When Braden Speck leaves the cross-country start box for the Plantation Field CCI4*-S this weekend, he might have the biggest cheering section on course. Not only did the 21-year-old grow up in Unionville, Pennsylvania, where the event is held, but his friends and family there know exactly what he’s been through to reach this point—the last big prep event before his planned CCI4*-L debut.

Speck, who just started his senior year as pre-vet student at the nearby University of Delaware, weathered the tragic loss of three horses as a teen and now—spurred by their deaths to pursue veterinary medicine—spends part of his year commuting between Newark, Delaware, and Aiken, South Carolina, to achieve his eventing and academic goals simultaneously.

Growing up in horse country, Speck lives a stone’s throw from equestrian luminaries including Boyd Martin, Philip Dutton, Jessica Ransehousen and Bruce Davidson. He got into riding early in life, largely thanks to his sister, Kaelen Speck. 

“We went to school with Philip Dutton’s kids, and my sister was best friends with Ada Plumb, the granddaughter of [seven-time Olympic eventer Mike Plumb and Olympic dressage rider] Donnan Sharp. She got hooked on riding through them,” Braden said. “Then I got roped in.”

Braden’s introduction to eventing came aboard Rosenharley Romello, a Connemara pony his sister had outgrown. “Weasel” introduced him to eventing, carrying Braden in his beginner novice debut.

“He was built like a weasel—or maybe a stretch limo,” Braden recalled with a laugh. “He was also a saint.” 

Weathering Triple Tragedy

When Braden outgrew Weasel, he began riding Regal Dancer, a Thoroughbred mare his sister and other young riders rode in their trainer Erin Kanara’s program. “Dancer” helped Braden move up the levels, and he made his preliminary debut with her in 2017, when he was in the eighth grade. Then came tragedy.

“We were cross-country schooling at Boyd Martin’s farm, Windurra, when Dancer collapsed on course,” Braden said. The mare suffered a ruptured aneurysm and died immediately. “Boyd came out and gave me a big hug,” he recalled. 

While Braden was not physically injured, losing Dancer was traumatizing, and it put him at a crossroads.

“That was a tough time. It was a while before I could get back on a horse,” he said. “I was a hockey player, too, and after Dancer died my parents said I could go to boarding school for high school and play hockey, or I could continue to pursue riding. It was a turning point; I knew that if I committed to a new horse, I would be doing it for real.

“It was difficult, for sure, but I ended up choosing horses and riding,” he said. 

He started leasing a mare named Moondance a couple of months later. But just about a month into their partnership, she colicked. The Specks took her to the University of Pennsylvania’s New Bolton Center in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, where she spent a week but was able to recover without surgery. 

After rehabbing from that emergency and being cleared to compete again, they got back into their groove. Then, after cross-country one day, she colicked again.

“She was perfectly herself until she stopped competing, but when we brought her back to the trailer, she immediately parked out, and we could tell it was happening again,” he said. “We gave her Banamine and rushed her back to the barn, and then to New Bolton. When they opened her up, 70 percent of her small intestine was dead.” 

The vets and the Speck family knew that euthanasia was the only answer.

Despite two major setbacks, Braden persevered. 

“My sister had recently gotten a horse named American Fortitude, who we called ‘Wolf.’ After ‘Moon’ died, I started riding him when he was 5 and I was 15,” Braden said. 

The pair spent a short time together, until Wolf suffered a career-ending injury, slicing his leg open on a jump cup while schooling at home.

“He was immediately three-legged lame, and we knew it was bad because he was a really stoic horse,” Braden recalled. 

After months of stall rest, his vets said that even with an expensive surgery to his superficial digital flexor, there was only a remote possibility of recovery. Euthanizing Wolf seemed the most humane decision, although it was heartbreaking for the family.

 “It was just devastating to lose Dancer, and the other two were atrocious bad luck,” Kanara, the Specks’ coach, said. “When I’ve experienced this with other young riders—losing a teammate—they’ve often wanted to take a step back, but Braden didn’t.”

Enter ‘Liam’

Kanara was good friends with the late Annie Goodwin, and Annie shared with her and Sally Speck, Braden’s mom, that she had a horse in training to sell, “with a super-neat personality; a horse that could be great for Braden,” Kanara said. They traveled to Aiken to meet the then 6-year-old U.S.-bred Connemara-cross gelding BSF Liam (Ballywhim An Luan—Rumor Risky, Hawkster). 

“As soon as I saw ‘Liam,’ I said, ‘This is the horse I want,’ ” Braden recalled. “I could tell right away that he was a sweetheart. Even though at the time we thought he would probably top out at prelim or intermediate, after what I’d been through, I just really wanted to enjoy riding every day.”

Liam, now 11, has exceeded expectations, surprising everyone with his ability. “He just keeps chugging along,” Braden said. “Anything I ask him to do, he just does it. He’s a machine in cross-country—he fights and tries his hardest at every fence.” 

Braden and Liam started their career together at the novice level in 2019 and made their advanced debut in May at Fair Hill (Maryland) earlier this year. In 2023, they earned the USEF McKenna Trophy for being the top-performing eventing Connemara, either halfbred or purebred, at the preliminary level and above.

“They are so special together,” Kanara said. “Liam is incredibly intelligent, typical of a part-Connemara-bred horse. He can be a sporty pony when he needs to be and then grow his stride and be a horse when he wants to be. Nobody expected the two of them to do as much as they have, but they are so connected, the two of them.”

Also in 2023, Braden was accepted for the USEA Emerging Athletes 21 clinic, attending a clinic coached by Shannon Lilley at Morven Park International Equestrian Center in Leesburg, Virginia. “It was cool. I was the only guy in my group!” Braden said with a laugh. From that clinic Braden was one of two selected to attend the national camp in January 2024, training for a week under David O’Connor, Olympic gold medalist and USEF’s chief of sport.

That training came into play this year, when he successfully moved Liam up to advanced. Now, they go back and forth between intermediate and advanced, and on Aug. 11 won an intermediate division at the Fair Hill International Recognized Horse Trials.

“I just really want him to keep enjoying his job,” Braden said. “He has a heart of gold, and it’s important to me that he’s having fun.”

Braden credited his family for helping him through the series of tragedies he’s endured with horses and persevering toward his goals.

“My parents are both very supportive,” he said of his parents, Sally and Stefan. “My mom, Sally, is at every show, and although she is not a rider, she watches and knows what’s going on. After a competition she says things like, ‘I don’t know what you need to do, but he’s behind the vertical!’ ”

Braden chose pre-veterinary medicine as his college major after what he went through with Dancer, Moon and Wolf.

“Losing horses definitely has influenced my desire to become a vet,” Braden said. “I’ll hopefully help prevent people from experiencing what I had to go through.” 

“He will be a great vet,” Kanara added. “He loves animals so much, and he’s truly a whisperer with all the horses in the barn.”

Unlike many of his pre-vet classmates, Braden spends January through March each year traveling between school and Aiken every weekend to compete. 

“I wake up at 3 a.m., drive from UD to Aiken, ride, have dinner with my girlfriend Gabby [a vet tech with Dr. Ashley Taylor of Sports Medicine Associates of Chester County, whose clients are mostly eventers], then compete and drive back to school,” he said. “It’s a pretty crazy schedule.” 

That schedule, however, has laid the groundwork for Braden to move up to advanced and, he hopes, contest his first CCI4*-L in November at The Event at TerraNova (Florida) in November. After graduating from UD in the spring, he plans to take a gap year to focus on competing.

“My big goal is to go to a five-star in Kentucky in 2026, before I start vet school,” he said.

But after the work and tears that have gotten him to this point, Braden never loses sight of the importance of his relationship with Liam.

“I love the horse-rider partnership,” he said. “Liam is the perfect horse for me, and I just love going out to the barn every day. He’s probably the only four-star horse that can also go out for a bareback hack.”