Tamie Smith: Taking It To The Next Level

Mother, grandmother, and winning 5* eventing rider—these three titles don’t typically go together. However, Tamie Smith, 49, is all of the above.

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!