Before the 2022 FEI Eventing World Championships in Pratoni del Vivaro, Italy, few eventing fans were familiar with Monica Spencer and her Thoroughbred Artist. The pair had only competed outside of their native New Zealand once before, and even that excursion kept them in the Southern Hemisphere, in neighboring Australia.

In their first trip to the Northern Hemisphere, the pair made a splash, scoring the third-best score on Day 1 of dressage (25.6), behind British juggernauts Laura Collett and Yasmin Ingham while preventing Ros Canter from making it a British sweep for the day. They went on to help the New Zealand team score a bronze medal—the country’s first in 12 years—and were 21^st individually.

“When I halted in my dressage test at world champs, [I was] just feeling so happy that we’ve done a performance that we knew we could but didn’t believe we could on the world stage,” Spencer recalled.

The following year they made their five-star debut at Adelaide (Australia) and led the dressage before parting ways on cross-country. Their next attempt at the level came in October 2023, when they contested the Mars Maryland 5 Star at Fair Hill, finishing seventh. With more team aspirations in her sights, Spencer decided to uproot her life and relocate to the United States.

“We flew over for Maryland and just really enjoyed the country and the people and the opportunities that the United States provides and just thought, ‘Let’s do something a bit different than go to England,’ ” she said. “The rest of our high-performance team are based in England, and so everyone kind of gives me a sideways look when I said I was coming to America. But here we are. Just excited to ride amongst a bigger pool of riders and see what we can do here.”

Spencer, her husband, Andrew Spencer, and their 2-year-old son, Gus, are in the States on a three-year visa and have set up shop in Florida, North Carolina and now Virginia. If things pan out, she’d like to stay through the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

This spring she and “Max,” a 13-year-old Thoroughbred (Guillotine—Maxamore, Volksraad), were seventh at the Defender Kentucky CCI5*-L and were named alternates to New Zealand’s Pair Olympic squad. As the fifth-ranked pair, they traveled to France in case they got the call-up but ultimately weren’t needed. Since they’d already made the trans-Atlantic flight, the pair opted to stay for a few more weeks to contest Defender Burghley CCI5*-L (England), where they were 11^th.

Go behind the stall door with us to get to know Max better.

• The story of how Monica first found Max as a 4-year-old is well-known by now:

“I saw him at his first show across the warm-up, and I just loved his type and his movement, so I promptly rode up to the lady that had just got him off the track and asked if I could buy him,” she said. “Long story short, I bought him.”

• Max was bred by Windsor Park Stud in New Zealand, and when he proved too slow to race, he went to EventStars, which specializes in retraining and re-homing Thoroughbreds.

“Those beautiful climbing front legs that get him good marks in the dressage didn’t get him much speed as a young horse,” Monica said. “But I find him definitely fast enough now.”

• The name Max is a nod to his dam, Maxamore, while Monica dubbed him Artist.

“I thought it suited him,” she said. “He’s got beautiful movements, and he’s nice shape of a horse.”

• Monica describes Max as “a true gentleman,” and it’s something that’s served him well in his competitive career.

“He’s just such a nice guy, you know?” she said. “He really is super trainable, very willing. It really is his personality that’s got him to where he is. It’s really a Thoroughbred characteristic from my experience—[that] they’re willing to give everything a go, and he really has been very trainable for me, and I’m just fortunate to have him and make the most of it while I do.”

That easy-going attitude has also made him a favorite of anyone who deals with him on the ground.

“He’s always the groom’s favorite,” Monica said. “He’s one, when you walk up to his foot to pick it up, he’ll pick it up for you and hold it there and never leans on you or anything and is perfect to clip and perfect to do everything with.”

• Monica described Max as an old soul.

“Everything that you train him to do, he’s kind of almost like he’s done it before,” she said. “It makes it pretty special that he’ll go around those big tracks for me because like I say, he’s not naturally a bold horse. He just does it because I asked him to, which makes it pretty special. 

“He’s always been just sort of a quiet achiever, and he was a little bit living in the shadow of my other advanced horse Acrobat, who I was on the long list for Tokyo [Olympics] with,” she continued.  

When Acrobat was injured, Max was able to step out from Acrobat’s shadow, and he became her top horse.

“Max is not naturally brave or bold, so I am sort of surprised that he goes around the things he’ll jump for me, but he’s very rideable, so if I want to put him on a distance, he’ll let me ride him there,” she said. “He doesn’t pull cross-country. He’s very polite. So I can gallop along the field and then sit up, and he comes back to me, which makes my job easy. He really is a pleasure to ride cross-country, that’s for sure.”

• While some horses enjoy non-conventional treats, from donuts to French fries to bananas or watermelon, Max is pretty straightforward in the treat department: Apples and carrots suit him just fine.

“It took me a while to get him on to apples and carrots,” Monica said. “I had to chop them up really small. He’s quite suspicious with food.”

He’s self-conscious when it comes to eating his grain.

“He’s a bit of a closet eater, so he’ll eat a lot more in the dark than he will during the day,” she said. “So during the day he’ll only eat sort of a scoop and a half a feed, but then at night, he’ll eat like three scoops of feed. I think he just likes to graze and just chip away at it over the night in his paddock or stable if he’s at a show. He eats under the cover of darkness.”

• “He definitely knows who his people are,” Monica said. “He’s easily spooked, and he’s not naturally brave, so he likes his people that he knows. But at the same time, he’s friendly to everyone. 

“He really loves my husband and our little boy, who’s 2,” she added. “He holds his head really low and lets him pat him. He’s good with children.”

• Max is a bit of an enigma; while he does get a little nervous in a big atmosphere, Monica said she also believes he likes being watched.

“I definitely think when there’s a crowd he shows off, and he knows when it counts,” she said.

• Max is used to long-haul plane flights at this point and is a good traveler. He’s not too attached to any particular horse, which has been a benefit as they’ve traveled solo quite a bit, but he’s good at making friends anywhere he goes.

“He’s been on his own a lot, so I think he’s used to it,” she said. “He kind of makes friends with horses along the way, like at the Grand Prix Eventing at Bruce’s Field [South Carolina], he made friends with Colleen Loach’s [FE Golden Eye], so he really likes ‘Goldie.’ But he’s not a particularly matey or clingy horse.”