Karen O’Neal and Clooney 14. Photo by Emma Gray for Atalya Boytner Photography.
Washington-based Karen O’Neal has been waiting a long time for this Defender Kentucky week.
When Karen heads down the centerline at Kentucky for her first CCI5* with Annika Asling’s Clooney 14, it will mark the arrival of a dream that’s been with her since she was a kid — even if the road there has taken a little longer, and a few more twists, than she might have imagined at 10 or 11 years old.
“I was pretty hooked,” Karen said of discovering eventing as a kid in Arizona. “I was pretty sucked in and wanted to go to the top of the sport.”
That goal never really went away, but like it does for so many riders, life filled in around it. Karen built her career the long way: producing horses, teaching, building a business, and raising three children, all while keeping one eye on the upper levels. There were good horses along the way, and there were also hard breaks — horses lost, horses sold, and opportunities that slipped out of reach. Still, she kept plugging along.
Now, with Clooney, the timing has finally come right. The 12-year-old Westphalian gelding, owned by Annika, has been part of Karen’s life since he arrived from Germany as a three-year-old. Annika had initially purchased him for herself, and Karen was there from the beginning.
“She bought him. We shipped him over. He was three,” Karen said. “She did all the groundwork, and I rode him.”
Karen O’Neal and Clooney 14 win at Aspen Farms in 2023. Photo by Cortney Drake Photography.
At first, the plan was never necessarily this upcoming CCI5*. Karen started Clooney with the idea that Annika would eventually have the ride, but as life evolved, so did the arrangement. Annika started a family, Karen rode the horse more and more, and eventually, as Karen put it, Annika said, “Why don’t you just see where you can take him?” Famous last words, Karen joked.
What followed has been the kind of partnership that feels especially satisfying because it was built, not bought ready-made. Karen has said Clooney was never the obvious, push-button type. In fact, part of what makes this week meaningful is that she did not always know he would turn into a horse for this level.
“I never thought he was brave enough to do what he does,” she said. “But he just kept getting better and better. He’s taught me a lot too — not to force it with him, just to train him and teach him the things that he needs to do.”
For Karen, who has produced mostly Thoroughbreds through the levels, Clooney also represented a different kind of ride. The adjustment was not just technical, but philosophical. “He’s really taught me to go a little slower, to figure things out and get him to understand things,” Karen said. “And once he does, he’s pretty solid.”
Karen comes into Kentucky off a confidence-building prep run at Twin Rivers, where her focus was less on fireworks and more on feel. After a tack malfunction at Galway earlier this spring shook both horse and rider, she wanted one thing above all else: a safe, solid run that put them both back on sure footing.
Karen O’Neal and Clooney 14. Photo by Tina Fitch Photography.
“It shook both of us, I think, a little bit,” Karen said of the malfunction, which involved a broken breastplate. “I just wanted to get around, be safe. My plan was to have a competent, very safe run, and just get both of us back in top shape for the trip to Kentucky.”
That practical mindset feels very Karen. There is no sense of rushing the moment or pretending the significance of it all somehow erases the work. If anything, the work is the story.
Karen has spent years balancing riding with the rest of her life. She has a busy teaching program, a family, and “an amazing husband,” Jeff, who travels to shows with her and helps make the whole machine run. Back home, there’s even an Airbnb business in the mix. For a long time, her own biggest riding ambitions shared space with everything and everyone else who needed her.
“I think for a while, I raised three kids and put myself on the back burner,” Karen said. Now, with her three kids all of adult age (and even her daughter, Patience, is an active rider who frequently pitches in to help teach and ride), “I think I got to focus more on myself and my riding. I think I were fortunate to always have clients and a lot of people in my program, but when [my kids] kind of had their own lives, I was able to focus more on my own riding.”
That is part of what makes this Kentucky debut resonate beyond just another rookie stat line. Karen is coming here as a rider who stayed with it, who kept building, kept teaching, kept riding, kept believing.
And now, she says, she’s living out something her younger self absolutely would have recognized.
“I think I am,” she mused, when asked if this is the life she once pictured for herself. “It’s pretty much everything I wanted to do.”
There is something especially fitting, too, about the horse carrying her there. Clooney was not an overnight made horse, nor is he a quick-fix answer. He was a young horse Karen helped shape from the beginning, one who has taken time to mature and time to understand the job. “I just feel like he’s starting to understand it all,” she described.
Now the pair will take that understanding to Kentucky, where the atmosphere is bigger, the questions are tougher, and the margin for error is slimmer than ever. Karen is well aware of what the week represents, but she also has a refreshingly simple answer for what she’s looking forward to most.
“The thing I’m most looking forward to is the show jumping,” she chuckled. “Then I know I made it there.”
For Karen, this week is about ambition, certainly. But it is also about longevity, timing, and the satisfaction of arriving at a moment after earning every inch of the road to it. With Annika’s trust, Clooney’s steady rise, and a lifetime’s worth of work behind her, Karen will finally get her shot at the level she has been chasing since she was a little girl who got hooked and never really let go.
EN’s coverage of Defender Kentucky is supported by Kentucky Performance Products, your one-stop shop for all the science-backed nutritional support your horse needs. Learn more about KPP here.
