United States Eventing Association

Producing Young Horses Has Jordán Linstedt-Granquist Excited for the Future

When Jordán Linstedt-Granquist entered the Rolex Kentucky Three-Day Event for the third time with RevitaVet Capato in 2017, she had no clue what the future had in store for her.

“He just wasn’t himself, and at that level, they have to be,” she recalled. “I just ended up competing him in the dressage before withdrawing him.”

There were no specific injuries or ailments that Linstedt-Granquist could pinpoint at the time, but her intuition told her that "Capato" just wasn’t the same horse he normally was. After mountains of diagnostic work revealed nothing major, Linstedt-Granquist did a little maintenance with the Hanoverian gelding and got back to competing.

Just two months later, she and Capato won the Pedigree Bromont CCI4*-L (Quebec, Canada). The duo was put on the 2018 U.S. Equestrian Federation High Performance training list, but that spring the horse again just didn’t feel 100%.

“I brought him home early and went back to the drawing board,” shared Linstedt-Granquist. “He was second in the Advanced at the 2018 [USEA American Eventing Championships] behind Tamie [Smith] and Mai Baum, but then going into the fall season he had a freak accident in the paddock when I was standing right there watching.”

Capato was playing around with Linstedt-Granquist's other former five-star horse, Tullibard’s Hawkwind, and landed on a front end funny, resulting in a shattered pastern.

“That was the end of his career,” she reflected. “In 2019 I had a big step back in my career. I didn’t have another top horse at the time, and so I kind of had to rebuild.”

2019 was a big year for Linstedt-Granquist for two other reasons: she relocated farms and celebrated her marriage to her fiancé, Brad Granquist.

“I had my daughter in 2020, which was such a weird year,” she continued. “Since then, I have been focusing on the quality of horses that I have in my string.”

Linstedt-Granquist has spent the last several years working with Erik Duvander to produce a crop of young horses that she's excited about.

“The last three years have been a huge influence on me and my training program. I have a farm now that I run and operate in Monroe [Washington] and super quality horses," she said. "I have had a fantastic group of young riders and adult amateurs that have followed me around through this transitional time where so many things were happening with the move and me getting married and then being pregnant, all while rebuilding a string of horses. I guess as I talk about it, it’s almost like, 'Oh that was a lot to go through at one time,' but it never seemed hard during those times because I had a great group of people around me.”

Rather than looking back at her last five-star appearance, she is looking ahead to what new opportunities are waiting for her.

“Thinking back, 2017 was the last time I was in a five-star, and that seems like such a long time ago, but it takes that much time to rebuild,” she noted. “Not every horse is a five-star horse. I was so lucky to have two kind of back-to-back that I produced from the beginning. Since then, I have gone through several top horses that had great careers and top placings to a certain point, but they were limited in their scope and ability, and then I’ve had horses who were mentally more limited but had the physical talent. They just weren’t quite as brave.”

As she produced horses and placed them in their appropriate homes, the right horses, which Linstedt-Granquist describes as “world-class,” began trickling in.

“If things continue to go the way they are, and these horses stay healthy and continue moving up the levels, the next few years look really good,” she said.

One of her biggest passions in the sport is producing young horses. She has had the opportunity to do just that with many of the top horses in her program now, including the now-7-year-old Hanoverian gelding LS Crown Royal (by Comte).

“We bought him from Europe as a 2 1/2-year-old with a partner, but then that partner and I had different ideas. I really believed in this horse, even though he was so young, so my husband helped me make the decision that we would buy my partner out," she said.

Linstedt-Granquist has been the only person to ride and produce the horse, and she is confident in his potential as he continues to develop.

“The horses that I have been the most successful with have been horses that I have started early and produced all the way,” she shared. “There is nothing I don’t know about this horse. There’s no holes. He goes the way I want him to and his talent is unbelievable. He’s brave and his jumping ability is just freakish. We are very excited about him.”

Duvander has supported Linstedt-Granquist’s belief in LS Crown Royal from the beginning.

“Erik wants me to continue riding and producing him and take him as far as I can, but he’s also like, ‘If you don’t end up keeping this horse, there is a team rider that would take him.’ He believes in him that much.”

In addition to the gelding, Linstedt-Granquist also has several other exciting young horses coming up through the levels, all of whom are owned by people involved in her program. It’s that support from the local eventing community that led her to put down permanent roots in the Pacific Northwest.

“I obviously grew up here, but I have traveled all over,” she reflected. “I spent a couple of years in California with Tamie Smith in my early 20s, and I have been on the East Coast several times for several months. Coming back here always felt like coming home—you have your community, your family. I think being a rider and a trainer here is part of my identity. I feel like there was a need for me to stay here and that it was not impossible to do so and just travel. I am not scared of some long drives to get to the events that we need to. The owners and the clients believe in me and allow me to go and do what I need to do and then come back here and ride and train better. The support has been incredible.”

Even with her transition to mom a few years ago, that support continued to pour in from her barn family.

“Life since becoming a mom hasn’t changed a whole lot for me,” she noted. “Maddie [Baumann], my assistant, barn manager, and head groom has a background in child development and a degree from Central University here in Washington, so when she is not working for me, she actually doulas. Having her as my best friend and my partner in business, as well as when I had my daughter, was incredible and helped make it very seamless to get back into the saddle.”

Now at 4 years old, Payton seems to share her mother’s love of horses, which makes the experience of being a mother and a rider/trainer even more special.

“She is absolutely horse crazy. At the end of the day, all she wants to do is go ride her pony,” Linstedt-Granquist said with a chuckle. “I think as she gets older, there will be more planning that has to go into when I travel longer distances or go across the countrymy husband has a full-time job and works for the city of Redmond—so I don’t know what the future will pose, but I know that the support and community around me will help me figure it out. That’s just how we operate and how it’s always been.”