manager of both people and horses. As a kid, he got involved in pony racing, and his love of speed is reflected today in winning jump-offs, motorcycles, and fast sports cars.
“I don’t know that you’ll meet another person in the world who can plan and execute better than Kent Farrington. He’s so smart,” said Laura Kraut, who has ridden with Kent on Nations Cup teams.
Kent’s first instructor, Nancy Whitehead, took him to a George Morris clinic, where that master trainer saw his talent and loaned him horses to ride in Florida. During Kent’s equitation days, when he won the 1998 hunt seat Medal finals and the championship at the Washington International Horse Show, he worked with trainer Andre Dignelli. Kent earned team gold in the North American Young Riders Championship, then turned down offers of college scholarships to apprentice with Olympic medalists Tim Grubb and Leslie Howard before starting his own business.
Although horses are his profession, he is multi-faceted. While he has no formal training in architecture, Kent has bought, designed, and sold a number of equestrian properties, in addition to laying out his own much-admired farm in Wellington, Florida.
Kent earned a berth on the United States’ 2014 FEI World Equestrian Games Team, where he was part of the bronze medal effort with Voyeur. In 2016, he realized his long-held dream of competing at the Olympics, where he rode the same horse to a team silver medal and finished fifth individually.
Someone of Kent’s determination can handle whatever comes his way. When he broke his leg in a fall from a horse during the 2018 Winter Equestrian Festival, he made recovery his mission and worked out rigorously to come back and be competitive three months later.
A master of “diversified risk,” Kent has assembled a string of horses with different owners, so he isn’t reliant on one or two. His mounts over the years have included Madison, the 2005 American Grand Prix Association Horse of the Year, Up Chiqui; Gazelle, Uceko, Creedance, and many more. His propensity for planning paid off in a big way when he became the number-one-ranked show jumper in the world in 2017, earning the Longines FEI World’s Best Jumping Rider Award.
Opportunities to be with horses were few where I grew up in Chicago, so I started riding at a carriage horse stable after I was inspired by a photo of my mother, Lynda, riding a horse in Wisconsin. We soon moved my riding activities to a farm outside the city where my sister, Kim, and I got our first pony, Samantha, on Christmas. I was thinking about the Olympics even then.
After joining Pony Club, I got involved in pony racing. I wanted to be a jockey at first, but when I got too big for that, I focused on equitation and show jumping. My mother traded three used computers for my first horse, MVP No. 4.
Although my father wanted me to go to college, I’m doing what I want to be doing. I don’t think I’d be happy sitting behind a desk. I worked with Tim Grubb and Leslie Howard after graduating from high school. After 18 months with Leslie, she encouraged me to start my own business. She told me she thought I had a lot of talent…but that I wasn’t a great employee!
It was a little sooner than I expected. I was only 21, but you have to take the opportunities you have, make the most of them, and step up to the plate. It’s one thing to question what you’re doing. It’s another to question yourself. I try not to do that too much.
Even from his pony racing days, Kent Farrington was determined to be a winner and let nothing stand in the way of an ambition that eventually would take him to the world Number One ranking.
Whenever anybody asks about my most significant Grand Prix victory, I always say that it was winning my first five-star in 2006 with Madison. It was the final Grand Prix in Wellington that season and the only five-star show at that time in America. That was sort of a catalyst for my career. I brought Madison up from when she was young, and she also was the first horse I rode on the U.S. team.
It was important for me after Madison that I was able to follow her with another top horse. That would be Up Chiqui, who won many classes. The best show jumpers in the world are consistently riding different horses. That’s a sign of somebody who can do the sport and isn’t a one-horse wonder.
I’m trying to be at the top of my game at all times. A lot of things have to come together to win a