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“My idea was to help young professionals who are struggling by providing them with good guidance, mentoring and opportunities,” Katie Prudent tells World of Showjumping about her brainchild and initiative ‘Road To The Top’. “Laura Kraut and Beezie Madden are helping me out, and as time goes on, I believe more of our top professionals will be joining in.”

“We have many great amateur riders with good horses, but our pool of young professionals coming up has dwindled a bit because of the costs of the sport,” Prudent explains further about the background of the project.

In Kraut and Madden, Prudent – herself a team gold medalist from the 1986 World Championships – has two of the world’s most accomplished riders helping her.  

“It's sort of a passion of ours,” Laura Kraut says. “As I get older, I know that eventually I'm going to be phasing out. I'm excited and want to help someone that really, really wants this.”

“I think that, especially in the United States, the costs of trying to develop as a young professional are so high that it’s a real barrier for some of these up-and-coming riders,” Beezie Madden tells World of Showjumping. “The goal is to try to find some of the talent that we might be missing out on just because they don't have the means to find their way to the top. We try to bring some of that talent along in a way that they can then go on themselves; we bring them far enough that they can be able to manage their own careers and have their own stables in the future.”

“It's a mentorship program and we're doing it through fundraising,” Prudent explains about the structure of the 'Road To The Top'. “The foundation covers the expenses of three horses for each rider, while we as mentors don't charge anything for the training. The foundation covering the horses’ expenses allows these riders to stay on the road and show all summer with us.”

“I'm hoping to help some young professionals and hopefully they will be able to get in the limelight at some of the bigger competitions and get sponsors of their own,” Prudent continues. “It's a long road to find someone who will actually then provide these riders with top horses, possibly Olympic horses. This is just the beginning of their opportunity to sort of get to the top.”

“We felt that there was a need to help the next generation of hopefully the most talented Olympic level riders by mentoring and by assisting with the financial end of it,” Kraut weighs in. “As everyone knows, the sport is expensive. What we do is that we source three horses for each rider, and cover the costs. We don’t buy horses and we don't have horses donated to the program, but we have people who contribute by perhaps sending us a young horse or maybe someone just has a horse that they want to have trained and ridden by a very good rider with no cost to them. It's sort of a win-win situation; for the owner of the horse as they have no expenses and for the rider it's an opportunity to get experience on a new horse. We've been very fortunate with some very generous people who have believed in this program right from the start, and we're hoping that with some success more people will come on board.”

Providing young talents with an opportunity to compete with several horses is at the heart of the initiative. “I think the more horses a young rider can ride, the better it is for them – and they should not only be sitting on easy horses,” Prudent points out. “They've got to ride the young horses, strong and spooky horses… Every different type of horse teaches a rider something more and riding as many horses as possible is needed in the process of learning to become a great rider.”  

“They're not getting five-star horses,” Kraut says. “They're hopefully getting lots of different kinds of horses so that they get the experience to become well-rounded.”

“Riders have to apply, explain why they want to join our program, detail how committed they are, and send us videos,” Prudent tells about the selection process. “They need references from several professionals describing their abilities and their work ethic. I want people who have already decided that the horse business is all they want to do for the rest of their lives. From there on, we can take them far – but they have to be totally dedicated.”

“It's easy to spot talent; it's harder to spot ambition, determination, work ethic and intelligence,” Kraut points out. “All of those things are what ultimately makes a top horse-person.”

“The riders that are really submerged into the program will probably be in it for a minimum of two years, the obvious goal being that they become five-star riders and go to Nations Cups and hopefully Olympics and other championships,” Kraut explains. “It's hard to put an exact timeframe on it. We have only been active for a year, so we're learning how to navigate the ins and outs of doing this, but so far, we're very happy with the riders that we have.”

“In the U.S., one of the things that breaks my heart is to see American owners owning horses for riders from other countries,” Prudent concludes. “I would like to develop a pool of young professionals coming along so that when there is an owner who aspires to have a rider maybe go to the Olympics or some of the championships, they will look within this American pool of riders and not go to other countries. That would be my goal.”

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