Lisa Barry and F.I.S. Prince Charming. Photo by Leslie Threlkeld.

Lisa Barry is recovering from a fractured skull that resulted in a subdural hematoma and a broken bridge of her nose after falling onto concrete while walking a horse at her home farm in Ocala, Florida on Friday evening. Lisa was treated in the ICU before being moved to a trauma floor room on Sunday.

The EN family extends its best wishes for a full recovery for Lisa, 34, who is said to be stable after multiple CT scans. We will provide more information on Lisa’s recovery as it becomes available.

Any offers to help or otherwise provide support can be directed to the Lisa Barry Equestrian Facebook page.

Lisa Barry first hit our radar with her beloved partner, F.I.S. Prince Charming, a small but mighty New Zealand Thoroughbred with which she completed multiple Advanced and former three-star events, including a second place finish in the CCI3* at Bromont in 2014. She was also a silver medallist at the National Junior and Young Rider Championships in 2005.

Holly Jacks and More Inspiration. Photo by Kingfisher Media Services.

Holly Jacks-Smither says she’s the happiest she’s been in years right now, and she has many reasons to feel that way. She’s fresh off of a gutsy performance in the Les Etoiles de Pau CCI5*-L, where she ended her weekend in 12th place among some of the top riders in the world aboard her off-track Thoroughbred, More Inspiration. She has a thriving business and a healthy support system in her friends and family back home in Canada. She has a handful of up-and-coming horses waiting to step up in the coming seasons.

But for Holly, perhaps the biggest harbinger of happiness this year has been her decision to ride for no one else, but herself.

The Best Laid Plans

Holly and More Inspiration’s roundabout path to Pau began two years ago, when the pair earned their qualification and set about making plans to head to France. Why Pau? I asked her. “(More Inspiration) is a really good technical, twisty horse,” Holly explained. “He’s always done well at Red Hills, for example. I just thought the track at Pau would really suit him.”

The flywheel was set in motion, and all systems were go for Holly and “Morris” to make the trip in 2017. But then, two days before Holly was set to take off, her father, Terry, suffered a stroke. Not wanting to be anywhere but by his side, Holly’s French plans were put on hold.

The following year, Morris was sidelined with a minor injury and would once again miss the fall five-star. Then in 2019, the stars seemed to be lining up once more, and Holly would finally get her shot.

Holly Jacks Smither and More Inspiration. Photo courtesy of Laura Dupuy.

“It’s just been one of those situations where things just kept falling into place, even though there were some hoops to jump through,” Holly said of the last few months leading up to Pau. “Morris didn’t go to Kentucky this year but he ran two four-star shorts and felt amazing. Jessica Roberts put on this huge fundraiser for the trip and paid for half of my trip. It was pretty incredible how it just kept moving forward.”

It was no coincidence that Holly says she feels the best she’s ever felt and the most confident in her riding. What’s changed? I asked her. Holly talks freely, as if she can feel the weight that’s been lifted from her shoulders. Taking the pressure off of herself and, more importantly, off her horses has made a world of a difference. It’s liberating, she tells me, to feel that she is a thousand percent riding only for herself and not under pressure to make a team.

Of course, it hasn’t always been this way for Holly who like any hungry and talented rider believed that making a championship team for Canada would mean she’d finally “made it”. But this is no longer the case. Holly is a proud Canadian who is honored to represent her country — but not at the expense of her sanity and her horses’ wellbeing.

“We see a lot of people chasing teams,” Holly explained. “Myself included. It’s made me made poor decisions and it’s made me distracted. I have a really nice young horse that I was trying to chase the Pan Ams with last year, and I made some decisions that I’m not proud of under the pressure — and at the end of the day, we still weren’t on the team.”

Holly understands the complexities of the team selection process and the difficult job that selectors have on their hands. But when she took a step back, she realized that her burning desire to be on a team was making her lose sight of the horsemanship that’s required to bring a horse along at any level. That, she says, was an eye-opener for her.

“I feel like I’m in a better place now that I’ve said my goal might not be the Olympics,” she said. “My horses owe me nothing, and I need experience at the five-star level, but they’re only going to do what they need to do. It’s like a weight was lifted off my shoulders.”

This shifting of priorities has made Holly unendingly grateful for the opportunity to go to Pau, this time on her own terms, on her own making. “I’m a big believer in making the best out of what you have,” she said. “A lot of people said Morris wouldn’t go Advanced, but now here he is. I get a lot of students who don’t have the money to go out and buy a nice horse, and I want them to see that it’s still possible.”

An Eventing Family Affair

Holly Jacks Smither and More Inspiration. Photo courtesy of Laura Dupuy.

The outpouring of support from her community still leaves Holly a bit speechless. She tells me the story of her fellow riders handing her small amounts of money at shows or of a parent supporting her trip because Holly had walked cross country with her daughter years ago. Little gestures of support, all because of the impact Holly leaves on those around her.

“I’ve never been one of the ‘cool kids’ or really played the game,” Holly continued. “I’ve done my best to stay true to myself, and a lot of time it kicks me but sometimes when it really mattered, people have stepped up and helped me.”

Holly’s uncertain as to her plans for the upcoming seasons — she’s adamant that her horses will never do more than necessary and that she’s no longer going into the pressure cooker in the name of making a team. For her, it’s no longer the end all, be all, and she wants others to understand that there are other defining factors of success.

“I’ve always wanted to do the best by my horses,” she said. “Riding with (coach Buck Davidson) has made me realize that by taking the pressure off my horse, it allows us to work together in a better way. I just want others to see that being in a good personal place can have such a positive effect on your riding.”

Mia Farley and BGS Firecracker. Photo by Abby Powell.

Rarely in our sport do all of the pieces seem to come together at just the right time. A brilliant dressage test here, a confident cross country there, a clean show jumping round somewhere in between — but not all at once, not as often as we’d like. But no matter what our end goal is, we are all still in pursuit of the same goal: one weekend where it all happens. Just one, enough to stock up on motivation to start the process all over again.

The weekend of the Dutta Corp. Fair Hill International was one such moment for 19 year old Mia Farley. Finishing in Reserve Champion position in the CCI4*-L — the first attempt at the Long level for both Mia and her nine year old Irish Sport Horse mare BGS Firecracker — was the ultimate payoff for the attention to detail Mia had focused on in the months prior.

I first made Mia’s acquaintance when she was 14 and competing Donn and Daisy Tognazzini’s The Good Witch at the American Eventing Championships. Mature much beyond her years and impressively well spoken, Mia didn’t hesitate to tell me that her pie in the sky goal was the Olympics. “I know everyone says that, but I just keep learning that things are possible when you work hard,” she said then. Now, five years later, she’s inching ever closer to that goal, but she also reminds us of the bigger picture that keeps her grounded: “I just want to be a good horsewoman.”

Mia Farley and Fernhill Fine Diamond. Photo by Abby Powell.

Mia relocated from her home in southern  California to Virginia to take advantage of an opportunity to join the O’Connor Event Team just in time for the early 2018 season. Her first lesson was a return to the fundamentals of riding, the competitive rider’s foundation. David O’Connor, Mia noted, was studiously detailed and encouraged her to break down her riding to address individual, smaller issues.

“He had me starting out with a lot of bareback dressage,” Mia recalled. “I wasn’t able to get my hips to follow properly, and those lessons were a big eye opener for me. The fact that I couldn’t use my hips properly was a basic thing, but I needed a better grasp of the idea.”

Mia also mentions her elbows, another detail that needed attention. “I would get confused with keeping my hands still but keeping my elbows moving,” she explained. “This made me lock my arms. David really helped me with this and taught me to have quieter hands.”

As Mia prepared to move BGS Firecracker (“Cracker”, as Mia likes to call her) up to the Advanced level heading into 2019, the learning curve continued. Every competitive, hungry up and coming rider wants to have success quickly, but Mia would need to address the foundational issues first.

“David is really big on teaching us to go with what the horse is telling us,” Mia said. “It’s been a struggle for me, because I always want to fix a problem right away. But he’s good at reminding me that you get there faster if you go slower.”

With Cracker, this has been invaluable. Mia’s developed an affinity for riding mares (The Good Witch, Fernhill Fine Diamond, and now BGS Firecracker had been the mares who have shaped her career) but this requires a level-headedness that we don’t all possess. And Cracker hasn’t been the easiest to partner with, Mia admits. The beginning of the pair’s first Advanced season was far from ideal — they ultimately came to grief with a double dose of eliminations earlier this spring.

Mia Farley and Fernhill Fine Diamond. Photo by Abby Powell.

But as we all do, Mia kept her head down and kept at it, finding issues, addressing them, continuing on. The pieces began to fit together. Mia learned to ride more efficiently across the country. She continued to work on building trust with her mare. Two cracking prep runs before Fair Hill gave her more confidence as her 4*-L debut barreled toward her. She credits the O’Connors as well as her past trainer and mentor, Ginnie Bryant, for giving her both the motivation to keep chipping away and the confidence to believe that she was up to the challenge. “It’s amazing what you’re motivated to do when someone believes in you,” she said. “I think heading into Fair Hill, David and Karen knew I was more ready than I thought I was.”

Mia is quick to point out the areas in which she’d have liked to have done better during Fair Hill weekend, and she says her main expectation as she went in to show jump was to just have a clean round. But the end result was better than she ever imagined — “If you’d told me six months ago that I’d end up second at the Fair Hill four-star at the end of this year, I would have laughed at you.” To add a cherry on top of the whole pie, Mia also finished 11th in the CCI3*-L with Fernhill Fine Diamond, who she has campaigned this year for now-owner Charlotte Zovighian.

For Mia, the weekend was a taste of what she’s spent her still-young career working for, and it was a large enough dose of inspiration to bottle up for the next go-round.

“It was a true privilege to be able to ride with top riders like that, and I’m very thankful to have a horse that allows me to do that,” she said. “Making a bond with my horses is really important to me. I remember saying a long time ago that I hoped I would be able to have that relationship with my horse that would get us to the upper levels and, well, now I guess I can say I’ve done that.”