Coming into the Thoroughbred Makeover I couldn’t have been much more confident in where I was with Maverick. Our final run the week before at Stable View had gone just about perfectly with a fifth-place finish in the Beginner Novice only adding two rails in stadium — one of which was definitely my fault — and a couple speed faults on cross country. Most importantly, down there he was so bold and confident out on cross country and gave me a great feeling coming into the makeover.

A bright future for Maverick. (Courtesy of Jordan Sigmon)

The weather on check-in day was definitely a big factor. Since he had already been showing at the Kentucky Horse Park all summer, I elected to just ship him over for the check-in exam and then bring him back to the farm in hopes of catching a break in the rain to ride that never came. Wednesday morning I gave him a couple hours of turnout and a pre-ride at the farm before taking him over to the horse park in time to get braided before we did our Dressage division in the afternoon.

I can’t say enough good things about how lovely he was for both of his Dressage tests. His training level test was by far our most accurate and relaxed test to date, and he definitely seemed to appreciate the extra space of having the large arena. In our demo ride, he was able to show off some of the lateral movements we’ve been working on as well as a lovely medium trot and medium canter each direction. Both rides earned very respectable scores and lovely comments from the judges.

Thursday was our main focus, with that being the day we did the Eventing division. He put in another lovely dressage test in the morning, earning the equivalent to about a 30.6 in eventing-land, which would be his best score to date. It was so nice to feel all of the hard work we’ve put in on the flat coming to fruition. By then end of it though, I could tell he was definitely starting to think I’d lost my mind and brought him to a straight Dressage show.

Our jumping portion in the afternoon was by far what we were both looking forward to the most, and at the end of the day it honestly went exceptionally well, minus the 45 seconds that meant we finished the weekend on a letter instead of a number. He warmed up better than he ever has and was definitely more than ready to jump out of the start box, something I was really happy to feel as it shows he’s really starting to understand his job and enjoys it.

The five show jumps at the beginning were probably the best five show jumps he’s strung together since we’ve been competing. After that, we kicked right on into the cross-country phase and his ears pricked right up. He gave me such a great feeling over all of the jumps on the first half and popped off of the drop brilliantly. Unfortunately, he decided the ditch was not his cup of tea on the day, which was really hard for me as it’s something we’ve spent a lot of time working on and I thought we had solved. Though we did not make it over the ditch, the organizers did let us finish the course which was great for both of us to end on a positive note, and of course he finished up brilliantly just as he had started.

Sigmon with Maverick at the makeover. (Hannah Lujbli/Erin Gilmore Photography)

Looking back, it’s definitely really frustrating to have that moment at the one show of the year you really wanted everything to go right, even more so when I got his score sheets and saw he was well on his way to earning a score that would’ve gotten us to the championships up to that point, but such is life with horses … always keeping us humble.

In the moment, it also reiterated to me how important it is to have the right people around you when things go right, but even more so when things go wrong. Walking back toward where everyone had come to watch, I knew I was too frustrated to talk to everyone in that moment, so I veered away from them and my trainer, Morgan Houberg, followed. It was so important for me in that moment to have someone that could understand exactly what I was going through as a rider, and one of the first things she did was to tell me that I did nothing wrong and reminded me I’m still a good rider.

I think most of us that do this sport are wired in a similar way. It’s so easy to jump straight to doubting yourself when things don’t go well, so having the support of someone that gets it in that moment made all the difference. There were definitely a few tears on the way back but by the time we got back to the barn we were already cracking jokes and making a plan to take home with us.

The next day we went for a little cross-country school at Clearview Farm and, of course, he popped right over the ditch there like it was nothing. While it made the sting of the day before a little sharper in the moment, it did make me feel a lot better about the future. He’ll go for one more run at Virginia Horse Trials this coming weekend to finish the year on a good note and then rest up before heading down to Florida after the first of the year.

Since the Thoroughbred Makeover, I’ve been working on putting together a video of our journey — from the eight-second video I bought him off of until now — and it really was so cool for me to watch it all back from the beginning and see how far we have come.  

So, while the result ultimately wasn’t what I hoped it would be, at the end of the day I had a week full of really big positives with just a small moment of bad sandwiched in the middle. I’m so grateful for this journey that we’ve been on over the past year. It’s brought us to a new barn family that I definitely could not have done any of it without, and I think we still have a pretty bright future ahead of us.

The Jockey Club supports many aftercare initiatives including the Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance, the only accrediting body in aftercare, and Thoroughbred Incentive Program (T.I.P.), which encourages the retraining of Thoroughbreds into other disciplines upon completion of careers. View all of the initiatives supported by The Jockey Club.