Based in Temecula, Calif., out of her Next Level Eventing barn, Tamie became the first American rider in 15 years to win the Kentucky Three-Day Event CCI 5* when she claimed victory aboard Mai Baum in 2023. Held the last weekend in April every year, the Kentucky 5* represents the highest level of eventing, with only seven 5* competitions held per year in the entire world.

She accomplished this feat aboard her long-time partner, a then-18-year-old German Sport Horse gelding named Mai Baum, owned by Ellen Ahearn, Eric Markell, and their daughter, Alex Ahearn. Tamie was also the first woman since 2011 to win this internationally prestigious event.

The eventing world has had a keen eye on Tamie and Mai Baum for years as their eye-popping dressage scores and top finishes at major events gained notice. The pair won eventing team gold at the 2019 PanAm games in Lima, Peru, team silver at the 2022 FEI World Championships, and they were selected as reserves for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games (held in 2021).

We sat down with Tamie to learn more about what keeps her motivated, the perks of being a mother in the horse world, and the horse that made the big win possible.

On Mai Baum

Mai Baum, or “Lexus” as he’s known around the barn, started off as Alex Ahearn’s ride when she took a post as one of Tamie’s working students. Alex had imported Lexus from Munich, Germany.

“I’m not certain if everybody thought that he would be what he is today,” says Tamie.

Alex competed Lexus through his first Intermediate (3’9″) before coming to ride with Tamie.

“She’d had trouble at Lexus’s first Intermediate, and we worked her through that,” says Tamie. “We got her competing well at [that] level. She was winning.”

After competing Lexus at the 3* event at Fair Hill in Maryland and making the U25 list (a selective list of upcoming young American riders aged 25 and under), Alex decided she wanted to pursue further academic education instead of continuing her riding career.

“After a training session that winter, I remember her coming to me and saying, ‘I want to meet you for dinner and talk,’” Tamie recalls. “She said, ‘I want you to take the ride on Lexus.’ I remember being a little surprised. I said, ‘No, you don’t. You don’t know what you’re saying. You have to do this.’”

Despite Tamie trying to talk Alex out of it, she insisted that Tamie was the right rider for Lexus.

“I remember her saying, ‘America needs a good horse. And you need a good horse,’” Tamie says. “And it was quite emotional, because I knew what she was saying.”

For a while, Tamie thought that Alex might decide to take Lexus back and start riding him again herself.

“I thought I would start riding him, and a few months later she would say, ‘I’m just kidding, I want to ride him,’” Tamie remembers. “But here we are eight years later, and it’s been so incredible to see her vision and what she wanted for me and Lexus actually come to fruition.”

At 20, Lexus is still going strong. Tamie isn’t sure if or when he will be ready to slow down, but thinks he will tell her when that time comes.

“I am really careful every time I get on,” she says. “I feel like I have a good gut instinct and know my horses. It’s a possibility that he could just drop down a level. He absolutely loves the crowd. After he’s done at the top level, maybe Alex could take him and compete him again. It would be an icing-on-the-cake kind of thing.”

Of course, if Lexus tells Tamie that he needs to stop competing, she will happily retire him.

“If he needs to be fully retired, he will be,” she says. “But I don’t know that he’ll want to just stand in a field.”

On Being a Mother

In addition to raising sport horses, Tamie has also raised two children, son Tyler, 21, and daughter Kaylawna, 29.

“[Being a mother] definitely has its struggles,” she says. “You go through guilt because you’re spending time doing something [not family-related] that you have a goal towards. When I travel, it’s been hard to cope with being away and missing a water polo or basketball game for my kids. That was not always easy.”

However, Tamie feels the guilt she and other riders might experience as mothers isn’t specific to her sport.

“Any woman or man in high level careers—doctors, lawyers, and elite athletes—all battle the same struggles,” she says.

To help with any guilt, Tamie tries to look at her time away from her family as a way of setting an example to her kids to go after what they want and to have big goals and expectations of themselves, even if it gets in the way of what tradition might want them to focus on.

In addition to being a mother, Tamie is now a grandmother. When her daughter, Kaylawna, married several years ago and then had a daughter of her own, Tamie says Kaylawna also struggled with her confidence and guilt. Of course, mom was there to help coach her through it. Other professional riders who became mothers have also turned to Tamie for advice on how to keep a healthy balance.

When it comes to coaching her clients and training the horses, Tamie says that she views being a parent as an advantage.

“I feel like being a mother helps with your level of compassion and your level of empathy,” she says.

On Managing Goals

Tamie says that she initially planned to also take Dutch Warmblood gelding Elliot V to the 5* at Kentucky in 2023—the division that Mai Baum ended up winning. She felt he was on track to meet that goal, but in their last preparatory competition, she decided to rethink her game plan, since he didn’t feel quite ready.

“I’ve learned throughout the years that you can never keep a goal set in stone,” she says. “The slow way is always the fast way, and you only get one good shot at doing this at the top level. I’ve learned that if it doesn’t seem ideal—if I’m going into a 5* and don’t feel like I’ve done absolutely everything I possibly could to prepare for it, or any competition for that matter—I typically err on the side of caution.”

She moves her horses up the levels at the rate she feels is best by staying true to her morals and trusting her program.

“I have a pretty solid opinion about what I think horses are ready to do [and] when,” Tamie says. “I don’t feel like taking a 5-year-old Preliminary [3’7″] is appropriate. I have had 5-year-olds that are probably ready—they’re bored at Training level [3’3″]—but I don’t feel like it’s always in the best interest of their overall development and their minds, and to me it always ends up catching up [to you], so I try to keep things more on a conservative basis.”

On Being a West-Coaster

Tamie says that living in Southern California also helps her to not be influenced by others’ timelines.

“It’s a different atmosphere out here than it is on the East Coast, where everything is showcased in the public eye, whatever you do,” she says. “[Here] I leave the barn and never see anyone that I know, and I’ve found that I really like it that way. Once I leave the barn, I’m just Tamie, and not Tamie Smith-who-is-doing-this-or-that.”

However, sometimes Tamie’s competitive nature does make things a little tricky.

“It’s difficult sometimes to see what other people are doing and then not get caught up,” she says. “But it’s been nice to be focused on my program, believing in it, and then making sure that I’m doing the right thing by my horses.”

On Education

“I’m a big supporter of going to [college],” says Tamie. “I think it’s super important. I know that there are a lot of top riders that don’t believe it’s necessary, so my answer might be a bit controversial. Education is super important for learning how to communicate, navigate through life, and deal with conflict.”

She says that her formal education has helped her navigate relationships with her horses’ owners and all of the different personalities she meets.

“[My education has] enabled me to learn how to communicate and to understand what it’s like in the real world, and working in corporate America,” she says.

Before turning to horses as her full-time profession, Tamie worked in the intake department of a mental health facility.

“I have always been intrigued by mental health,” she shares. “My original plan was to get my degree in psychology.”

However, a mentor encouraged Tamie to pursue other avenues toward her goal of helping people when the flaws of the healthcare system began to wear on her.

Initially, she was a little “bummed about that, because I thought if I went down that avenue [I could] help people navigate through their trials and tribulations.”

Tamie decided that she would strive to help people in other ways, no matter what career path she went down. Now, as a professional rider and coach, Tamie says that her time working in mental health has given her a unique perspective.

“It gave me a different perspective as far as learning what works for different types of people when I’m coaching,” she says. “I bring in an old-school approach where I think it’s very important to be empathetic to your horses. I mean, they don’t choose to do what we ask them to do. They do it because they love us.  They love the sport as well, but they would be fine and happy to be eating grass in a field, too.”

Tamie doesn’t have a lot of tolerance for impatient riders.

“That’s something that all of us have to learn as we grow in the sport,” she says. “It can be frustrating, especially where we have to master three different disciplines. You have to treat your horse with respect, the way you would want to be treated.”

From a competitive standpoint, Tamie adds that the mental element is almost more important than physical talent, and that a lot of counseling goes into producing good riders and horses.

Clearly her background has been perfect preparation for reaching the top of her sport. It takes nerves of steel to put the pressure aside and perform at your best at a 5* event like Kentucky, but Tamie showed the world she is more than capable.

More Tamie Smith Content

• Our Webinar with Tamie Smith
• Our “Next Level” Series with Tamie Smith

This article about Tamie Smith was the cover story of the August 2023 issue of Horse Illustrated magazine. Click here to subscribe!

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Tamie Smith of Next Level Eventing in Temecula, Calif., winner of the 2023 Land Rover Kentucky Three-Day Event CCI5*, has a strong focus on pole work in her program.

“Not only do they help your horse become stronger, but they get the horse to a place where he’s super rideable,” she says. “You can start off super simple, just trotting over one pole.”

Smith emphasizes that setting up pole exercises doesn’t need to be complicated.

“In my ring, I just have random poles out,” she says. “It’s a really good exercise for the horses to learn where their feet are and for them to let go of their bodies because they have to push over their back when they trot over them.”

Relaxation & Rideability

Additionally, Smith uses poles as a check-in for riders to see if their horses are adjustable and listening. Instead of passively riding over the poles, Smith encourages her riders to think about how their horse is completing the exercises and what holes in their training the poles bring into focus.

Smith says to ask yourself the following: “Do the trot poles create more tension and make your horse stiffen? Do they create anxiety?”

The more trot pole work the horses do, the more comfortable they get and the more rideable they become.

“I always err on the side of making sure that the horse isn’t feeling overwhelmed by the trot poles,” says Smith. “If he’s struggling, I’ll take away multiple poles and only use one until he gets really confident with it.”

Fresh Footwork with Ground Poles

Catherine Donworth has spent most of her riding career focusing on fox hunting. When her long-time partner, Skippy, was ready to retire, she got a ranch horse named Doolin Banjos. She began prepping Doolin to be her next fox hunting mount, but quickly discovered that he might be destined for a dual career, so Donworth began her dressage journey.

She uses ground pole exercises to keep things fresh for both herself and her horse in training.

“When you have a dressage horse that doesn’t jump, or doesn’t jump very often, poles are a huge way to introduce variety into your schooling,” says Donworth.

She regularly sets up different pole exercises in the ring year-round and finds new creative ways to use the smaller space of the indoor arena in the winter to keep training going, especially in colder weather when hacking and hill work aren’t an option. When Donworth sets up an exercise, she tries to leave it up for others at the barn to benefit from.

“You can tailor the exercises to whatever level your horse needs very easily, depending on his level of collection or how quickly he can do transitions or how much he can lift his hocks,” she says. “You can easily lay out a pole exercise, and with tiny alterations, work several horses at different levels without needing to set the whole thing up differently again.”

For Doolin, Donworth has found that the main benefit has been that poles keep him thinking.

“It’s helped sharpen up his feet,” she says. “It sharpened his reflexes, and he has to think for himself about where he puts his feet.”

In addition to the mental benefits, Donworth has also seen physical perks.

“It’s good from a physiological standpoint,” she says. “It keeps their hocks and back moving in a way that plain flatwork might not. It strengthens their bodies and can increase range of motion without putting extra pressure on their joints.

“Even walking over small, raised poles gets them to lift their hocks. If a horse has hock problems or arthritis in his hocks, just even walking over poles can loosen, flex, and extend his hocks. It’s like us stretching as part of our warmup.”

Ground Pole Set Up

How to Set Up Distances

• Walking poles: Set 2.5 feet apart for most horses.
• Trot poles: Set around 4 to 4.5 feet apart. Smaller-strided horses may need closer-set poles, while horses with a longer stride may need poles a little farther apart. Adjusting the distance between the poles can help your horse learn to collect or lengthen his stride. Try to avoid having only two trot poles in a row; your horse might think he is supposed to jump both in one go.
• Canter poles: Set around 9 to 11 feet. Like trot poles, the length of your horse’s stride can influence your placement.

Simple Eight-Pole Set Up

Place four trot poles and four canter poles on either end of a circle. Begin by trotting the whole loop.

Then ask your horse to canter through the canter poles and come back to a trot before the trot poles, and then canter again before the canter poles. See how accurate you can get your transitions.

Once your horse gets comfortable, try raising some of the trot poles to add difficulty.

Benefits of a Single Pole

Whether you jump or not, finding a distance to a single pole will help you learn your horse’s canter stride length and increase his adjustability. Sometimes it feels easier to find a distance to a larger jump, so breaking it back down to a single pole makes you check in on the details.

For greener horses, trotting a single pole helps build confidence and get them trusting their footwork.

Key Takeaway

Integrating ground poles into your horse’s training program can increase strength and flexibility, add variety, and sharpen response time. A useful tool for riders and trainers at level, pole work is worth adding to your routine.

This article about using ground poles in training appeared in the November/December 2023 issue of Horse Illustrated magazine. Click here to subscribe!

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At Next Level Eventing, Tamie Smith utilizes a physiotherapist, chiropractor, acupuncturist, PEMF, BEMER blankets, Revitavet, laser therapy, and other therapeutic resources to keep her horses in top shape.   

Jo-Ann Wilson, the United States Eventing Team sports therapist, helps riders and their grooms come up with an ideal therapy plan and makes sure to check in with the riders consistently, even though they are spread across the country. She works closely with Tamie to determine which therapies are best for her horses to keep them feeling and going their best.  

Keeping up with fitness and bodywork is not just important for Tamie’s horses, but for Tamie herself.  

“As I’ve gotten older, I’ve had to incorporate taking care of my body more,” she says. “I’m lucky that I’m a pretty fit, healthy person. I go to the gym three to five days a week in order to be good enough to be at the top of the sport.” 

While Tamie rides multiple horses daily, she says that riding alone is not enough to maintain the level of fitness she needs.  

“Most people would think that was enough,” says Tamie. “It absolutely is not. I do a lot of cardio work, like the Stairmaster. I do light weights but high reps. It’s mostly about keeping my cardio [fitness] and my muscles strong so that I can be in the best shape for my horses.” 

Eventing requires a strong partnership between horse and rider, and putting in the extra work off of the horse has clearly paid off for Tamie and her herd.  

This article about Tamie Smith’s approach to alternative therapies and fitness is a web exclusive for Horse Illustrated magazine’s “Next Level” series. Click here to subscribe!

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While Tamie Smith, winner of the 2023 Land Rover Kentucky Three-Day Event 5*, rides and competes in eventing on many types of horses, Thoroughbreds are one of her favorite breeds.

“So far, I haven’t had the honor of having a Thoroughbred that I could ride at the top level,” she says. “I’ve yearned to have [one] that can compete at the top of the sport.”

Tamie personally owns her own off-track Thoroughbred, named No App for That.

“I absolutely love him more than life, but he is not an easy individual,” she says. “I got him to the 4* level [but needed to] take him back down the levels. Now my assistant rider is riding him. But I always say there’s nothing better than a good Thoroughbred.”

Thoroughbreds and Bloodlines in Eventing

When picking horses, Tamie considers the amount of Thoroughbred they have in their breeding.

“I have selected a couple horses that I’m riding now that have much more Thoroughbred in them,” she says. “I’ve learned that is an important piece to being able to do this at the top of the sport.”

However, she says that the amount of Thoroughbred blood alone isn’t what makes an event horse successful (or not successful).

“I’ve seen full Thoroughbreds competing at the 3* eventing level that didn’t have the endurance to do 5*, or even 4* for that matter,” Tamie says. “So I think each horse is individual. I’ve had full Thoroughbreds be very appropriate for amateurs and even beginning riders. So it really depends on the personality of the horse.”

In 2023, five full Thoroughbreds were in attendance out of the 39 entries at the Land Rover Kentucky 5*, making them the third most represented breed. Three of the five began as racehorses, and are now thriving in their second career as event horses.

This article about Tamie Smith’s take on the importance of Thoroughbreds in eventing is a web exclusive for Horse Illustrated magazine’s “Next Level” series. Click here to subscribe!

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“I feel like it helped him with his overall base conditioning,” Tamie says. “He came out much stronger this year than he has in years past. I think of dressage like weightlifting. Dressage horses are more heavyweight builders than marathon runners. It helped him gain more muscle and strength, and I felt like that was such a great exercise for both of us.”

Tamie Smith competed through Grand Prix dressage as a junior, and strongly values the skills and refinement that dressage training brings to her event horses. She says that going back to the dressage ring with 18-year-old German Sport Horse gelding Mai Baum and finessing the refinement in their riding before amping up his fitness and galloping work for the eventing season pays off in their dressage scores.

If you have the chance to get on a dressage horse that already has lots of training, Tamie highly recommends doing so.

“If you get to sit on well-trained dressage horses, you’ll be able to take it over to your personal horse and try to emulate that same feel,” she says.

Tamie adds that learning “feel” is critical to becoming a top rider, and learning dressage is a key part in that.

She feels the days of being able to do well in the sport of eventing without a heavy focus on dressage are over. This mentality has kept dressage as a strong focus in both her own and her daughter’s riding careers. (Tamie’s oldest child, 27-year-old Kaylawna Smith-Cook, is also a professional rider.)

“When my daughter was growing up, I had her go work for my dressage trainer for three years and learn dressage,” says Tamie. “She rode through the Intermediate level, and you can see that in her foundation when you watch her ride now.”

While impeccable dressage is a requirement to finish at the top at the 5* level, clean and fast jumping is also a must. Tamie’s training program is clearly working, as she and Mai Baum finished on her dressage score of a 24.2 at Land Rover this year, jumping around both cross-country and show jumping clean and within the time. This put her into first place ahead of Tom McEwen (22.6 in dressage, 5.2 time penalties on cross country) and dressage-leader Yasmin Ingham (22.1 in dressage, 20 jump and 20 time penalties on cross-country).

This article about Tamie Smith’s approach to dressage is a web exclusive for Horse Illustrated magazine’s “Next Level” series. Click here to subscribe!

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Tamie Smith, winner of the 2023 Land Rover Kentucky Three-Day Event CCI5 aboard the 18-year-old German Sport Horse gelding Mai Baum, tailors her fitness and conditioning program to each horse to focus on their specific needs and goals.

“Going into a top five star, I would be galloping typically every four to five days,” she says. “We have wonderful mountains in our area [Temecula Calif.], so I have access to probably the best gallop that I’ve been able to find in the whole country.”

She explains that having hilly terrain is paramount to being able to get her horses’ heart rates up, especially the non-Thoroughbred horses. The steep inclines test the horses’ hearts and lungs without putting unnecessary wear and tear on them.

For the horses at the lower levels, Tamie does a lot of pole and cavaletti work to get their heart rates up. This works on their rideability, while also improving their endurance.

Once a week, Tamie aims to take her horses for a trot-hack, which she finds extremely beneficial.

“We have all kinds of different types of footing, like a river bed, hard-packed road, uneven slopes, and whatnot,” she says. “I take the horses out and just play and just get them through all the different types of footing. I think that that’s really important for their bones and their tendons and ligaments.”

As far as recovery for the horses coming off of big events, Tamie always gives them ample time off.

“For instance, Mai Baum came home after Kentucky and got three weeks in a field of doing nothing,” she says. “I try to leave them out there to just be horses and let their legs and bodies recoup. During those three weeks, we would go over him to make sure that there’s been no new injuries or anything that might have popped up after a competition—typically if you’re going to have some sort of small injury, it might show up a few weeks after.”

For all of Tamie horses, she tries to give the whole month of November and into the start of December off. The older horses go on hacks to keep muscle and fitness intact, and all of the horses are checked on. Otherwise, they get a chance to just be horses and enjoy some time off.

This article about Tamie Smith’s fitness and conditioning approach is a web exclusive for Horse Illustrated magazine’s “Next Level” series. Click here to subscribe!

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