FEATURE
THE ‘‘STEP DOWN ’’ HORSE A Secret Weapon of the Horse Show World A seasoned campaigner in need of a lighter job can give green riders confidence WORDS:
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LETTIE TEAGUE
PHOTOS:
DENISE FURTKEVIC, PAWS AND REWIND PHOTOGRAPHY, ELIZABETH FURTKEVIC
DON’T LIKE the term ‘stepdown’ horse,” says Paul Cronin, the longtime
director of the Sweet Briar College equestrian team (1967-2001) when I call to discuss this type of horse. Cronin, who is also a trainer, recognized hunter/jumper judge and the author of Schooling and Riding the Sport Horse prefers to call them “new career horses.”
Mr. Cronin has worked with many such “new career” horses over his 50-plus year career. Sometimes they were show jumpers retired from the circuit, sometimes they were horses whose owners could no longer afford, and sometimes they came from owners in search of a tax deduction. (In this final instance meant, owners sometimes greatly inflated their worth.) Mr. Cronin has received—and retrained—hundreds of such stepdown/new career
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horses that he incorporated into his program. The horses, in turn, gave Sweet Briar student riders confidence and helped to improve their technique. “These horses play a part in everyone’s career,” says Cronin. In my case, a stepdown horse helped me to return to the sport that I loved. After a bad riding accident and a six-month hiatus from the barn three years ago, my trainer, Ariel Secula, suggested that I try the
