Horse Illustrated Magazine

A member of the United States Equestrian Federation (USEF) team since 2011, Hallye Griffin was appointed as the Director of FEI Sport in March 2023. With that role, she assumed position as Chef de Mission at the Olympic, Paralympic, and Pan American Games, as well as the FEI World Championships. In taking this post, Griffin has made history as the first female US Equestrian Chef de Mission.

Horse Illustrated had a quick chat with Griffin ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympics to discuss this year’s Games and what her role as Chef de Mission entails.

Horse Illustrated: Congratulations on being the first female US Equestrian Chef de Mission. What does it mean to you?

Hallye Griffin: Being the first female US Equestrian Chef de Mission is very special, but really what it brings me is a lot of gratitude for all the people I’ve worked for. I’ve worked for a lot of people in my time here at USEF, as well as my time before USEF, and learned a bit from each one of them. So I really just have a lot of gratitude.

HI: How did you get started in high-performance equestrian sport?

Griffin: I grew up riding myself; I came from an eventing background. I was fortunate that when the 2010 FEI World Equestrian Games came to Lexington, Ky., I worked as a competition department assistant. That was really eye-opening to me, to where the horse sport world could take me and my career. After the 2020 World Equestrian Games, I found myself at US Equestrian.

HI: What does a typical day at the Olympic Games look like for you?

Griffin: A typical day at the Games normally starts for me quite early. Luckily, I’m a morning bird, so I’m up quite early. I try to have a little bit of time to myself in the morning to first organize all my notes, my thoughts for the day, what’s on the agenda, go through any rules that I might need to freshen up on, and then we hit the road to venue pretty early.

My role at the Games is a lot of troubleshooting—making sure that our teams have everything they need to put in their best performances. And hopefully bring home some medals!

HI: What advice would you give to the first-time Olympic riders representing the U.S. in equestrian sports?

Griffin: The advice that I would give to any athletes representing the U.S. Olympic or Paralympic teams in equestrian for the first time would be to remember to trust what got you there. Remember to trust the training systems and all the work that these athletes have put in over the years, and that’s what got them to the Olympics. And then, ultimately, it’s about putting in the best performance they can and hopefully bringing home medals for the U.S.

HI: Tell us about your first horse.

Griffin: My horse—and I’ll say it was actually my first pony—was a pony named Coco. She was about 12 hands I wanna say. Bucked me off plenty of times; not the most well-behaved thing. But taught me quite a lot, and certainly didn’t stop me from riding.

HI: What is your favorite Olympic sport outside of equestrian?

Griffin: Favorite Olympic sport outside of equestrian: for sure, track and field.

For more news, visit our 2024 Paris Olympics main page.

Thanks to CareCredit for our spring and summer equestrian coverage.