Tamie Smith and Danito. Photo by Shannon Brinkman Photography.
It’s been two years since we last saw Ruth Bley’s Danito with Tamie Smith here at Defender Kentucky. The 17-year-old Hanoverian gelding (Dancier – Wie Musik) has a long tenure in the sport, earning accolades like a second-place finish at the Maryland 5 Star in 2022 and a top 10 individual finish in the FEI Eventing Nations Cup at Military Boekelo CCI4*-L in 2021. The 2023 and 2024 seasons were quieter for “Cheeto” (he has a lot of barn names, to be honest, but this one’s my favorite) due to some injuries, but now Tamie’s brought him along on her East coast tour which includes nearly 20+ other horses between herself and her students.
Now, he’s shown back up at Kentucky, competing in the Cosequin Lexington CCI4*-S (also a US Equestrian Open qualifier) where he’s taken the early lead with a score of 27.0 from judges Christina Klingspor (SWE) and Robyn Fisher (USA).
Tamie Smith and Danito. Photo by Shannon Brinkman Photography.
“It’s been rewarding to have the horses all be firing on the right thing, and I’m feeling really confident with how they’re all going,” Tamie said of her big trip East, with hopes to potentially take some horses to Europe this summer. “[Danito] was super today. He is an old showman, and it’s fun to have him because he’s kind of my little flashy dressage horse that kind of stepped in right behind Mai Baum. Danito actually had a bit of a hot shoe nail this week, which meant Tamie wasn’t able to ride him in ring familiarization or schooling prior to today while he recovered from that. Today, she got on for her pre-ride and felt as if he hadn’t missed a single beat.
“I pre-rode him this morning and I’m like, ‘He’s trained. He knows.’ And so you hope that you have that in the horses that you produce, and it’s the work that just keeps going all the way to the ring, and it’s just all the basics that are really strong, and then he has such a good mind. He loves to show off, and you kind of want that in a horse that is competing, so he was so proud of himself coming out of the ring.”
Tommy Greengard and That’s Me Z. Photo by Shannon Brinkman Photography.
California is well-represented in the standings after day one, with Bay Area-based Tommy Greengard slotting into second with his own and Andrea Pfeiffer’s That’s Me Z. That’s Me Z (Take a Chance On Me Z – Veneita) is a horse that’s truly been produced through the U.S development pipeline, starting in the USEA Young Event Horse program — he was the overall 2022 USEA Young Event Horse champion — and earning the Turner/Holekamp YEH Le Lion d’Angers Grant to compete at the FEI Eventing Young Horse Breeding World Championships in 2024, where he finished in the top 20 as a 7-year-old. Now 9, the Zangersheide gelding continues to shine, winning last year’s Adequan Advanced Championship at the 2025 USEA American Eventing Championships at Galway Downs.
This trip for Tommy, for which he brought along two horses for the CCI4*-S, including Galway Downs spring FEI winner Balladeer Kilbrickens Lad, is all about building for the future. He spent a year abroad riding with Tim and Jonelle Price, an experience he still says he’s learning from and applying to his own system.
“I think the biggest thing is that there are no tricks at the top and [it’s more about] just making sure no stone is left unturned, and that the basics are really established,” Tommy told me earlier this year about what he learned with the Prices. “I think that was one of the big things about that program — you can train and school in a way for success at the upper levels, and as the horses go up the grade, it’s very straightforward to them. And they have such a system and such a way of doing it — that was my biggest thing I tried to take away from it, is just how to look at things systematically and how to implement that.”
That paid off well for Tommy today, as he noted that the foundational work That’s Me Z has done in his short but successful career thus far really matters when the moment gets bigger.
“He is Mr. Consistency,” Tommy said. “He has very little sense of occasion in the best way possible, so he kind of was happy to go in the ring and perform and do the work. He’s very reliable in getting comfortable at the level now, and is getting a little stronger, which is exciting. He has a little more capability to move around the ring with a little more fluency and a little more step, which is new this year. But he is so dependable, and that’s a really nice thing as the rider. Because the training at home looks very similar to the training before the show, which looks similar in the ring. And that gives you confidence as the rider.”
Dan Kreitl and Carmango. Photo by Shannon Brinkman Photography.
Third on day one in the CCI4*-S are Indiana natives Dan Kreitl and Kay Dixon’s Carmango (Chirivell – Taramanga), navigating to a score of 32.0. The 13-year-old Westphalian gelding had a quiet year in 2025 after an injury was picked up at Boekelo in October of 2024, but now it’s all systems go for another season of eventing for Dan, who rides as an amateur and runs a real estate company as his primary career.
“After Carmango was injured, the vets kind of thought he wouldn’t event again,” Dan said. When the gelding came sound again, he competed in pure dressage up to the Intermediare level — but Dan’s (and “Fritz’s) heart lives in eventing, and I think they were both eager to get back at it. In the wake of the injury and subsequent rehab, Dan’s backed off the training intensity slightly, using a treadmill instead of more gallops for fitness and focusing a lot on the flatwork instead of the constant cross country schooling (the horse’s strongest phase).
“So our program is very different,” Dan said. “I’m not going to do as many gallop sets that I used to do when he was a younger horse, and I’m always worried about his fitness, but he’s always been quite fit. So I was probably overdoing maybe some of it on the fitness work.”
Balancing a family, a full-time job as an entrepreneur and competing at the upper levels is no mean feat. “Yeah, it is always a juggling act,” Dan said. “We have a college student housing business, that’s my full-time job. Then I have a friend that helps groom, and we have our routine in the morning, so I get through the horses, and then get straight on to work. My wife’s not a horse person, but she’s been really supportive — for the most part! — and with this sport, it takes a lot of time, so, it is hard balancing it, but I mean lots of people lots of people have lots of things to balance, so we just figure it out once step at a time.”
We also saw the first of the British Young Rider contingent today, with 22-year-old Finn Healy doing his dressage with Greannanstown Monbeg Joe (K.E.C. Maximum Joe – OBOS Jennifer), scoring a 35.8 for 12th place early on. Finn, along with Elizabeth Barrett and Isabelle Cook, are a part of a new initiative called GB Rising Lions, which provides funding and opportunities for young and developing riders to compete internationally. We don’t usually see any international entries in the CCI4*-S here — there is such a bevy of equal caliber competitions overseas, that the cost is undoubtedly not typically worthwhile to come over to the U.S. — which makes this weekend that much more exciting. Also of note is that Ride for Thais Chaman Dumontceau, a horse ridden by French rider Stephane Landois to a team silver medal at the Paris Olympics in 2024, is now with Elizabeth Barrett so we’ll get to see this special horse tomorrow.
We’re likely to see a slightly updated leaderboard tomorrow as we still have plenty of big swingers left to come. We’ll see rides from some serious contenders like Alyssa Phillips (inaugural CCI4*-S winner back in 2021) with the rising star Rockett 19, Sharon White with Claus 63, Will Coleman with Very Dignified, Mia Farley with Invictus and Carolina International winners Tamie Smith and Lillet 3 — all capable of threatening this current top 3, and of course, you never know who will have a banner day and surprise us all! We’ll have to stay tuned to find out more.
CCI5* dressage begins today at 1:30 p.m. EST, and we’ll have our traditional live blog running with Cheg Darlington here on EN. You can also find links to follow along below. I’ll be back later with some updates from the first day of CCI5* competition.
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