United States Eventing Association

2024 Richard Picken Memorial Grant Recipient Madelyn Cease is on Her Way Up

Madelyn Cease paused as she scrolled the USEA Foundation website. She stopped on the Richard Picken Memorial Grant, realizing she was eligible for it, so she signed up, never expecting to win the $5,000 fund.

The grant was first awarded in 2023 in memory of Richard Picken, who lost his fight with cancer in 2022. The goal of the grant is to fund show jumping training for riders aged 25 or younger competing at the two-star level or higher.

When she found out she’d won the 2024 grant in December, she was thrilled. “I was very grateful when I found out I [won], being someone who, like a lot of us in the eventing world, are trying to make ends meet,” she said.

Cease, 25, grew up in northern Minnesota, an area with not much eventing. She can’t remember exactly how she found eventing, but believes she discovered it watching YouTube videos. She’s competed in the sport since age 15. Her first horse, Charlie (Zippos Sheik x TQH Skippers Camille), a 16-year-old Quarter Horse, took her through Training level and the USEA Intercollegiate Championships, though she and Charlie weren’t able to compete often while in Minnesota due to competitions being far away from where they were based.

Cease attended Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, and competed with their eventing team. “That was a great experience,” she said, “coming from doing this one show a year back home, and then we did a show almost every month. It was definitely a big switch up, but it helped me grow more with my riding and fall in love with the sport more. It was a great experience having real teammates. I grew up playing sports but at home, it was me and one other girl riding—having a full team to go around competing with was a great experience.”

Currently, she competes at the CCI2* level with TS Air Striker (Air Commander x Lucky Colleen), a 12-year-old off-the-track Thoroughbred she initially bought as a 2-year-old for $1,000 to be a companion horse for Charlie and maybe a trail horse for her mother. But now, “Striker’s my two-star horse with potential to do more,” she said.

She began playing around with dressage and jumping with Striker when he was 4 when Charlie was injured and because she felt it “couldn’t hurt to have a little extra training, because he was always going to be maybe a trail horse for my mom or something. I was only 17 at the time, so it was like, I could use some help, and he was my first horse off the track, so I took a few lessons with him. Then one time we jumped a little, for fun, then realized he had a great jump on him. He really took to it—the summer before I came to Kentucky, he did one little starter competition, then he didn’t really compete once I got here until my other horse got injured a few days before his show. We were able to switch horses and divisions, luckily, at that show, and Striker did his first Beginner Novice. He loved it.” Cease took the approach of seeing what the gelding wanted to do and go from there.

“He’s a little firecracker,” she said of Striker’s personality around the barn. “But has the biggest heart; he’s done way more for me than I ever thought he would do. He means the world to me. He helped me realize I want to do this more in life and keep going further.”

She added that Striker “doesn’t love dressage” but is a “fantastic jumper—there’s nothing like galloping around the cross-country course.” She and Striker train with Sidney Baughman in eventing, Patricio Rodriguez in show jumping and Reese Koffler-Stanfield in dressage. Cease graduated from the University of Transylvania and currently works at Hagyard Equine Medical Institute in Lexington as a vet tech.

This year, Cease’s goals are to hopefully move Striker up to the Intermediate level and compete in a three-star by the end of the season, “as long as things are going well, and he’s staying health.” Last year, Striker competed in his first CCI2*-L at Tryon (Mill Spring, North Carolina) and his first CCI1* at the Virginia Horse Trials. Long-term, Cease wants to see how far she and Striker can go. “I’ve been told by some trainers that he could be my Advanced/four-star horse, so I would love to see if he could get to that level. If not, that’s not a problem at all! He’s done a lot more for me than I ever thought he would,” she said.