While riding with Katie, I discovered many things that were new to me. I learned so much from her about riding. From Pancho Lopez, who ran her barn, I absorbed a lot of valuable information about being a horseman.
My nature is not real aggressive, so Katie was my switch from equitation and hunters into jumpers. Every kid who goes through that needs to learn to be a little more aggressive and effective. It’s not all about smoothness. Sometimes you just have to get it done.
John Madden, who had worked for Katie, was transitioning out to start his own business as I was transitioning in. He moved to Wisconsin and one day he saw my mom at a show, telling her, “I wish I could get someone like Beezie to ride for me.” My mother replied, “Why don’t you ask her?” So he did. We worked well together for 10 years and in 1998, we got married.
My first time on a team was in 1988 in Guadalajara, Mexico, where I rode Northern Magic. Rodney Jenkins was supposed to be on the team and serve as Chef d’Equipe, but he pulled out and I went in. John was asked to be Chef. I was only supposed to be the fifth person, but after I won a class, John sought advice about who to put on the team from Bertalan de Nemethy, the former U.S. coach, who was there as an official.
Bert told John I should be part of the Nations Cup squad. I went double-clear and we won. That was a milestone in my career. I never imagined being good enough to ride for the Team. I was a kid from the Midwest who did seven or eight shows a year until my last junior year. I wasn’t on anyone’s radar, including my own.
Northern Magic was my first good horse. We went to Europe with him the next year. It was quite an experience. In those days, not so many Americans wanted to go to Europe to compete. If you were going, you went on an official team or with a private stable’s tour—Hunterdon, which was George Morris’ stable, and Sandron, run by Joe Fargis and Conrad Homfeld, were the two operations that were doing that. We went on our own, and knew we had to win enough money to get back home!
Beezie and her husband, John Madden, a former FEI first vice president who has guided her career through Olympic, World Championships, and Pan American Games medals, as well as FEI World Cup finals victories.
Beezie Madden raised the FEI Longines World Cup FinalsTM followed up that victory with another in 2018.
It isn’t easy to get invitations to compete in Europe when you’re starting out, but we had help from Johan Heins, a Dutch horse dealer, the man through whom we buy our horses. On our 1989 tour, we hooked up with Conrad, Joe, and Katie to form a squad for the Rome show. The fact that I was naïve helped me. I was able to go in there thinking, “I can do this.” I still have a copy of the Italian newspaper that came out the day after the Nations Cup; it had a photo of me, jumping the headlines.
This was kind of a storybook tour. Next, I got picked for the team at Aachen. When we walked the course the first day, John asked, “Do you think our horses can jump this?” I told him, “I hope so.”
In those days, the American Invitational was in Tampa Stadium, so my horses were used to being in a stadium like the one they had at Aachen, and since it was the same feeling, that helped us.
We won money in Rome and I was Leading Lady Rider at Wiesbaden. We were able to pay our way home and had proved it could be done. We got the fever, after having a good experience the first time.
One of Beezie Madden’s busiest mounts in 2014 and 2015, the Dutch-bred Simon, did everything from Nations Cups to the World Cup Finals.
The main goal for both John and me is to represent the United States—for me to be on teams and win medals for the country (and obviously, for ourselves, too). We’ve been lucky with our owners, because that’s been their main goal, too. They have been people who were really in it for the team and the country, and included my parents, Carol Hofmann Thompson and her sister, Judy Richter, the Jacobs family, Mary Alice Malone, Gwendolyn Meyer, Elizabeth Busch Burke, and Abigail Wexner.
I tried to make the teams for the 1992, 1996, and 2000 Olympics, but they were all chosen objectively following a 1990 lawsuit over team selection. And when I had one bad round, I was out. It was discouraging. But I felt I was close enough and it kept me hungry.
My first FEI World Equestrian Games was Jerez, Spain, in 2002. Michael Matz, who had the ride on Judgement, recommended me to the horse’s owner, Iron Spring Farm, after he retired, and that meant a lot. The first time I jumped Judgement, I was impressed and told John, “We don’t have any horses in our barn that feel like this.”
To do your first championship is amazing. The scope of the WEG is almost more overwhelming than the Olympic venue, because so much is going on at the same time. The first day I was there I watched eventing; it was a real team atmosphere.
I didn’t handle the pressure at the WEG as well as I would have wanted. It was a wake-up call, because I was trying to do everything too perfectly instead of going in there and riding—doing what I did best every day.
A friend of John’s, Ed Huber, had a farm in upstate Cazenovia, New York, and John started his business there. Ed would let him have stalls and when he sold a horse, John would pay him. Eventually, John found a farm that he liked in the area, but it was beyond his means. When it became affordable, we bought it, and now we own more than 300 acres where we also have based a horse-retirement business that has attracted a group of famous former showring stars.
For the trials for the 2004 Athens Olympics, Authentic pulled through on the last day when my other horse, DeSilvio, got hurt after he was leading the standings. I ended up in the top four.
We got Authentic when Elizabeth Busch Burke wanted to buy a horse, and she liked the Thoroughbred type, so he was a perfect choice for her—especially since he was winning six-year-old classes right and left. He didn’t jump in classic form, he had a bit of a “drapey” front end, but the feeling on him was better than it looked. You couldn’t get him too close to the fences, he was too careful. He had a cool personality; he was very cocky.
Being in Greece was exciting. None of us on the team—McLain Ward, Chris Kappler, Peter Wylde, and myself, as well as alternate Alison Robitaille—had ever been to the Olympics. I don’t think any of us were actually friends before this, but we had respect for each other. We were all excited to be there and we ended up doing a lot together; it was a great feeling.
That is, until Authentic colicked badly the day of the jog. They wouldn’t let us compete if we gave him any medication, and it was looking as if he’d need surgery and we’d be out of the Games. Then we let him roll, and that did the trick. Frank Chapot was Chef d’Equipe and he made me the anchor after I was able to go clear in the individual qualifier, despite everything we had just been through with the horse. We were all pretty equal going in, so I was honored and excited, and I thrive off the confidence of others. That kind of inspired me.
When you think about it, we were four rookies with two nine-year-old horses, Authentic and McLain’s Sapphire, on the team. We won silver behind the Germans and were on the podium with wreaths of olive branches on our heads. But as it happens, that wasn’t the last time we were on the podium.
A German horse tested positive for a banned substance at the Games. That eventually dropped them out of first place and moved us up. Eighteen months after the closing ceremonies in Athens, we were presented with the gold medal during a brief ceremony in Florida.
The 2006 WEG in Aachen was amazing. We got team silver and I won individual silver in the Final Four ride-off, where we all switched horses. After the team medal ceremonies, we did the victory lap at a walk. McLain turned to me and said, “I don’t think we’ll ever experience anything like this in our lives again.”
But he was wrong. We