Lexington, Ky.—April 24

Like many top riders, Matthew Grayling’s days begin in the barn. But his primary objective isn’t getting his horses worked—it’s getting approximately 600 dairy cows milked. Once that task is completed, he can squeeze in a ride, but only if he’s finished by 3 p.m. to do the afternoon milking. Dairy farming is a time-intensive profession, and Grayling has learned sometimes horses take the backseat.

“Some days you don’t get to ride them and it’s not happening, so you learn to just say, ‘Another day off,’ ” he said.

Grayling, 60, grew up in a family of farmers in New Zealand, and he took up the family trade after leaving school at 17. In more than four decades, he’s never missed a calving, though he was once away for sixth months when he competed at Badminton in the early 2000s.

“Riding can be a bit of a mental game, and farming’s a bit the same,” he said. “If things aren’t going right, you’ve just got to adapt because there’s no one else to do it, and you’ve got to make decisions. I think it’s follow-through: You might get upset at some things, but you can sort of switch off and perhaps start again, hopefully.

“I’ve gotten better with age,” he continued. “When I was a bit younger, when you get a bit tired, it’s quite hard to go out and ride your horses and be quite calm about it, because perhaps you were in a hurry. I learned pretty smartly not to poke the bear too much. Better the horse have a day off than ride it somedays when you’re under the pump and things aren’t going right.”

Despite the challenges of riding at the upper levels while maintaining a large herd, Grayling has made his way to the world stage. In 2001 he won the Adelaide CCI5*-L (Australia) with Revo, the same horse who took him to Badminton. Though a tendon injury after cross-country prevented them from finishing Badminton, the gelding rehabbed well and they returned to Europe to compete in the 2004 Athens Olympics, where the pair were 15^th overall. Two months later they were eighth at the FEI Eventing World Cup Final at Pau (France). Another horse, Gordon, got Grayling back to Adelaide the following year, but it’s been 19 years since he’s competed at the five-star level, thanks in part to keeping his horse count small.

“At this level you don’t get too many horses that may be able to do it, especially when I only have one or two,” he said. “I don’t have a big team, so in between farming we’ve always only had two or three to ride.”

While he might not have a constant stream of top horses like some riders, the advantage comes from knowing the few he does have so well.

“You learn a lot, just hacking out, what they feel like,” he said. “Some days you might hack out with intentions to do certain things and then your gut says no, so you go home. It’s a harder thing to teach people I think, having a little bit of feel, but the horse industry’s good in that you can sort of do it when you get a little older and probably you get a little bit wiser and a little bit smarter, and I think you can think it through a little bit better.

Grayling clearly has an eye for a good horse. He took Parklane Hawk from novice (the equivalent of preliminary in the U.S.) to advanced before the gelding sold to England for William Fox-Pitt to ride. The horse went on to win Burghley (England) in his first five-star start, quickly followed by a victory in Kentucky, and he finished no lower than fifth in his three subsequent attempts at the level.

“It was lovely to see, and all the good work that we think we’ve done I think paid off,” Grayling said. “I think William quite enjoyed the ride on Parklane. He was quite a powerhouse, beautiful gallop, and not many horses when you get [to] a five-star and you get to five [kilometers], and you’ve still got another gear if you need it. He was pretty impressive like that.”

Thanks to a gray gelding named Trudeau, Grayling’s getting another shot at the five-star, this time at the Defender Kentucky Three-Day Event.

Grayling got the ride on the 18-year-old New Zealand Warmblood (Magistad—Clarity, Valiant), bred and owned by Winky Foley, eight or nine years ago. “Tru” had competed some with other riders, but the gelding hadn’t found quite the right fit until Grayling.

“The first week we took him to a little one-day event and had a little canter around an 80-centimeter [course], and I thought straight away he jumped what … he needed to jump well. He didn’t have the best technique in the world, but I still thought I could work on that, and it’s improved 100 percent over the years. I’m hoping it’ll stay like that. His show jumping, he’s had the odd rail, but he’s good; we can all have a rail down. We’ve had a very good run with him over the years.”

Grayling first started thinking about competing at Kentucky a few years ago, but COVID put that dream on hold, followed by surgery for Grayling, which kept him out of competitions for six months. Prior to this year, Tru flew once before, to compete in the Werribee VIC CCI4*-L (Australia) where they were 10^th. Since the gelding traveled well then, Grayling decided to try going farther afield for a five-star.

While Europe or England were options, Grayling had never competed in the United States, and he’d heard good things about the venue in Kentucky.

“It’s probably not the cheapest exercise to come to America from New Zealand; it’s cheaper to go to Europe, … [but] the Kentucky open country just gives me a good feel,” he said. “[We’ll] find out. And it’s got the rolling hills, and they say it’s quite tough running the distance on that country. But I would think we’ve got him reasonably fit. He’s got a pretty good ticker, so I’m hoping he won’t give up.

“I’ve always been confident he’ll come out the next day and have enough petrol to show jump,” he continued, “but he’s only run—he’s run 6,000 meters before, a couple hundred more isn’t [much more], but I think the cumulative effect of jumping bigger jumps and testing jumps plays on them a little bit. So that’s why I like him to be a little extra fit, so he can handle it.”

At the end of January, they’d solidified their plan to come to the States. Grayling and Tru left New Zealand mid-February, stopping in Sydney and Anchorage, Alaska, on their way to Chicago, before driving to Aiken, South Carolina, to base with Boyd Martin.

“It was a long few days, but that direct flight allowed us not to have a week’s quarantine, just three days, so if we came later and had a week’s quarantine that was going to be quite hard, I thought, to get up to task and perform,” he said.

The pair’s first outing was the Conceal Grand-Prix Eventing Showcase (South Carolina), where Grayling didn’t take all the straight options but took advantage of the crowds to prepare Tru for the experience at Kentucky. While they picked up a stop at Setters’ Run Farm Carolina International CCI4*-S (North Carolina), they had an easy last run at Plantation Field (Pennsylvania), where they won the intermediate on their dressage score of 25.8.

Grayling jokes that he is the “young apprentice” at Martin’s barns in South Carolina and Cochranville, Pennsylvania. He’s kept busy by riding a few horses for Martin, and at Plantation he took the reins on a couple of Martin’s young mounts including BarbeCue, son of Martin’s five-star winner On Cue.

“I’ve probably ridden more horses there than I’ve ridden in my lifetime,” he said. “Full credit, they’re a big team and all of the staff that they have, it’s a big operation, and I’ll go home thinking dairy farming’s not too bad after all.”

While Grayling has navigated most of his trip solo, for Kentucky his wife Susan is coming over to cheer him on, while one of their daughters, Phillippa, will act as Tru’s groom. Matthew acknowledged that, at 60, it requires more effort to keep fit and ready for the job of riding at the upper levels, but having horses like Tru has kept him eager to do the work.

“If you’ve got a horse that’s going quite well, then it keeps the enthusiasm up that you want to go out and ride it,” he said. “The day you don’t want to go out and catch your horse and ride then [it’s] probably, perhaps, the time to pack it up. But we haven’t gotten to that stage quite yet.”

The Chronicle is on-site at the Kentucky Horse Park with two reporters to bring you everything you need to know at coth.com, so you don’t have to miss a minute of the action. You can find all of our coverage from the week here. You can also follow along on Instagram and Facebook. Be sure to read our May 20 issue for more in-depth coverage and analysis of the event.