Riding for the Team. United States Equestrian Team Foundation

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СКАЧАТЬ on the part of both horse and rider. The more effective you can be while still being smooth is critical because the horse has to concentrate on his job as well.

      One of my best qualities is being able to focus and block out distractions. When people say there was a big crowd for a class I was in, I say, “I couldn’t tell you, I didn’t notice.”

      When I feel like I’m under pressure and have the honor of being on the team and riding for my country, I approach it one round at a time. You can’t think of a multi-day show or a championship as a whole. I think of that competition and that course. I want to do it to the best of my ability in that round. You’re behind the eight ball if you worry about making a mistake; you’ve just got to show them how good you are.

      After my junior career, I went to Southern Seminary College in Virginia for two years because Russ Walther, who headed the riding program, wanted me there. I was on the intercollegiate team and won the 1984 Cacchione Cup, the most prestigious award at the Intercollegiate Horse Shows Association’s national show.

      Intercollegiate competition was a fun experience, hopping on strange horses and having to get it done (as I would do decades later in the Final Four at two World Championships). It also was a valuable experience because I learned to work with a team. When you do that, it’s not all about you and your success.

      I graduated as valedictorian and was accepted to the University of Virginia, where I had been turned down when I first applied for college. But then trainer Katie Monahan offered me a job and I had to decide whether I would go to school or work with her. My parents said they would support me in college, or if I didn’t go, they would support me while I was training with Katie for a couple more years. So I went with her.

      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.

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