When Meagan Nusz went to try SRI Aladdin at Kent Farrington’s Palm Beach Point farm, her father, Tommy Nusz, said he’d buy the horse if she could jump it around at the top of the standards. Since the horse had only just started to jump bigger classes, it seemed like a tall order.

“I cruised around it like a working hunter and never thought twice about it,” said Nusz. “Literally from the second that I sat in the saddle, Kent and I both believed in that horse 100 percent and said that this was going to be something special.”

Over a year later, after hours of work put in outside of the show ring, Nusz’s patience paid off with their first grand prix win together in the $127,000 August Grand Prix FEI 3* at the Tryon International Equestrian Center (N.C.) on Aug. 8.

Strung together with tight rollbacks and half-stride lines, Florencio Hernandez’s course asked the riders to make tough decisions. “I know that when we were all walking it, everyone was kind of starting to second guess themselves,” said Nusz, 27. “The jumps weren’t super huge, but he did a very good job building a pretty delicate course. There were a lot of tricky parts for me, especially the first combination was a double vertical out of the turn off the right lead, which is always a bit difficult.”

With his huge stride, SRI Aladdin typically shines in bigger rings with wider turns. However, being able to leave out strides in the lines played to his advantage. They were one of three pairs that made it to the jump off.

Nusz had a nail-biting few minutes watching Mark Bluman and Uitteraard tackle all of the leave-out options that she was hoping to avoid having to do in the jump-off. But when Bluman forgot to jump the skinny on course, therefore eliminating himself, Nusz had the leeway to stick to her original plan. “My horse is naturally very, very fast—he has a huge stride—so that’s kind of just where I gauged my time. I did all of the normal strides, nothing too crazy or tricky.”

Though Jonathan McCrea and Aristotles V were hot on their heels, Nusz stopped the timers a second faster to seal the win. “This was our first grand prix win together, so that was very, very special. And then that was actually the biggest purse that I’ve ever won, so it’s kind of a double whammy there,” she said.

Though Kent Farrington, her coach of five years, is currently competing in Europe, Nusz had the help of Candice King ringside and had the satisfaction of reporting her success to her coach abroad. “That was special too, to be able to call Kent and tell him that we’d won and him believing in the fact that we were able to do it without him standing there telling me what to do.”

The class capped off the August I Horse Show and drew a crowd of spectators that ranged from fellow competitors to families to the George H. Morris Stadium. “It really livens it up!” said Nusz. “Not a lot of times do we get a huge crowd out for the show jumpers, so I thought that it was really nice that a lot of people from the local area came out.”

SRI Aladdin wasn’t phased by the extra attention, a quality of his that has stood out to Nusz from the beginning. “He’s quite level-headed, actually. He doesn’t care much whether it’s under the lights or during the day or there are people there. He doesn’t’ really mind large crowds, no crowds; he’s pretty straightforward in that matter which is good because some of the horses will go in and kind of freeze, especially with the lights and a lot of people, but luckily mine didn’t.”

However, forging the formidable partnership on display in the grand prix ring took time. She purchased the now-10-year-old Dutch Warmblood gelding (Quasimodo Z—Merci, Burggraaf) after the Winter Equestrian Festival (Fla.) last year from Javier Salvador after a suggestion from her barn manager, Erin Everett. Though SRI Aladdin was jumping around 1.45- and 1.50-meter classes, he wasn’t an easy ride.

“He was really, really unrideable when I first got him: really strong, very stiff. I had minimal steering,” said Nusz, who splits her time between her Lexington, Ky., and Palm Beach Point, Fla., bases. “We just had to put in the time and the effort into making him what we wanted him to be, because all of the parts were there.”

She and Farrington have spent the last year putting in the time to figure out what makes him tick. She doesn’t ride him in draw reins or ask him to be really round; stretches in the barn suffice to loosen up his neck. Their compromises with him have helped produce the strong and careful jumper that Nusz has now.

“I don’t think he’s every rider’s cup of tea, but I get along with him great,” she said. “He has such a big personality you can’t help but love him, and you know he’s always going to try. You can see it in his eyes that he really wants to be a good horse and he really wants to fight for you, which is a really, really redeeming quality. Not a lot of horses have that so I’m really, really lucky to have him as part of my string.

“He’s really starting to believe in me and to trust that what I’m telling him to is the right thing most of the time,” she continued. “That’s a nice feeling, especially to work so hard with one. You spend all these hours with them every day riding them and teaching them, so when it finally starts coming around you feel really accomplished, because you know that they’re finally starting to believe in you.”

Nusz has her sights set on the grand prix classes at the Hampton Classic (N.Y.) in September and a special trip to the Spruce Meadows Masters tournament (Alberta) to fulfill a childhood dream. “My dad used to take me when I was a little girl; we would go every year to watch for my birthday, because it always falls right around my birthday,” she said. “That was one of my riding goals and dreams: to show at the Spruce Masters. Fortunately this year, especially because of Aladdin, I have two really good horses to take. That will be my debut to get to go there and jump, so I’m really excited about that!”