Lindsey Fletcher’s middle name isn’t Superwoman, but if she ever chooses to wear a cape around the 1.50-meter classes in which she competes—on her off-the-track Thoroughbred, no less—she’d have good reason. 

Based on a farm in Kingston, Wash., a ferry ride away from Seattle, Fletcher, 40, and her husband are raising two young children and juggling full-time careers with Fletcher’s riding and show schedules. It helps that her daughter Sadie has taken to horses as much as her mother and now attends horse shows and competes in the short stirrup division. But Fletcher’s life with horses is still a balancing act.

These days, Fletcher shows her off-the-track Thoroughbred, William L, in the grand prix classes and in the high amateur-owner division. She also has a young Holsteiner mare in the young jumper classes and a hunter that’s currently for sale. Although she doesn’t currently work with a trainer at home, she clinics often with Greg Best and other top professionals to develop her horses and her riding. Not to mention that she does her own grooming, oversees her daughter’s burgeoning equestrian pursuits and has a few other horses in the pipeline. 

It all sounds like a full plate for a professional, let alone someone with a full-time job that requires all her shows to fit into a paid vacation time limit. Working in sales in the biotech field, and from home, has helped Fletcher carve out the time for the horses, but she also credits her husband, Cameron, for doing far more than his fair share with house work and with the kids.

“A lot of sacrifices are made, and I don’t know if I would say it’s particularly easy,” Fletcher said. “But I’ve never been afraid of working hard.” 

The secret to Fletcher’s lifestyle and accomplishments is in prioritizing, she said. “Horses have never been negotiable, and they haven’t fallen by the wayside, but I don’t have a clean house, I don’t have fancy things, I don’t get my hair done, and we don’t take vacations. I’m trying to get 10 things done at the same time and I had to get very comfortable with that. For me, it’s giving up the fight for things like having a clean house in favor of spending time with my family and riding horses.”

As her daughter, Sadie, has gotten interested in riding, Lindsey Fletcher has been able to share her passion with her. 

Fletcher isn’t from a family of equestrians, but got bitten by the horse bug early. At age 8, she struck a deal with her father when he proposed a move from Dallas, Tex. to Washington State, and she traded in living near her best friend for a horse.

“I sold out my best friend so fast you wouldn’t believe it,” Fletcher said. “And as soon as we got out to Washington, the first words out of my mouth were, ‘Where’s my horse?’” Riding lessons started immediately after the move, and Fletcher received her first horse, a solid-colored, Appaloosa-cross gelding, when she was 10.

“Back then the lowest classes were 3’3″,” Fletcher said. “We weren’t terribly competitive, but we showed in the children’s hunters.”

Her next horse was a Quarter Horse that went on to be Fletcher’s first grand prix horse. He was one of those once-in-a-lifetime horses, she explained. Little did she realize then that not all horses could competitively jump at that height.

Throughout her teen years, Fletcher rode as a working student, riding anything that was available to her. Never having the fanciest horse, she defected from the hunters to the jumper ring at the age of 12 and rode in her first grand prix three years later.

“I rode the young ones, the green ones, the rank ones—I did all of that as a kid. [My trainer then] was one of those guys who could find a diamond in the rough, all of the time,” she said.

After she graduated high school, she sold her Quarter Horse and enrolled at Whitman College, graduating with a biochemistry degree in 1997. “In school, I did anything I could do to ride,” Fletcher said. “I was riding gaited horses, trail horses, anything. I’d ride whenever I could on breaks and during summer vacations. But that was my time away from the sport.”

An early graduation present of an unbroken, 2-year-old warmblood from her parents served as a reintroduction into the horse world coming out of college, she added.

Fletcher found a job as a technician in a research lab, studying diseases in third-world countries. It was fascinating work with a flexible schedule, but it didn’t offer too much in the way of compensation so she kept her young horse at home, trying to do things the absolute cheapest way that she could manage. “I think a lot of riders have a Top Ramen phase,” Fletcher said. “For many years, I braided at horse shows, anything that I could do to help pay for the shows that I did.”

Fletcher brought her young horse through the ranks, eventually finishing at the 1.45-meter height. But his propensity to pull rails made the decision easy to sell him as a nice, lower-level mount. Then, as chance would have it, a friend had a mare to unload at a steal of a price. Fletcher bought her to turn her around as a re-sale project.

“I was pregnant at the time, and once she showed up on my farm, I promptly sent her to Seattle to sell,” Fletcher said. “It was one of those decisions you make in life, with no contract—it could have gone sideways 18 different ways, but the trainer rode her and said that the mare had something special about her.”

But Socks didn’t sell by the time Fletcher had her first child, Wyatt, so she called the trainer to send the mare home.

“It was just meant to be,” Fletcher said. “The mare took me through to the 1.40-meter. She shouldn’t have made it—she wasn’t scopey enough. She won almost every time she walked in the ring at 1.30-meter, but 1.40-meter was tough.”

In that time, Fletcher bought a Thoroughbred at the track for $1,700.

“I decided that horse was going to be my next big jumper,” she said. “I think [choosing a horse] has always been a gut feeling for me.”

She first heard about the horse from her longtime equine body worker. Fletcher arrived at the track trainer’s barn to find a 16.2-hand plain bay. He was lame at the time, but Fletcher could only negotiate $250 off his sales tag. “I do sales for a living, and I totally blew it,” she said.

It took six grooms and two hours to load William L into the trailer. After rehab work, he began to jump, although he didn’t have the most classic form and didn’t start to use himself in the air until he was going around the 1.40-meter classes.

“At that stage, there’s no more faking it,” Fletcher said. “I had a trainer friend who said, ‘Now, at 1.40-meter, I see something in him.’ He has that Thoroughbred heart, and it doesn’t matter what you point him at, he’ll jump it. The first open water he ever saw was in a grand prix, and he didn’t bat an eye. I also think most horses can jump higher than most people will think.”

Lindsey Fletcher and William L are frequent competitors at the grand prix level in the Northwest shows.

Once Billy reached the 1.40-meter level, Fletcher decided to retire her mare from showing, but keeps her in work at home as her no-stirrups horse. Recently, daughter Sadie has picked up the ride on Socks, piloting the mare around short-stirrup courses while she waits for her mom to train her medium pony for her to show.

Sadie Fletcher showing Socks.

Multi-tasking for Fletcher often means taking a conference call from a horse’s back and working the entire three-hour drive to Thunderbird and taking more calls at the show. The effort has resulted in successes in and out of the ring, but for Fletcher, her journey with Billy from the track to 1.50-meter classes is her best amateur moment, yet.

“It’s been an extremely fun project,” Fletcher said. “I love the process, I love the project and moving through the levels. Part of it is that I got really lucky.”

Next up for the working mom and rider is the search for her next winning horse. It’s possible that she already owns the one that will take her to the next level, but she’s also aware that she may have to start the process afresh if they can’t meet expectations.

“I’m hunting what everyone else is,” Fletcher said. “That one in a million that wins and wins and wins. I’d like a horse that can take me to the top.”

Until then, it’s the process of developing horses that Fletcher really enjoys, in addition to the time spent in the saddle alongside her daughter. That’s what makes all the sacrifices and the prioritization an easy trade for the hard-working amateur. So for anyone seeking the same fairytale of grand prix classes, a string of horses and a farm, know that the superhero lifestyle is up for grabs, only requiring endless determination and hard work. But that said, it’s totally worth it—just ask Fletcher.