All About the Journey
By Pam Gleason
For Lindsey Holleger, the discipline of dressage is more about the journey than the destination.
“I could go buy a Grand Prix horse and show, but I want to make the horses myself,” she said. “To me, the process is such a beautiful thing. If you take them from the very beginning and develop them all the way to the end, that’s incredible. You know the horse so well, and the horse knows you so well, you have a true partnership. To me, that is what it is about.”
Lindsey, 29, is a dressage professional who set up her own business in Aiken in early 2024. Her parents, Dayle and Roger Holleger, had moved from south Georgia to Aiken’s Bridle Creek development a few years earlier, and Lindsey, like her parents, felt instantly at home in the area. She initially bought six acres in Bridle Creek, but when she realized what kind of training facility she wanted to have, she knew she needed more space. Accordingly, she sold the Bridle Creek property, and she and her fiancé, Jacob Harper, bought a 20-acre parcel in the new Mill Race Farms subdivision in the Route 302 equestrian corridor east of town. There, they are building a 16-stall barn with an arena, a round pen, and plenty of paddock and pasture space.
“I didn’t plan it this way, but since we bought there, my assistant’s boyfriend bought land next door, and then Jacob’s parents bought 18 acres on the other side, and a client of mine bought 35 acres across the street, and another client is possibly buying more land next to her. It’s turning into a whole little community,” she said.
Horses were in Lindsey’s life from the beginning. Both of parents ride: her mother Dayle was an eventer in her youth but switched to dressage after Lindsey was born. Her father Roger rode western, did a little eventing, and then became a Civil War reenactor, acting as a cavalryman. Lindsey herself was born in England in the town of Harrogate, North Yorkshire where the family lived for Roger’s job in the telecommunications industry. She had her first little Shetland pony there when she was about 18 months old, and later, when the family relocated to Budapest, Hungary, she had her earliest show experiences when her mother took her in leadline classes.
“My mother told my father that she would go anywhere as long as she could have a horse,” Lindsey said. “When we moved to Hungary, she said, fine, as long as I can bring a European warmblood back with me.” When the family went to live in Georgia five years later, Dayle imported a Bavarian warmblood mare named Luna, and to this day has one of Luna’s foals.
While Lindsey was growing up, the family lived on a farm in tiny Cairo, Georgia. Together, Dayle and Lindsey traveled three and a half hours to Wellborn, Florida to take lessons with Erin Brinkman, an FEI dressage trainer. At 13, Lindsey got the first horse she would bring to the FEI levels, a 7-year-old Trakehner she called Fenway (properly Friedensfürst). He was already starting Second Level and he had talent, but the price was right because his vetting was not good, and he had an unfortunate tendency to buck people off. It was a good match: if there ever was a 13-year-old girl with the grit and determination to help him realize his potential, it was Lindsey.
“I don’t even really know how it happened, but I just fell in love with dressage,” said Lindsey. “I was so into it. I would come home from school and I would go out in the backyard and practice. I would watch videos of my idols online, and then I would go out and try to do what I saw. I remember one video in particular of Edward Gal – it wasn’t even a famous video of a competition or anything. It was really just him warming up a horse, and the horse was super relaxed and long and low and carrying himself beautifully. And I would go outside and try to see if I could recreate that feeling.”
Lindsey was equally serious about her lessons with Erin Brinkman in Florida. She and her mother might make the trip once a month, and Lindsey would take each lesson to heart. Then in the weeks at home, she would practice what she learned with such intensity that when she returned for the next lesson, she would be levels beyond where she was a month earlier.
“Erin taught me so much,” said Lindsey. “She taught me about throughness and suppleness and how to really pay attention to what the horses are saying.”
All the hard work and practicing paid off in the show ring. Lindsey and Fenway competed and won in the young rider divisions, earning team medals in the North American Junior/Young Rider Championships as well as the individual gold medal in 2013. She also won the Global Dressage Festival junior individual championship in 2016 and multiple USDF regional championships. “I learned so much from Fenway and I owe him a lot,” she said.
By the time Lindsey graduated from high school, her fate was sealed: she knew that she wanted to be a professional dressage trainer. Her father counseled her that she needed to go to college to have a backup plan, and so she attended Florida State University in Tallahassee where she studied international affairs. Her professional career had already started: Julie Whitfield, a local breeder, gave her several quality horses to train, compete and sell, all of which which she did with success. She also spent time as a working student for Erin Brinkman and Jodie Kelly, an FEI rider in Destin, Florida.
While still in college, Lindsey moved to Charlotte, North Carolina to be with Jacob (who has a career in the automobile industry) and a goal of establishing her own business. She was there only a few months, however, when she was offered a job she could not refuse: assistant trainer at Maplewood Warmbloods in Middletown, New York, a prestigious facility owned by Jen Vanover that produces elite dressage horses. There, she was given the job of starting the young horses. Then, about 10 months later, the head trainer left, and Lindsey took over the top position. The horses were wonderful, but the pressure was intense.
“In the beginning, I had five horses in training. By the end, it was closer to 20,” she said. “We had to get creative with the scheduling, but we had a really, really good run. The horses were lovely.” During her time at Maplewood, Lindsey says they qualified horses for the Markel/USEF Young and Developing Horse National Championships over 20 times. They also took multiple contenders to the Festival of Champions and had three named to the USEF Young Horse Emerging program. Additionally, Lindsey produced and showed many horses to USDF Horse of the Year titles at different levels. Her talent and dedication was recognized with prestigious grants and awards, such as The Dressage Foundation Anne Ramsey Grant for U.S.-bred horses and the Debbie McDonald Grant for FEI Riders. In 2020 she was named to the USEF Kundrun Developing Team for horse and rider combinations with the potential to be on international teams, including the Olympics. Over the years, she had the opportunity to train with and learn from some of the top names in the sport.
After six years at Maplewood, however, Lindsey was ready for a change. She and Jacob debated where they would go together: they needed a place where they both could pursue their own careers. California and Florida were possibilities, as was Arizona where Jacob had a job that he loved test-driving cars for the electric automobile company Rivian. But it was difficult to juggle all the things they required, until they considered Aiken. “The second we thought about Aiken, everything was easy. It just flowed so nicely, like the universe was telling us this was it.”
And things have definitely gone well for Lindsey’s emerging business. She has a stable full of horses in training, as well as several quality youngsters that she will be riding soon. Three of the 4-year-olds in her program are qualified for the FEI 4-year-old Championship at the U.S. Dressage Festival of Champions that takes place August 18-24 at the HITS Lamplight Equestrian Center in Wayne, Illinois. Since a rider can show only two horses in each age division, Lindsey will be riding two herself while her assistant, Michelle Davis, will ride Galaxena, one of the few horses that Lindsey owns outright. Lindsey will be riding Real Surprice (which she owns in partnership with Carole Brunsting) a Dutch Warmblood mare that scored an 86.4% in her last outing at Bouckaert Farm in Georgia. Her other mount is WSI Royalty, another Dutch mare that Lindsey owns with David Wilson, who scored above 80% in every one of her shows.
“I’m incredibly lucky to be able to do this,” said Lindsey, giving credit to all the people who taught her, gave her opportunities and trusted her along the way, including Erin Brinkman, Debbie McDonald, Scott Hassler, Jeremy Steinberg, Lars Petersen and her current trainer Julio Mendoza, among many others. She reserves particular gratitude for her parents “the best people on the planet,” who supported her passion from the start – her father is even now building her barn.
As for the future, like any talented rider, Lindsey has international ambitions and would love to ride in Europe, go to Aachen, the World Equestrian Games, the Olympics. But for now, her focus is on the horses she has in training, and the path she will follow with each of them.
“I think to do it in a healthy way, you just have to say, I want to be the best rider I can be. I love developing horses, and if I never showed again, I would be fine. I would still do this every day.”
What is special for her about dressage? She says she finds it hard to put into words.
“Dressage is such a beautiful sport,” she began. “It makes the horses more beautiful. I have a 2-year-old in my field right now, and everybody thinks he’s ugly. But I say, just wait. That’s the nicest horse on the whole farm, and he’s going to be a superstar one day.” She paused, thinking. “It’s just the feeling you have when something clicks – the most incredible feeling you have – the harmony and the connection and the suppleness – and the horse and you are just one in that moment. That’s what gets it for me.”
