As soon as she halts and salutes after her dressage test, Lisa Marriott isn’t thinking about how she was slightly late on her left change or maybe a little hurried across the diagonal. Instead, she’s searching the crowd for her 5-year-old son, Blake Trevalyan, with his long, blond hair and happy smile.

“He’s watched every test, and when I finish my last centerline, and I salute, I always look for him and his little wave,” she said. “He always goes, ‘Good job!’ no matter how I did. He’s my No. 1 fan, I think.”

Marriott made the trip to the Adequan Global Dressage Festival for the first time this year from her home base near Liverpool, England, and she, Blake and her partner Jan Trevalyan, are enjoying soaking up the Florida sun while she competes her Grand Prix horse Valucio DH Z and her small tour horse Rockstar 1.

Lisa Marriott and Rockstar 1. Lindsay Berreth Photo

Although the professional has only two horses with her, she stays busy every day. Blake has autism, and Marriott spends much of her time and energy keeping him in a routine that helps him thrive.

“I never shy away from talking about it,” she said. “I didn’t know autism until I ended up with an autistic child. I think it’s brilliant for him—the experience of the flight and to just put him out there in the world and give him the best opportunity. Everyone’s been very understanding. He’s super cute. He wants to get on every [horse] he sees. At the moment he has long, blond hair because he doesn’t want it cut. It’s a sensory thing with the autism. At the moment he wants to be a surfer. He’s got the look, but I said he maybe needs to learn to swim a bit better! It’s special to me for him to be here.”

Blake didn’t speak until he was 4 years old, and while Marriott worried he might never, she says now he won’t stop talking.

“He’s very direct, a little Dutch!” she said with a laugh. “What comes out, comes out! He has a sense of humor and a photographic memory, which is insane. He can remember everything. He was the only 5-year-old who could read a book at school.

“For me, there’s no boundaries on him. And because of him and the way he is, there’s no boundaries for my horses either,” she continued. “You just have to teach them a different way and look at things a different way. He learns in pictures, not words. It’s exhausting, but it’s interesting!”

Lisa Marriott’s son Blake has autism, and his journey has inspired her work with her horses. Photo Courtesy Of Lisa Marriott

Marriott grew up riding on junior and young rider teams in northwest England. She became a professional and trained for 15 years with Dutch rider Imke Schellekens-Bartels, who’s since become one of her best friends, before starting to work with Carl Hester and Isobel Wessels more recently.

“[Hester] pushed me to come here,” she said. “Both horses need to grow up and see the world. It’s difficult in England because there’s not so many internationals, whereas on the continent you can go every weekend. Brexit’s made a big problem for us with the traveling, and then with the coronavirus as well, so we thought, let’s just come and do a couple of months over here.”

Jan’s company, DDC Group, a data processing company, is sponsoring her to be able to make the trip.

“Everybody has been so friendly,” she said. “I’ve found the whole experience so far really good. I’ve had to learn a lot very quickly. It’s a big grow-up for the horses. The atmosphere on Friday night is really loud and fun and exciting. I came out thinking, ‘I need to do it again!’ ”

Marriott’s two horses have been with her almost from their starts. Valucio DH Z, a 13-year-old Zangersheide gelding (Va-Vite—Lucia, Bollvorm’s Libero H), has been with her for nine years. He started life as a jumper in Belgium but was too scared of the jumps around him to focus on jumping what was in front of him.

Lisa Marriot and Valucio DH Z. Lindsay Berreth Photo

“ ‘Rocket’ is like my best friend,” she said. “I’ve had him so long. He used to be—and is still—very afraid of flower pots. The biggest truck can drive past him, and he has no issue, but the little daisy on the floor is a big issue. He’s been like that his whole life. For him to go in that arena and do it, he’s getting there. He just has to get a little bit braver. But [if he was a human] he’d be a character, with a pair of shades on, sitting and watching life go by.”

Rockstar 1 is a 9-year-old Oldenburg gelding (Rock Forever—Stavante, Stedinger) Jan bought on a whim at an auction.

“He’s a very exciting person, and he got very excited at one auction when I first met him, and he bought the small tour horse after a bottle of wine,” said Marriott. “He had no idea about horses. I had never seen this horse before! We ended up with a new horse. Only later did we find out that his nickname is ‘Terror Pony.’ ”

Rockstar acts like a pop star, according to Marriott.

“He just gets very overexcited at the smallest thing” she said. “Everything is exciting to him in his world. He’s so dramatic about everything, but he’s talented, and I feel like one day, ever hopeful, when he just takes a deep breath, then I think he can do it. He knows everything for the Grand Prix, but his mind is so busy. He reminds me a lot of my son. It’s actually given me an insight into how I deal with him, because he has to have structure and routine, and you have to introduce everything to him, so I can put the two quite close together actually. He’s a funny horse.”

Lisa Mariott has four foals out of her mare Paris. Photo Courtesy Of Lisa Marriott

Realizing dressage was an expensive sport early on, Marriott decided to breed a mare she’d rescued, and she now has four horses out of her in the pipeline.

Paris, by Tango, was rescued—along with another horse and a kitten—in the middle of the night from a woman who’d had a nervous breakdown and left her horses in a field for six months in the winter with no blankets. She was emaciated when Lisa first met her.

“The vet gave me one week to get her on her feet and eating because she was on the floor,” Marriott said. “In four days I had her up on her feet and eating, and I trained her.”

Lisa trained the mare, and they were working on Grand Prix movements when a foot injury ended her dressage career at age 7. She now has foals by Negro, Sezuan, Rockstar (before he was gelded) and Secret, who range in age from 2 to 8 years old

“For the £500 she cost me, she has given me the world,” Marriott said. “The Negro is really fabulous. I have one mare from her so I can continue the line after her. When I’m too old and gray and wrinkly, then I can put riders on those horses. Give me a normal horse and a few years, and I can make him into something. I’ve never had the spectacular horse to start with, ever. But now I feel like I’ve bred a few that I feel like I can be proud of already. They’re looking very nice.”

Lisa Marriott and her partner Jan Trevalyan. PPhoto Courtesy Of Lisa Marriott

Marriott is grateful to have the support of her parents and partner in helping her achieve her riding goals. At home, she has a business teaching riders from grassroots to Grand Prix, and usually toughs it out in the cold British winter with no indoor. She cares for all her own horses and has enjoyed spending one-on-one time with the two she has in Florida while they’re stabled at the AGDF grounds. At home, they enjoy lots of turnout.

“I’m the most down-to-earth-person going into this,” she said. “I want to be competitive, but I’m also a realist, so I want to be both. I want to be as competitive as I can be but without putting so much pressure on the horses. It’s just baby steps.”

Balancing life as a parent with horses can be tough.

“It’s hard, but because I have super supportive parents and my partner who’s unreal on the supportive scale as well, it’s all possible,” she said. “I don’t remember a night I’ve slept all night because [Blake] sleeps in the bed with me. I adjust to him. He’s just been like a shadow since he was born. He’s just always with me.

“My clients are very understanding with my teaching in England,” she added. “They look after him and play with him. I’ve got him in mainstream school, which is really good, but it is a juggle. At the end of the day the horses are so important to me, and the dressage is so important, but hand on my heart, he is above that and has to be. He is the No. 1, and if he’s OK, and we’re having a good day, then I can go and try and have a good day. That’s the best way to go, really.”

She says talking about autism often seems like a taboo subject. She wears a green lanyard that says, “I care for somebody with a hidden disability” to try and raise awareness.

“It was a lot of hard work to get Blake,” she said. “I lost four on the way to having Blake in the first place, so the whole thing has just been so traumatic. It was hard work to get him here. He’s so special to us and to me. Every time you go down that centerline in a field of, say 15 riders, and I go down centerline and can almost guarantee I’ve maybe had three hours sleep. I’m doing my best to concentrate the best I can and to be on my best game, and I’m trying my hardest, but nobody knows what night I had the night before. It’s just a constant worry because if I think he’s not happy on the side I find it really hard to concentrate. Everything has to be just right for [an autistic child]. It’s just a lot of preparation. I have to be massively prepared all the time.

“The judges don’t know what you’ve dealt with that day or that night or five minutes before you got on,” she continued. “They don’t care either because why should they? They’re judging from when the bell rings. So sometimes it’s frustrating because I feel like, ‘Oh, if I could have just had some more sleep it would have been better,’ but I’m also never going to not be next to him, so it’s fine. It will be what it will be!”