04/14/2026
"Can Horses Like Greya Save Show Jumping Fans?" Lauren Mauldin writes.
The first time I saw Kent Farrington ride, or really ever heard of him at all, was in the small indoor of the James B Hunt Horse Complex in Raleigh, North Carolina. It was 2006 at the $30,000 Duke Children’s Benefit Grand Prix, the biggest show of the year in our area. At the time, I was trying to make it around 2’0” local hunter courses with my bought-from-the-newspaper Quarter Horse gelding, but I looked forward to the UNC & Duke benefit shows every year. That was my chance to see the best of our sport. To me at the time, I might as well have been watching show jumping at the Olympics.
I was a nobody who didn’t know anyone. The highlight for me was watching our local vet show his jumpers in that Grand Prix, because he treated my horse. But that year, Kent and this literal knees-to-nose chestnut horse dominated the entire class. That horse was Up Chiqui. I can still picture them soaring over the oxers against the hunter green backdrop of that unassuming indoor. Instantly, I was a fan.
Last week, I sat in the press room at the FEI World Cup Finals listening to Kent talk about how he used to watch VHS tapes of World Cup Finals. “I didn’t have access to high-level shows, but I had videotapes of the World Cup Final,” he shared. I would watch them over and over and study all the riders, and pretend that I could ride like them.”
Before I continue, let me be clear. I do not pretend I can ride like any Grand Prix rider. I’ve come a long way from the girl with the rubber tall boots and bred from spare parts Quarter Horse, but I’m lucky to find the distances on my adult amateur hunter courses. But I was also that kid who put VHS tapes in my cassette player at home to watch over and over again. My favorite was a Gem Twist documentary that I rented from the now sadly gone Triangle Horse Sports. I was obsessed with Gem Twist. I had his Breyer horse. Any time my parents came to get me because show jumping happened to be on TV (a rare but delightful occasion in the 90s), I listened carefully to the name of any gray horse to see if it was Gem.
This week at World Cup Finals, watching Ken and Greya, reminded me of that same feeling.
If you ask a kid today what their favorite show jumper is, I’m curious if many could name one. Our TV coverage has shifted to expensive live streams the average parent of a horse crazy American kid is never going to fork over the cash for. Riders have huge strings of horses now. You need so many to get to the top. They get sold, they break, their owners or riders (or both) get burned out and quit. There is high turnover in our sport. It’s not super often that me, a casual show jumping fan, has looked at a horse and rider combination and thought, Oh god. That’s amazing. I can’t wait to see them the next time they come out.
There have certainly been pairs. Laura Kraut and Cedric. Beezie and Cortes C. Richard Vogel and United Touch S. The magical combination of an amazing animal and a skilled rider will always take my breath away. This weekend, swept up in the magic of finals, I felt that way about Kent and Greya.
And it makes me wonder, is it pairs like them that can revive the sport of show jumping?
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