North Cliff's Journey To The Children's Hunters Became A Family Affair

Emma Brown learns to ride her mother’s Thoroughbred and reaps the rewards at the USEF Zone 2 Hunter Finals.

The first time trainer Nancy Maillet saw North Cliff in action, she thought he had the perfect, cadenced canter for a show hunter—as he crossed the finish line at the Meadowlands Racetrack (N.J.).

“He was running his own race,” said Maillet with a laugh. “He was way behind.”

She’d noticed him in the track stable two years earlier, when he was just 2, and was attracted to his low head carriage, the shoulder set low into his withers and his nice, relaxed walk. She’d told trainer Pat McBurney to let her know if he was ever available, and two years later, the time came, and the 4-year-old registered with the Jockey Club as Nice Try came to her farm in Morristown, N.J.

Maillet’s niece, Melissa Monti, began to show “Mario,” who took quickly and quietly to his new job. At about the same time, 10-year-old Emma Brown was learning to ride at Maillet’s Crewe Hill Stables. Aboard a small pony, she learned how to count strides and get her changes.

Meanwhile, Emma’s mother, Erika, had been bitten by the bug after watching countless hours of her daughter’s lessons. When she started looking for a dependable mount for herself, Maillet thought of Mario.

“He was young and green, and I’m just starting, but I got on, and he felt so safe,” said Erika. “We just clicked.”

Mario’s job description was about to change, however, when it became evident that Emma had outgrown her small pony. A long search for just the right large mount wasn’t yielding the perfect match, so Maillet thought of Nice Try, now renamed North Cliff. Erika was more than willing to share her horse in order to keep Emma showing.

At first, however, Emma wasn’t so thrilled.

“Originally, I started riding Mario as a filler while we were looking for a pony, but then we decided to stop looking,” said Emma, now 13 and an eighth-grader in Chatham, N.J. “I was disappointed at first. I didn’t like riding him because he was my mom’s horse. I felt like he was more of a hand-me-down until I realized how special he was.”

And that didn’t take long.

“Everyone started going ‘wow’ when Emma started jumping him. He was no longer just that plain bay,” said Erika. “He was sort of a diamond in the rough. I don’t think any of us knew quite what he was.

“Nancy has a great eye about finding the right horse for the right rider,” she added. “She’s really picky. She always says, fancy is as fancy does.”

Mario, now 8 years old and just 15.1 hands, proved how special he is at the 2008 USEF Zone 2 Hunter Finals in Harrisburg, Pa., where Emma finished as the reserve champion in the children’s hunters in one of the biggest shows of her career.

A Big Transition