Katie Dinan went into this year’s Longines FEI Jumping World Cup Final knowing it was going to be the biggest test yet for her mare Out Of The Blue SCF, but hoped the experience would only strengthen for their 15-month partnership. The pair emerged from the three-day championship, held April 3-6 in Basel, Switzerland, as the highest-placed U.S. finishers and the winners of the final day’s class as the only horse and rider to finish without a single penalty.

“Bridie,” an 11-year-old Belgian Warmblood (Verdi TN—Casa Blanca La Silla, Cassini I) bred in the U.S. by Lisa Lourie and owned by Grant Road Partners LLC, came up through Lourie’s young horse training program at Spy Coast Farm. Once she had a solid base, Irish Olympian Shane Sweetnam started riding her in bigger classes. After a lifetime under Lourie’s ownership, Dinan purchased Bridie as a coming 10-year-old, and the pair was able to step right onto the international stage.

“She has so much power and ability; she has so much scope,” Dinan said. “She physically is such a great jumper, and at the same time, she’s super intelligent. She understands the sport; she understands that she should clear the jumps. She has quite a competitive nature herself, and she really wants to do the job really well and takes herself very seriously. Especially this past week—what she put into it, it just took my breath away how hard she tries to do the right thing. To have a horse that’s both so brave, but also so smart at the jumps is such an amazing combination.”

Dinan, 31, already had five World Cup Final appearances under her belt, so she had ample experience to draw from, paired with a little extra good luck in the form of memes of retired top mounts Brego R’N B and Nougat Du Vallet wishing her luck, courtesy of her mom.

Bridie showed she was ready for the intense three days of jumping, culminating with a pair of clear rounds on the final day of competition. They were one of just three pairs to jump clean and the only ones not to have a time penalty that day, boosting them to eighth overall and making them the highest-placed U.S. finishers.

“It was definitely a very exciting week,” said Dinan. “I am still pinching myself a bit. Sunday was definitely a really big day for me.”

We caught up with Dinan to talk about Bridie, their World Cup experience and Dinan’s research endeavors.

Tell me a bit about Out Of The Blue SCF. She seems like a cool horse.

She has a really fun story. She was bred by Lisa Lourie at Spy Coast Farm, so she’s an American-bred horse, which is not something you see that often in show jumping. There are more and more people, especially Spy Coast, trying to breed in America. That was something really cool to be part of, especially representing the U.S. at these competitions, to have a horse that was bred in the States.

She has really good breeding. She is by Verdi TN, the stallion from Maikel van der Vleuten that had so much success. And on her mother’s side, she’s out of a mare named Casa Blanca, who was by Cassini I and Tin Rocco, and her mother has unbelievable results as a broodmare. She is the mother of Rebeca LS, [who was] ridden by Edward Levy and Brianne Goutal-Marteau in big grand prix, jumped 1.60-/1.65-meter classes, and Bridie’s younger sister by one year [Paso Doble SCF] is now ridden by Nayel Nassar, and is also jumping 1.60-meter grand prix. So, the fact that the same mother had three babies that have all jumped 1.60 meters is pretty remarkable.

We got her at the end of her 9-year-old year, and I started showing her last January. … The more I know her, the more in awe of her I am. She’s just an unbelievably fantastic horse, and I am pinching myself that I am lucky enough to be her rider and that we have her in the stable. She has so much blood and really wants to go and has so much just, like, forward energy and is always looking to the next thing. She’s the kind of horse that you could go galloping outside and she could canter for hours and hours. She just seems to have endless reserves.

What drew you to her in the first place?

I have to give my coach, Beat Mändli, who I’ve worked with for over 10 years now, credit for that. He had seen her with Shane that summer jumping some big classes, and he really liked her. I think he saw in her that she was a mare with a lot of blood, and that really pulled you to the front and wanted to go, and he thought it would be a really good combination for me. And I wasn’t sure. Shane is such a good rider, and I’m always hesitant to make any assumptions [that] a horse will be a good fit for me or not based on their prior results, but he had a really good feeling. …

She’s definitely a bit different than horses I’ve had in the past. She’s the first mare I really competed at this level. And she’s a big horse. She’s got a very big stride. She has a lot of blood. You don’t know until you go in the ring with them a few times, right? So I trusted Beat, and his judgment, and he had such a good feeling.

I also have a huge respect for Shane Sweetnam. I know him well, and I knew the horse had a really good upbringing, and that he had done a really good job producing her. I felt really good that we were getting a horse that had had such a positive experience and been asked the right questions at the right time.

What made this was a good year to make a bid to go to World Cup?

I think the World Cup Final is always a really big deal and something that is great to aim for. It’s been a priority of mine for many years. It’s a great championship, and it’s the only championship we have this year. … Also, for me, I have an 11-year-old horse that I’ve had for just over a year, and the experience of jumping this championship together I hoped would make us stronger, and we would learn in the experience.

Bridie just blew me away, and how she kept on jumping and got stronger and better as the week got on. One of the toss-ups was that I did not jump for the last few weeks in Florida in preparation for the World Cup. And for sure, I wondered if I was making the right decision. And I kind of jokingly said that I would know after the fact if I made the right decision; hindsight is always 20-20, but looking back, I’m obviously so happy I went.

You two hit the ground running last year and made the short list for the Paris Olympic Games. How do you feel like your partnership has grown over the last 15 months?

We accomplished a lot and had a few really good rounds early on in our partnership, towards the end of [the 2024 Winter Equestrian Festival (Florida)], and we were put on the short list, which was a real vote of confidence from our chef d’equipe and selection committee. I think we grew stronger because of that, and I was really honored by that and wanted to rise to that occasion. And then we had the opportunity to go to Aachen [Germany] last summer, which is the dream of any rider, and I think that experience made us stronger as a combination.

I really feel that we’ve been learning each other and growing together ever since, culminating this past winter at WEF. She was clear in our last five-star grand prix we jumped, and I felt like that was one of our best rounds we’ve had together.

We’re getting more and more in sync in the rounds and trusting each other more and more. It’s a huge team effort, and my coach, Beat, knows the horse better and better. Lou Beudin has been taking care of my horses now for almost eight years and has been taking care of Bridie since we got her. And she’s had really the same program now for 15 months and is getting more and more comfortable in our program. We’ve just gotten all stronger together as a team.

You were the only person to go clear in both rounds on the last day of World Cup, which is a big accomplishment. Can you talk about how it felt to pull that off?

I can’t really believe it. I was really motivated to have a strong finish on Sunday. I felt like my horse was really on form, and I wanted to deliver for her, because she was there for me, and I knew she was ready to do it. I thought [the first round] walked very big, but it was riding pretty well. There were many good rounds.

“You live for that moment of exhilaration when you’ve done it, and we did it together. The connection we had, I felt like so in sync with her, and I think that’s what made it like such a special moment for me.”

I didn’t actually watch anybody before I went, because I went 12^th. I walked my course; I made my plan, and I wanted to just stick to that and focus on my warm-up. When I went in the ring, she gave me such a good feeling. The first two lines, I took a little bit of a deep breath, and just was like, “OK, just follow the plan; she’s right there.” The more we went the more confident the two of us got because she was giving me such a good feeling. After going clear the first round, I was so thrilled, but I was like, “OK, I can be happy for a minute, but now I need to just refocus, because the next round is in an hour.”

The second round was very big, and also a long enough course, so it was like a whole new event. The day is not over. It was really, for me, a test of focus, and for my horse, a test of endurance and fitness from the week. I felt like she was just peaking then, and all I had to do was not mess her up, which is a great position to be in as a rider, because she was like, “I’ve got it, Katie, just buckle up.” But I also so badly didn’t want to let her down, because I knew that she was there to do it. The whole team I had behind me—Beat and Lou, who put so much into this, and my parents and my fiancé also came for the weekend—I felt really supported.

She warmed up great, and then I felt like she was jumping so well in the second round. I thought [the course] was tough because the last two lines were like so interconnected. …  It was really about execution, and my horse made that easy for me because she was just simply spectacular. When we crossed the finish timers, I had an overwhelming sense of joy and relief, because it’s what you dream of and what you work hard for through ups and downs, and you live for that moment of exhilaration when you’ve done it, and we did it together. The connection we had, I felt like so in sync with her, and I think that’s what made it like such a special moment for me.

Are you still a doctoral candidate?

I am a third year Ph.D student at Rockefeller University, which is a research institute in New York City, I am working in the lab of a guy named Mike Young, who won the Nobel Prize in 2017 for discovering basically the molecular mechanisms for circadian rhythms of our body’s clock. The lab does all their work with fruit flies, and I am studying sleep and sleep deprivation in fruit flies to try to better understand the genetics and epigenetics of why we’re so affected by sleep deprivation.

I’m really interested in sleep and different like sleep cycles. I also sometimes wonder how the sleep patterns of different types of animals have evolved, and it’s given me a new perspective on some of my horses’ behavior, [on an] evolutionary biology level. They have made new rules about how you need to have the stable areas at shows dark at night and things like that. And I think that’s really good, because the more we know about sleep, the more important we realize it is. Everything from a fruit fly to a dog to a horse to a person has this internal molecular clock in them that’s operating on a 24-hour cycle. It affects our not just our sleep, but our eating patterns, our mood, our energy, and that’s something that I think about in myself and in my horses.