The Thoroughbred has long been a hallmark within the sport of eventing, but as the sport has evolved we’ve seen a shift to horses with, yes, strong Thoroughbred blood but with additional influence from various warmblood lines. With the removal of the dressage coefficient in 2018, the sport went through another evolution. The standard was higher, the scores were tighter, and the Thoroughbred once more stood out as one of the best types of horses an eventer could have on cross country.
A few Thoroughbreds feature on the entry list for this week’s FEI Eventing World Championships at Aachen (Germany) and one of those is ridden by Jillian Giessen, making her Worlds debut for the Netherlands this week with the 13-year-old Australian Thoroughbred gelding Seattle Park (Reset – Sealers Cove x Brief Truce).
Jillian hasn’t historically ridden many Thoroughbreds. While in the UK working for British five-star rider Andrew Downes, she had the “golden” opportunity to team up with his four-star Thoroughbred, Gold Nugget. This gave her the chance to gain valuable experience at her first four-star events; the pair competed in the CCI4*-L at Blenheim in 2023 and spent the better part of two seasons together.
Photo by Tilly Berendt.
These days, Jillian works as a rider for Lips Stables, the home base of Dutch father-son duo Martin and Tim Lips. Martin, she described, is a massive fan of, in particular, Australian Thoroughbreds.
“He used to ride Thoroughbreds from Australia and New Zealand,” Jillian said. “And of course Tim had his horse, Keyflow, who took him around a lot of big courses. So they are big fans of the Thoroughbred.”
It was a happenstance run-in with Australian rider Sophia Hill (who’s also competing here, on her Thoroughbred Humble Glory, at Aachen this week) at Bicton a few years back that made the first connection to Seattle Park. The gelding had competed up to the four-star level with Sophia, and she’d brought him over from Australia with her as she prepped Humble Glory for the Paris Olympics, in case she was called up to the team from the long list.
Jillian and “Basil” earned a 33.6 in their World Championships debut dressage. Photo by Tilly Berendt.
“Martin said to her, ‘if you ever want to sell one of your Australian Thoroughbreds, you can call me,’” Jillian continued. “And she called, and we ended up trying ‘Basil’ as we call him. So that’s how he ended up in our stable. I’m really, really happy that I could have the opportunity to ride such a super horse. And I mean, I think he’s really loved because she saw him for the first time here again, and she had a cry. I thought that was really sweet.”
Forming a partnership with a horse who had gone four-star with another rider isn’t an easy task, but luckily Seattle Park came with a full instruction manual: “It was really kind of Sophia to send me a whole list of what she did and what she wouldn’t do and what she like liked to do,” Jillian described with a laugh. “I tried to just take that as much as possible in the whole routine because I really believe with a horse like that you cannot just change anything. I read the list really thoroughly. I was like, ‘okay, this I should do, this not.’ She’s like, ‘he doesn’t like to be alone,’ so okay, I never go somewhere alone. It was really sweet of her, and it actually really helped me a lot. So I just tried to slowly take him into our system, but actually, he’s one horse that really has like his system around him. He’s the king of the stable, and he knows it.”
Photo by Tilly Berendt.
Now, Jillian is along for the ride with a horse who’s now taken her to her first senior Championship. Previously, Jillian had competed in the Pony European Championships back in 2015, so this next step is a big one for the 26-year-old. And to do it with a horse she’s built such a partnership with, after years of selling on horses or riding other people’s horses, makes it all the more impactful.
“He’s really, really special,” she said. “I think we took our time to get a partnership, and I think he really has a partnership with me, and I really have a partnership with him. I love him to bits, and I sometimes think he loves me too — he looks happy out of the stable when I’m coming, so I hope that’s also due to me.”
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