When Catherine “Cakki” Purcell told her longtime trainer, Molly Cobb, that she wanted to give eventing a try, Cobb wasn’t at all surprised. Purcell had been thrill-seeking from the time she first arrived at Cobbs’ farm, Pony Paddock near Gainesville, Florida, as a particularly tiny 6-year-old.

“She has always loved to go fast—always,” Cobb said of Purcell’s beginner lessons. “I put her on this little pony named Peaches. She was just learning to canter, and Peaches was a little bit more of a handful, and she was cantering faster than I wanted her to canter. I was trying to get her to slow down, and Cakki was just laughing and laughing. We had her in the dressage ring, and every time she went past the mirror, she’d grin at herself.”

That little girl enamored with her blurred reflection wasn’t just in it for the thrill. As Purcell grew older, she became competitive, honing her dressage while also indulging in that growing love for speed through show jumping and cross-country. 

“I liked going fast and jumping big,” said Purcell, now 16. “I like the adrenaline part of it. Elisa Wallace’s YouTube videos, and watching her do the GoPro stuff, just blew my mind, and I was like, ‘I really want to do that with my life.’ ”

Last fall, Purcell and her mare, Mystic Hazzard, qualified for the U.S. Dressage Finals (Kentucky) at second level, where “Haz” was the only Thoroughbred among the hundreds of horses competing. 

“It was so cool to bring a Thoroughbred like Haz to Dressage Finals,” Purcell said of her mare. “I thought it was a really big deal, and it meant a lot to me.”

Last weekend, Cakki and Haz realized another of the teen’s goals: winning the individual gold in the CCIJ1*-S division at the USEF Eventing Young Rider Championships, held July 5-7 in Adamstown, Maryland.  

The Young Rider Championships had been a dream of Purcell’s since she was about 11 years old, when she saw an eventer she admired, Jules Elliott, posting about the event. Years later, that same rider would begin posting about a horse she was bringing along, Mystic Hazzard (Mystic Replica—Class Shadow, Rock Point). When the mare went up for sale a few years ago, Purcell bought her sight unseen. 

“She was very spicy,” Purcell said with a laugh. “I was used to sort of kick-ride ponies, and then I got on Haz, and I was like, ‘Whoa, this has a go button!’ And jumping her, she jumped three feet over all the jumps and would throw in some bucks.” 

At first, Purcell wasn’t sure the pair would be a good match, but as her riding improved, she found it easier to manage the spirited mare. And she loved that Haz seemed to enjoy the speed of cross-country as much as her rider.

“I wasn’t originally looking for just a Thoroughbred, I was looking for anything,” Purcell said. “But I’m really glad that I ended up with a Thoroughbred because she just has so much heart, and she’s so willing to do everything and take good care of you. She’s just a good girl.”

At the end of this school year, her sophomore year, Purcell and Haz made their way north from Gainesville to Virginia to spend the summer as a working student for four-star eventer Maya Clarkson. Riding under a different coach has given Purcell a new perspective on her mare, and she was pleased with how well things came together in time for the championships. 

“[Haz] felt great in dressage. Because I’m here working with Maya Clarkson, it’s sort of been a learning curve, finding new ways to ride her and figure her out,” she said. “I went out there, and everything sort of came together at once, which was so great. She felt so good.”

Purcell said that the last few weeks of riding in Virginia also helped her prepare for the varied cross-country terrain at Adamstown, which is a stark difference from the flatter courses in Florida. 

“She’s a cross-country machine—she’s a beast!” Purcell said of Haz. “She always takes me through the finish flags. It was a great feeling to be galloping around that track at Young Riders.”

On the final day, Purcell was ecstatic to finish double clear in show jumping. You wouldn’t know it from the size of her smile in her photos that she had no idea she’d just clinched an individual medal. 

“I was just happy I went clear; I had no idea that I had won,” she said. “I wasn’t really worried about winning all week. I was just more worried about doing good for my team. So the fact that I was even in the standings was crazy. Over the last jump I was like, ‘Wow, I just finished Young Riders.’ ”

With her first team experience behind her, Purcell is more motivated than ever to invest her time and energy into riding. She plans to make the upcoming school year, which will be her junior year, her final year of high school. Graduating early would allow her more time to explore what it would mean to make a career of horses.

“I want to focus on the horses for a year because it’s really hard right now trying to balance the horses and school,” she said. 

Cobb, Purcell’s Gainesville trainer, looks at her rider’s progress and fondly remembers those first walk-trot lessons. 

“She would just start giggling on the longe line; she would just start laughing. I looked at her parents, and I said, ‘You guys are stuck. You’re not going anywhere,’ ” Cobb said. “Early on, we knew she was going to be in it for the long haul.”