United States Eventing Association

Mother-Daughter Duo Kirchhoff and Chater Share a Love of Eventing

There were so many horses and riders who overcame the odds and triumphed at this year's USEA American Eventing Championships presented by Nutrena Feeds. While we couldn't tell every story during the event, we'll be sharing some in the coming weeks on useventing.com.

Searching for a new restaurant to try, catching up on the news, or watching funny cat videos? The internet’s where it’s at. But buying a horse, sight unseen, from the web?

“I don’t recommend it,” said Jesse Kirchhoff, 43, with a chuckle, remembering how she came to own Wings Of A Dove (HB II x Vorbuch 2), a 22-year-old Zweibrücker mare. She and her husband Drew Kirchhoff had just purchased their farm, Hidden Springs Stables, in Columbia, Tennessee, and were ready to start filling it with horses. One of their four daughters, Madalene Leigh, then 13, wanted a horse. “Lakota” seemed like the perfect fit.

“We didn’t even try her,” said Kirchhoff. “She’s a warmblood, and she looked good from the still shots. I didn’t even vet her. But I don’t recommend it. She kind of checked all of the boxes and we snagged her, almost in a panic, because we were worried someone else would get her.”

Leigh and Lakota partnered for a few years, but ultimately, it “didn’t work out,” Jesse said. However, Lakota was part of the Kirchhoff family, so she wasn’t going anywhere. Jesse tried breeding the mare, who has famous bloodlines. Her grandsire is Habicht (Burnus x Hallo), sire of Windfall II (out of Wundermaedel), Darren Chiacchia’s partner in winning the 2003 Pan American Games (Elkton, Maryland) individual gold medal and as part of the USA’s bronze-medal-winning team at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Greece.

Jesse said that Lakota being a maiden mare at the age of 18 made it difficult for the attempts to take. However, finding herself in between competition mounts, she realized Lakota might serve a different purpose. “She needed a job, and I didn’t have a [competition] horse at the time,” she said.

In 2021, Jesse and Lakota began training and competing together, and now they’re cruising around at Training level. They recently were part of the High Speed Hive, which won the Adams Horse Supply Adult Team Championship at the Training level at the 2024 USEA American Eventing Championships (AEC) presented by Nutrena Feeds, held Aug. 27-Sept. 1 at the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington.

The High Speed Hive, from USEA Area III, also included Dayna Freeman and Divine Reason, April Hays and Anteros HSH, and Marisa Shulman and Samurai Sam. The team won with a score of 103.8.

This year marked the first time that Jesse has participated in the team competition. She knew her teammates before the competition, which made for a fun, enriching experience, she said.

“We just had a blast,” she said. “We really had each other’s backs.”

Jesse said that team support was on full display right after her cross-country round on that Saturday evening. Normally, Kirchhoff’s mother, Lynn Chater, 75, herself an event competitor, and her youngest daughter, Rowen Kirchhoff, 4, travel with her to competitions. However, Rowen came down with COVID-19 the week of the AEC, so she and her grandmother stayed home. Kirchhoff was on her own for the weekend.

With a 6:18 p.m. ride time, Jesse and Lakota were one of the last duos out on cross-country. Being late in the day, many competitors had already left the showgrounds. But not the High Speed Hive. When Lakota pulled a shoe midway through cross-country, at the coffin jump, Jesse’s teammates and their spouses jumped into action, helping her track down the shoe. And when Jesse, a Type 1 diabetic, came off the course needing her sugar tablets because of low blood sugar, they were quick to get those for her.

“It’s so nice to have someone to ask for help when you need it,” Jesse said. “I really love all of these women.”

Despite the pulled shoe, Lakota motored around the cross-country course, posting a double-clear to move the duo up to 34^th place from 50^th, where they landed after posting a 42.0 dressage score. Ultimately, the pair finished 28^th overall based on a clear show jumping round.

“She’s not great at dressage,” Jesse said. “She’s 22 years old now, and it’s kind of like teaching an old dog new tricks. But she’s very keen about jumping.”

Even missing a shoe, Lakota “ate it up” on cross-country. It helped that the mare had previously competed at the venue. At the 2023 AEC, she and Jesse finished 19^th overall in the ARMA USEA Training Horse Championships.

“Honestly, I thought for a split second, should I pull her up?” Jesse says of the moment she realized Lakota pulled a shoe. “But she just kept going. That’s the best course she’s ever run. She ate it up. The year before, I ran the same Training level course. There were a couple things she looked and peeked at, but she just ate it up.

“She’s a really anxious mare when anything is new,” she added. “Anything that’s out of place—if the grass got mowed, she notices. This horse needs a really confident ride. It’s not the jumps that are the issue. It’s the banner on the side or the arena or the mother pushing a stroller 12 flights up in the stadium. She’s very careful and very handy with her feet, which also makes her very quick. I’ve really had to develop my seat as a rider because at an instant, with no tells, she’s just, like, ‘Oh, spook!’ ”

Jesse began riding at 9, while growing up in Nashville, and then she got her first horse and began eventing at 13. She started training daily, with dreams of competing in the sport’s upper echelons. In the 90s, with After Midnight, her off-track Thoroughbred, she competed (then known as Jesse Bridgewater) through the Intermediate level.

“I was in it to win it. I was really dedicated,” she said. “I did a lot of eventing through the 90s before I took my family break. I took a hard 15-year sabbatical.”

Her two oldest daughters Nora Leigh, now 23, and Madalene, now 20, took riding lessons when they were youngsters at a neighborhood barn. That’s where Jesse rediscovered her passion for riding. The girls’ instructor heard Jesse coaching her daughters over the rail during lessons and suggested she ride again.

“She got me back into riding, and I kept going,” Jesse said. “I had all of the dreams and aspirations when I was younger, but then I got pregnant. It was kind like I’m going to chase those dreams again. But it takes a lot of family support to make it possible.”

Central in supporting her dreams are her husband of 18 years, Drew, 42, and her mother, Chater, who herself competes at the Starter level. Chater took a fall while flatting her horse recently, due to slippery conditions from Tropical Storm Helene. She suffered a hip injury and had surgery on Thursday to partially replace the hip joint. However, she said she’ll be back in the saddle as soon as possible and is already setting her sights on qualifying for, and competing at, the 2025 AEC at Beginner Novice.

“I’m doing great, and no, I’m not stopping riding,” Chater said with a hearty laugh from her hospital bed. Chater’s been horse crazy since she was a little girl, growing up in Kearny, New Jersey, a suburb of Newark. Her dad used to take she and her three siblings out for occasional trail rides, but having her own horse wasn’t possible until she got older.

“It was urban, all the way. No one could have horses, but that only made me want it more,” said Chater, explaining that it wasn’t until she enrolled at Maryville College (Maryville, Tennessee) and spotted a fellow student on horseback on campus that she got the chance to ride regularly. She approached the young woman, became fast friends with her, and would ride with her weekly. She eventually married Jesse’s father, Steven Bridgewater, and continued riding while they lived in Kansas. However, it was with her next horse, gifted to her by her music publishing company, that she began competing.

By this point, Chater and Bridgewater had divorced, and Chater had married Kerry Chater, a member of The Union Gap band, who she met on a blind date in 1986. The couple were married for 40 years, and worked together too, writing “hundreds and hundreds of songs” and two novels, Lynn said. In 1996, their publishing company asked Lynn what she’d like as a bonus for resigning with them. She asked for a horse. The company gave her the money for Ben There Done That, a then 8-year-old OTTB gelding who she competed with for two years before taking a break to focus on her career. She kept “Ben” until he died at the age of 32, but didn’t really ride much, she says, until Kerry died two years ago after contracting COVID-19.

“When my husband died, two years ago…I didn’t get out of bed for a month. My daughter came to me and said ‘I entered you into a combined test, and if you don’t want to embarrass yourself, you need to get out of bed and ride your horse,” Lynn said.

“Horses absolutely got me back to living, smiling, and laughing again,” she added, saying that horses keep her young. “You don’t stop riding when you get old. You get old when you stop riding. I don’t realize I’m 75 when I’m on a horse. Nothing hurts. And it’s something my daughter and I can do together.”

The mother-daughter duo regularly travel to competitions together and also did the 2023 Mells Foxhounds Hunter Pace, held annually at Sugar Valley Farm in Lynnville, Tennessee. This year Drew decided he wanted to get in on the action. The couple had a “day date” just a couple weeks ago, Lynn said, where they competed at that same hunter pace. Jesse said it was at Drew’s urging that they paired him with a mount, Lynn’s 17-year-old gelding, Quigley O’Higgins, a handsome Quarter Horse/Trakehner/Hanoverian cross.

“My husband has been the most supportive groom and show husband ever, and then he finally said, ‘I’m traveling to all of these shows, it’d be nice to do something,’ ” Jesse said, adding that she thought the hunter pace was the perfect way to introduce him to the sport. “It’s such breath-taking fox hunting ground, and I thought it’d be an easy thing for him to explore, without the pressure of an event. It was exciting to be able to do that with him.”

The couple currently are putting the finishing touches on a home they’ve built on their farm, having first built Lynn a house. Jesse said she and Drew, along with Rowen and their daughter, Lynn Kirchhoff, 17, have been living in a “barndominium” while they finish their new home, which has room for the whole family, including their two older daughters, who are away at college.

And the whole family gets involved with the farm work, including Jesse’s dad, Steven Bridgewater, an actor, producer, and director who lives in California. He and his wife motor across country in their RV regularly to spend time at Hidden Springs and help out. Bridgewater is currently using recycled wood from Jesse’s home builds to craft jumps that she can practice over with Lakota.

“They’re the most annoying, bright jumps with little flags all over the top of them,” she said. “They’re annoying, but it’s to desensitize her. “

Jesse has a couple other horses that she’s bringing along, including Jackie 0, a 3-year-old Westphalian mare who already stands 16.3-hands. The duo did a starter horse trials recently, finishing second, and she hopes to produce Jackie into an upper-level eventer. Meanwhile, she’s also excited to continue campaigning with Lakota, as long as the mare seems happy, as well.

No doubt, her family will be cheering her on at each outing.

“Horses and my family make me happy,” she said. “My family is really supportive. We have a close relationship, and we always rely on each other. With them, I can do everything. It drives me to be successful and just keep grinding at it to make my dreams a reality.”