United States Eventing Association

For Meg Pellegrini, 2024 was a year of transition. She’d started to train with Olympian Will Coleman and his wife, Katie Coleman, as she was eyeing the upper levels of the sport and admits she was struggling at the Intermediate level.

But by the end of the year, a top-10 finish at the CCI3*-L at Maryland with Cooley Wish Upon A Star, an 11-year-old Zangersheide gelding (Comilfo Plus Z x Uranie d’Hyrencourt) who she owns with Margaret and Hank Pellegrini, got her confidence back up.

“My record wasn't beautiful,” she admitted. “I had some great horses, but I just had a huge learning curve when I started with Will, and I knew it was all necessary, but it really set me back a little bit more than I wanted. But then Cooley Wish Upon A Star went to Maryland, and he was amazing.”

She and Will decided to take it slow with her horses throughout 2025, and Meg hoped to have a “pleasant time” at the three-star level and get her bearings back, so she didn’t set too many hard goals with her three horses.

“I just sort of said, these are our spring goals and our fall goals, but I would have probably thought you were lying if you said I ended the year going four-star on all of them,” she said. “I knew it was possible, but just in the place that I was at, I wasn't sure if it was feasible for any of them, or for myself and my confidence, and so we sort of just kept it very simple.”

That plan paid off as Meg, 20, won the CCI3*-L at Rebecca Farm (Kalispell, Montana) in July with Falcon Crown Z, earned three top-10 placings in CCI3*-S competitions with Dondante and Cooley Wish Upon A Star, and ended the year completing the CCI4*-S at TerraNova (Myakka City, Florida) with all three horses.

She also took home the RevitaVet USEA Young Rider of the Year, the Advanced Young Adult Rider of the Year, and the Intermediate Young Adult Rider of the Year awards.

At the 2025 USEA Annual Meeting & Convention (New Orleans, Louisiana) in December, she was also presented with the $5,000 Richard Picken Memorial Grant and the $15,000 Rebecca Broussard National Developing Rider Grant.

Meg is a past participant of the USEA Emerging Athletes U21 (EA21) program and was named to the 2026 U.S. Equestrian Federation Eventing Development 25 program.

We caught up with her to learn more about her 2025 and what’s ahead this year.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Tell me a bit about your season with your three horses.

I ended up waiting a little bit longer [to compete] than I normally would with both “Falcon” and Cooley Wish Upon A Star, or “Troy.” I wanted to give them as much time as I could in the winter, just practicing and prepping. And we were going to dressage shows and show jumping shows and doing a lot of schooling at home and just trying to really refine everything that I had taken from 2024.

Then the two of them just sort of kept going, and they were being so good. And I feel like we sort of caught this really good roll of every event. I was just learning more from them, and there wasn't ever really a moment of like, I don't know what I'm doing. We started to really click.

And I also had Dondante [a 16-year-old Irish Sport Horse gelding (Pacnio x Muckno Clover) owned by Team Rebecca LLC], who is a former ride of Will’s, and the goal with him was to just have him as my Intermediate/three-star horse. He's a bit older and has had quite a lot of runs with Will, and so really, we just wanted to use him as a horse for me to practice on.

I really felt like everything started to pick up with all three of them. And then we went to Rebecca Farm. Falcon [a 13-year-old Zangersheide gelding (Farfelu de Muze x Lovely Lady) owned by Margaret, Meg, and Hank Pellegrini] had a really good time there. He won the CCI3*-L, and Troy came in fourth. It was just like, great!

It was a huge reward for all the work we were putting in and all the effort that Will and Katie had put into helping me. It's really extraordinary how much time they're willing to spend getting me where I need to go. Then from there, the fall season just sort of played out pretty much exactly how I expected it to.

Can you talk about what it’s been like to be involved in the EA21 and USEF U25 programs and how they’ve prepared you as you work towards becoming a professional?

They've been amazing. It's been a really fun way for us to get involved with our peers and all of our competitors that honestly, we don't get to see too often. [For the USEF U25 program] once a year we get to come together and make these plans with Leslie [Law] for our goals and our ambitions.

It's been such a game changer for me, and I know for everybody around me that has been in the Under-25s or the EA21—everyone takes a positive experience out of it.

I hope I get to work with [the USEF staff] closely in the future when we're looking at championships and going abroad and the Olympics and WEG and all the big things that we all strive to get to one day; you sort of need the help and the support of the people at USEA and USEF, and we couldn't do most of it without them.

What does it mean to win two grants at this year’s Convention?

I was so honored and very proud to just be on that list of recipients with the rest of them. It's been something I've wanted for so long, and I've always admired these people and everybody that contributes to the grants, I’m very deeply grateful to them. I remember the first time I went to a USEA Convention—and someone close to me won the ‘Big Becky’ grant, and I just remember at that time being like, ‘Oh, I'm gonna do that one day.’ I sort of made that goal at that time. So, every year since then, I've just sort of been like, OK, when is it going to be my turn and how can I get there and be doing all these things and prove to these people that this is what I want? I feel very fortunate that they are looking after me in this way and, and it's so huge for our sport.

Even just being a part of the meetings that weekend, going over all the numbers and what USEA brings in—it's sort of remarkable how many people can be involved in this, and I really hope that we can continue on and make it more accessible for people. And these grants are so hugely helpful in that. I feel very, very fortunate to be a part of it.

On a different note, your mother, Molly Pellegrini, has taken over as USEA President this year. What is that like for you?

I think she's absolutely the right person for the job. And obviously I look up to her every single day, and I think she is going to do a great job and can hopefully incite some change in our sport and be helpful and give other perspectives from history that she has on other boards and committees and other sports. She's really passionate about it. Every single day she's telling me about all of her meetings, and I think she's really enjoying the process and getting to know everyone. And hopefully this leads to another step beyond USEA for her, and she can get involved in some other committees and be just another pillar in our sport.

She picks up on everything and wants to hear everybody's perspectives. And I think that's something I've learned from her, definitely just being open to hearing from other people, and wanting to just keep learning and growing. I think that's a great thing that she's taking into the position.

What are some of the big takeaways you’ve learned from working with Will and Katie?

It's just been really digging into each horse individually, and I've had to change my mind set a lot and take the focus so much out of results and the small things that feel so important at the time when you're getting to know a horse.

For example, when I got Dondante, I probably before would have only seen the fact that this horse has gone five-star, and I have to live up to that. I need to be just as good as ‘Al,’ and I think I've learned so much about how to let that go and just feel like you're learning from the horses. It's been a big one for me and taking each horse as their own character.

All of mine could not be more different from one another, and I've just sort of had to learn how to use that in the best way and learn from it and just think ‘big picture.’ Ten years from now, how is Falcon going to help me with this horse and just keeping that in mind all the time.

They do so much work on the ground, and just really digging into how the horses think and how they operate, and it's very confusing, to be honest. It takes a lot of feel both on the horse and off the horse, and it's taken me the entire time that I've been here to figure that out, and I'm still learning. There's not a day that I don't feel like I need to go over something with Will or Katie, review something, and try to pick up on the small things that I've missed, but that's what they're so great at, and sort of taking their ego out of everything and going back to the roots and not feeling embarrassed about it—that's been huge for me.

You’ve said that working with equestrian sports psychologist Natalie Hummel. How has she helped your performance?

She’s played such a big part in my career. I've been working with her for nearly three years now. I got to listen to her speak at the Convention, and it made me almost want to cry—I'm so glad that people are starting to see what she's capable of and what she can teach, and I think she will be so huge for our sport if we let her come in.

She came in with we're looking at our current climate and the way that we treat our horses and everything, and it's all very sensitive, and she, for me, just brings a new light to it, and that there's so much we can do to change the way that we look at these situations and how we are training our horses, and how we can just do everything with a bit more grace and integrity. I think she hit the nail on the head, and everybody could learn from her.

The first six months of her and I working together, it was pretty difficult for me. I had to really sort of retrain myself and my nervous system, and it was a lot of work, and it was exhausting. And I'm so glad that I spent the time to do it, and that my parents and everybody around me saw the results from it, because it's hard to see the change in yourself, but I definitely feel like she made a huge difference. And you can see it in my results last year. It just everything all of a sudden became a bit easier, and I started to really understand why I love this sport so much, and why I love the horses.

What are your plans for 2026 and for the continuation of your professional career?

I’ve been riding for Will for a while, but it's been more casual than anything. But they are wanting me to take on a paid position now. We ride together every day, and when Katie's here, she helps me on the ground. It’s sort of like one big family operation. It's been really nice to have.

I have my own separate space here too. I've got very fortunate that at [the Coleman’s Virginia base] and here there's a separate satellite barn for my horses. I've been able to kind of start my own thing and create my own program, and I have my own employees and people that help me, and so I've been able to get that going, which is really nice. I'll have my own business and people hopefully coming in for lessons and all of that, but I can still be under Will's watch and Katie's watch.

I'd like to teach more, and I've started recently, but just last year I didn't have a ton of time. I really enjoy teaching the young kids too. It's like my favorite thing to do, so I try. There's a couple Pony Clubs nearby, and I go to them. I hope we'll have a couple sales horses coming in. Will doesn't have a huge sale program, but we're trying to get some young horses in. It's been really tricky with everything being just really ridiculously expensive, so it's hard to find those 4- and 5-year-olds that you really want to help produce and sell again. But he had actually bred a couple that he kept over in Germany, and those horses will be coming over soon, so I think you'll probably see some sales horses coming out in the next couple of months, but we'll see. It's going to be the process.