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Kent Farrington

From Pony Racer to World

Show Jumping Number One

Always ambitious and a goal-setter, Kent is a top-notch manager of both people and horses. As a kid, he got involved in pony racing, and his love of speed is reflected today in winning jump-offs, motorcycles, and fast sports cars.

“I don’t know that you’ll meet another person in the world who can plan and execute better than Kent Farrington. He’s so smart,” said Laura Kraut, who has ridden with Kent on Nations Cup teams.

Kent’s first instructor, Nancy Whitehead, took him to a George Morris clinic, where that master trainer saw his talent and loaned him horses to ride in Florida. During Kent’s equitation days, when he won the 1998 hunt seat Medal finals and the championship at the Washington International Horse Show, he worked with trainer Andre Dignelli. Kent earned team gold in the North American Young Riders Championship, then turned down offers of college scholarships to apprentice with Olympic medalists Tim Grubb and Leslie Howard before starting his own business.

Although horses are his profession, he is multi-faceted. While he has no formal training in architecture, Kent has bought, designed, and sold a number of equestrian properties, in addition to laying out his own much-admired farm in Wellington, Florida.

Kent earned a berth on the United States’ 2014 FEI World Equestrian Games Team, where he was part of the bronze medal effort with Voyeur. In 2016, he realized his long-held dream of competing at the Olympics, where he rode the same horse to a team silver medal and finished fifth individually.

Someone of Kent’s determination can handle whatever comes his way. When he broke his leg in a fall from a horse during the 2018 Winter Equestrian Festival, he made recovery his mission and worked out rigorously to come back and be competitive three months later.

A master of “diversified risk,” Kent has assembled a string of horses with different owners, so he isn’t reliant on one or two. His mounts over the years have included Madison, the 2005 American Grand Prix Association Horse of the Year, Up Chiqui; Gazelle, Uceko, Creedance, and many more. His propensity for planning paid off in a big way when he became the number-one-ranked show jumper in the world in 2017, earning the Longines FEI World’s Best Jumping Rider Award.

Opportunities to be with horses were few where I grew up in Chicago, so I started riding at a carriage horse stable after I was inspired by a photo of my mother, Lynda, riding a horse in Wisconsin. We soon moved my riding activities to a farm outside the city where my sister, Kim, and I got our first pony, Samantha, on Christmas. I was thinking about the Olympics even then.

After joining Pony Club, I got involved in pony racing. I wanted to be a jockey at first, but when I got too big for that, I focused on equitation and show jumping. My mother traded three used computers for my first horse, MVP No. 4.

Although my father wanted me to go to college, I’m doing what I want to be doing. I don’t think I’d be happy sitting behind a desk. I worked with Tim Grubb and Leslie Howard after graduating from high school. After 18 months with Leslie, she encouraged me to start my own business. She told me she thought I had a lot of talent…but that I wasn’t a great employee!

It was a little sooner than I expected. I was only 21, but you have to take the opportunities you have, make the most of them, and step up to the plate. It’s one thing to question what you’re doing. It’s another to question yourself. I try not to do that too much.

Even from his pony racing days, Kent Farrington was determined to be a winner and let nothing stand in the way of an ambition that eventually would take him to the world Number One ranking.

Whenever anybody asks about my most significant Grand Prix victory, I always say that it was winning my first five-star in 2006 with Madison. It was the final Grand Prix in Wellington that season and the only five-star show at that time in America. That was sort of a catalyst for my career. I brought Madison up from when she was young, and she also was the first horse I rode on the U.S. team.

It was important for me after Madison that I was able to follow her with another top horse. That would be Up Chiqui, who won many classes. The best show jumpers in the world are consistently riding different horses. That’s a sign of somebody who can do the sport and isn’t a one-horse wonder.

I’m trying to be at the top of my game at all times. A lot of things have to come together to win a particular event. For me, what I do is more about being consistent at the top of the sport. Over time, your number is going to come up, and it’s going to be your day to win. To focus solely on one particular event is a difficult way to approach our sport, because so many things are out of your control.

At the 2014 FEI World Equestrian Games in Normandy, France, Kent Farrington was part of the bronze medal squad with Voyeur on his first global championship team.

What is under your control is managing the horses and having people around you to support them. What you have to do is plan on being ready for opportunity when it comes your way.

I always own at least a piece of my horses. I’m a big believer in investing in yourself. No one wants it more than me. It says a lot when I’m going to put everything I have into my own career. I make my plan with what I think is best for the horses I have at that time and what I can do to win the most. I’ve tried to do that my whole career.

Kent Farrington’s vision of riding for an Olympic medal came true at the Rio Games in 2016, when he and Voyeur were on the silver medal team, and he came close to an individual medal, finishing fifth.

There are two things I try not to do—be boastful or live in regret—because they’re both a waste of time. I take the positive and go forward; learn from the experience of what did go well, recognize what didn’t, and keep moving. I have an interest in making something that functions well, and going to shows around the world is a dream for me.

Recovering from a broken leg in 2018 made me stronger and more confident in the decisions I make about what I want and don’t want to do with my career. I really realized how much I wanted to ride and love my sport. When you’re away from what you like to do for a long time, you dream about it all the time, and you realize how much you miss it.

In any sport, you raise your level of competitiveness by competing against the best people in the world on a consistent basis. Your skills are only going to rise as high as your competitors force them to rise. By constantly challenging yourself against the best, you’re going to improve. When I have a question, I go to the professional who I think would be most helpful in that particular area. I try to ask someone who has a lot more experience than I do, someone like an Ian Millar, who has done the sport at a high level for more than 40 years. He’s been everywhere and seen everything more than once.

McLain Ward is a good friend. Because I didn’t have McLain’s professional horse background (both McLain’s parents were in the industry) he was always someone I had to catch up with. That’s been the challenge for me since I was a kid, starting way behind from where he started. As you get older, the age gap narrows; we’ve become good friends, and we rely on each other for insight or if we have a question about training or a course. That’s part of what makes great competition. You want your friends and everybody to go at their best.

We’ve ridden on a bunch of teams together. We have a similar competitive mindset. I’m always happy when he does well, and he’s always happy when I do well. I think we both take it from a very professional angle. We try to leave no stone unturned. We lose sometimes because we’re trying to beat each other and not paying attention to what some of the others are doing. But it’s a great rivalry; it makes us both better.

These days, there’s a lot more money in the sport than there used to be, and I think that’s great. It obviously draws more attention and raises the level of sport from what used to be a sort of hobby sport into a professional sport.

To be number one at least once in my career is great; more for my team than for everybody else. They work really hard, long hours. It’s a job of passion more than a job for a salary. To know we made it to a place where we were at the top of the world at one time is a great thing for team morale, more than anything else.