Olympic dressage rider, trainer and horse dealer Belinda Nairn-Wertman died June 12, 2025, a day shy of her 70^th birthday. Reserve rider at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games and a member of the U.S. dressage team at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, she went on to work for years as a rider and trainer at Iron Spring Farm (Pennsylvania) before establishing Inspo, a sales business focused on sourcing horses from Holland, in Florida with her husband Bill Wertman. Here, her longtime friend and client Lauren Sprieser remembers her.

I met her husband, Bill, first. I’d just moved to Virginia, and we were stabled next to each other at a show in Maryland. Bill, larger than life in more than stature, made his presence known, and as one jokester tends to find another, we were suddenly best friends. But do not let her husband’s big character cause you to think of Belinda Nairn-Wertman as a wallflower; she was anything but. 

It is unfathomable to me, writing “was.” Because she passed away last week, after a long and ferocious battle with cancer. But also because she was so damn tough and so damn stoic that I don’t think most of us knew how sick she was. For me, I’m devastated that I couldn’t tell her how much I loved her, that I got caught up in that horse trainer life of shows and clinics and picking up animal care shifts when my staff can’t be there and, and, and. I know she would have understood; she lived that life too. But I’m crushed by the knowledge that, were our roles reversed, she would have been there for me.

I don’t recall who she was there to show, at that Maryland show years ago, but a friendship was struck. We kept in touch after she moved to Florida, and somewhere along the way I reached out to her about a horse, a reedy little 4-year-old she’d imported to sell here. His name was Johnny Road, and like nearly all of the young horses we worked together on over the years, he was exactly what Belinda said he was, and he grew up to be an FEI horse. 

Belinda’s generosity was unparalleled. I was always welcome in her guest room, and when I came, she made delicious dinners, and we sat on her lanai and solved all the world’s woes. When I bought a foal from her, she raised that foal for me at no charge for long past the point at which most breeders would have given her the boot. 

And last year, she shepherded an amazing elder statesman of a Grand Prix horse into my life, to be a professor to my students, free of charge. She knew he’d have a safe landing here, and her love for her horses transcended their expense. 

She found expensive horses. She found cheap horses. She made clever deals possible so that good horses could get into the hands of good people who couldn’t do it outright. She had an encyclopedic knowledge of breeding and bloodlines, and also embraced the little weirdos, the non-traditionally purpose dressage-bred ones that defy their genetics. She bred mini donkeys, and she loved her Aussies. 

She just adored animals. But she loved people too. When her groom of many years, Jeanne Pakes, grew ill with cancer, Belinda and Bill moved her into their home, and cared for her until the end. She knew everyone, and recognized hard work. A gifted teacher of humans as well as horses, her students made their own FEI horses, competed internationally, and made teams themselves. 

But it was equine matchmaking that made up much of her later career, and it was really in that context that I got to know her. I think we made five trips to the Netherlands together, spending hours and hours scouring the country for whatever my students and I were looking for. Good road trip buddies are a thing of beauty, and logging thousands of kilometers in the car with someone and not hating their guts at the end is hard to do. We told a lot of stories to kill the time: stories about horses, about clients, about training, about breeding. The story about seeing a woman schooling a horse in her home arena while she and her business partner Bart were driving past, liking the horse, stopping and asking if it was for sale (it wasn’t), making an offer on it anyway, then having the lady take the offer. (That horse ending up going to the Pan American Games.) The story about meeting Bill on a cattle ranch in Montana. The story about Bart’s father, and how he’d have to stop and greet any cats that were seen along their routes. And the story about the origin of the Twingo game (the Twingo is an utterly unremarkable Renault car model, relatively ubiquitous in The Netherlands; spotting one earned you points, with more points for the “kleur van de dag,” the color of the day. It was weird and silly. We loved it.)

I got to play a small role in one of my favorite stories. Belinda was heckling Bart and his longtime partner, Ramona, about why they hadn’t yet gotten married. “You know,” I chimed in from the backseat, “I’m an ordained minister. I could officiate your wedding.”

And suddenly, a plan was hatched. Belinda pulled a wedding together in a matter of days. Bart and Ramona were married on Belinda and Bill’s stunning Ocala-area farm, with string lights illuminating the Spanish moss, surrounded by friends and family. The food was incredible; the company divine. Trainer, agent, breeder, and wedding planner—Belinda’s talents never ceased.

Early in the pandemic, she called to tell me she was sick. She downplayed it; I learned later that she’d been given months to live. But horse girls don’t go down without a fight, and she fought, and she exceeded that edict by years. The last time I saw her in person was a few years ago, and she looked terrific (I drove up to Ocala with a client to see a sale horse, and I had been bucked off one of my own—not one from her!—that morning as hard as I’d ever been bucked off anything in my life. She had an ice boot waiting for me upon arrival.) The last time I spoke to her was just a few months ago, as she pointed me to a horse for a client that was represented by a trainer who worked out of the farm on which she and Bill spent her last few years. 

That horse was, as ever, exactly what she said it was, and the trainer who sold it to us has become a friend. Belinda was matchmaking, always, even up to the end.

We trainers get busy. The days are long, the demands can’t always wait. The animals need feeding, the show calendars are immobile. But I wish I’d prioritized her. A private person, she didn’t broadcast how she was doing, and so many of those who loved and knew her are reeling from her passing. I hope she knew we would have been there, had we known. Because it would have been a big group, her friends and her fans; both numerous and distinguished. She was a friend and a colleague and a cheerleader to so, so many. 

It was an honor to be among them, Belinda. Thank you. For Johnny and Danny and Puck and Swagger and Maddie and Lala and Elvis, for the countless more for students and friends. For the wit and wisdom. And for the stories. But above all, thank you for you.

Lauren Sprieser is a USDF gold, silver and bronze medalist with distinction making horses and riders to FEI from her farm in Marshall, Virginia. She’s currently developing The Elvis Syndicate’s C. Cadeau, Clearwater Farm Partners’ Tjornelys Solution, as well as her own string of young horses, with hopes of one day representing the United States in team competition. Follow her on Facebook and Instagram, and read her book on horse syndication, “Strength In Numbers.”