Ali Kuhn and Little Hail. Photo by Shannon Brinkman Photography.
At the 2024 Defender Kentucky Three-Day Event, where seasoned professionals, Olympic veterans, and polished 5* horses command much of the attention, one compact, scrappy Thoroughbred stole the show—dressed in bright watermelon pink.
Little Hail, a 15.2-hand (maybe, on an especially tall day) gelding with a grumpy face and a heart the size of the Horse Park itself, didn’t just finish his first CCI4*-S last weekend. He carried his rider, Wisconsin-based Ali Kuhn, around her first-ever 4*, completing one of the toughest events on the U.S. calendar with grit, joy, and not a single ounce of pretense.
“I never expected to be here,” Ali admits. “Let alone to finish here.”
Little Hail is 16 this year, and his journey to Kentucky was anything but linear. Originally campaigned by John Crowell, ‘Hail’ competed successfully before being turned out in a field when John stepped back from competing. By the time Ali got the call, Hail had been out of work for over two years.
“Dorothy [Crowell] and John had offered him to a few people, and no one wanted him,” Ali recalls. “Too small, not fancy enough, just kind of overlooked. But I had just put down my horse—my Intermediate hopeful—and I was ready to give up. I’d lost three horses to freak things. I was going to be done.”
Then the phone rang. “John said, ‘Hey,’ and I said, ‘Are you finally going to give me Hail?’ And he paused and said, ‘Actually, that’s why I’m calling.’ I was terrified. I didn’t want to take him—what if something happened again? But my husband said, ‘I think you should.’”
Photo by Shannon Brinkman Photography.
And so she did. Hail was delivered to a truck stop in Sun Prairie, WI—”like a sketchy horse drug deal”—and the next chapter of their story began.
“He was fat, out of shape, and the first time I jumped him, I genuinely thought he was trying to kill me,” she laughs. “But then we got to work. We started slow. First event? I got run away with. But after a couple levels, it became obvious—this horse loves the job. No jump is too big. No course is too long.”
Under the steady guidance of John and Dorothy Crowell, along with Cathy Jones Forsberg, Ali and Hail slowly climbed the ranks. From Training to Modified, then to Intermediate—where they kept winning.
“I remember telling Dorothy I wanted to try Intermediate,” Ali says. For her, even “just” going Intermediate was the dream. “She said, ‘Let’s do it—he’ll love it.’ And he did. The height just made him happier. It was like, finally, someone was respecting his opinion about fence size.”
Photo by Shannon Brinkman Photography.
For most riders, especially those in the Midwest, just reaching the Advanced level is a career goal in itself. But Ali’s little horse kept saying yes.
“I never dreamed that big,” she admits. “But then I joked to Cathy at Rocking Horse that maybe I’d try the [Kentucky four-star] next year. And she looked right at me and said, ‘Why wait for next year?’ I thought she was out of her mind. But then we went and did our first Advanced, and he was perfect.”
With that encouragement, the plan shifted—Ali would try to qualify for Kentucky.
“But the final three-star I needed was a disaster,” she says. “I got held on course at a frangible they were fixing, launched into a combination, and had a dumb run-out. It was terrible. Zero out of five stars. I went home thinking, ‘What am I doing?’”
Still, they pressed on. They made it to TerraNova for a final prep, and even through nerves and another bobble, Hail jumped out of his skin. Kentucky, incredibly, was on.
Photo by Tal Boatright for Shannon Brinkman Photography.
But not everyone thought it should be.
“I had people—good riders—say, ‘Hey, I want you to know that I did every other four-star before I took that one on.’ And I totally understand. I don’t recommend this path for most people. But I lived in Kentucky. Hail had been to the Horse Park a thousand times. We’d just won a three-star there that fall. For us, it felt like home.”
That context matters. Kentucky was her first 4*, but it wasn’t a leap of faith—it was the next step in a well-prepared, deeply supported journey. Still, Ali admits there was a chip on her shoulder.
“Absolutely,” she says when I asked her about this. “There were people who didn’t think we could or should. And I wanted to show them—and myself—that we could. I didn’t get handed a made horse. I had $700 in my bank account and a dream. I said, ‘I am not leaving Kentucky with a letter. I am leaving with a number.’”
And she did.
“I didn’t even turn on my watch,” Ali said of her memorable cross country round, which even elicited messages from riders she hadn’t met, like Will Faudree and Hawley Bennett-Awad. “I just rode the plan. I walked the course with my sister and said, ‘I think we can do this.’ And I meant it. I’ve never ridden better in my life. He was so happy out there. Every jump, he was like, ‘YES!’ I just remember going into the box, I looked at her and I was almost in tears, and I said, ‘You know we can do this, right?’ And she said, “Absolutely.'”
Photo by Shannon Brinkman Photography.
And the bright pink gear? A joke-turned-tradition.
“It started with the teenage girls in my barn. They thought Hail would look cute in watermelon pink LeMieux,” Ali said. “I was like, ‘No way, I’m trying to be professional.’ So they bought it all for my 30th birthday—bonnet, saddle pad, helmet cover, the works. I wore it once and everyone made fun of me—until the pictures started coming in. He looked amazing. So we leaned into it.”
Even more poetically, those colors—black, pink, and white—turned out to be Little Hail’s racing colors. “He was the last foal born at Harbor View Farm, and they actually reached out after Kentucky. They were thrilled. The people who foaled him were there to watch. They said he was a menace as a baby. So they couldn’t believe he was out there doing this.”
So what’s next?
“People ask if I’m thinking about a five-star. And honestly? I don’t know. I’ve already gone so far beyond what I ever thought I could do. If it works out someday, sure—but this? This was already my dream.”
Photo by Tal Boatright for Shannon Brinkman Photography.
And her message to others?
“I just want people to know that they don’t have to be rich. They can run around Kentucky in hot pink and smile and have a good time, and have a freaking dollar to their name—and they can still do it.”
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