Kristin Bachman moved across the country from Washington to Virginia in January of 2006 with the goal of pursuing her eventing dreams aboard her off-the-track Thoroughbred Gryffindor. Since then she’s gone through good times and bad—she and “Griffin” were winning the Rolex Kentucky CCI**** in 2007 until she went off course in show jumping and was eliminated. Injuries have kept Griffin out of competition since 2007, but the 16-year-old gelding (Country Light—Lani Molly) made a successful return to the advanced level this spring and most recently placed second in the advanced division at the Plantation Field Horse Trials (Pa.), held Sept. 17-18.

Q. Were horses a part of your childhood?

A. I loved horses but grew up in Omaha, Neb., and lived in the city. No one in my family had anything to do with horses. My mother got me your typical lesson package—four lessons for a month. I was about 7 or 8 when I went and took my first lesson. I walked, trotted, cantered and jumped in the first lesson and that was it. I was doing ballet, jazz, tap—I quit all of that and everything went into the riding. From then on I stayed at the barn and rode school horses and got involved with Pony Club.

Q. What was the turning point from riding school horses to making eventing a profession? 

A. In Nebraska I had lot of friends in Pony Club, and we did a lot of foxhunting. We moved to New Mexico when I was in high school, and the Pony Club wasn’t as strong. I started taking lessons with Nathan Martin, and I would go to his parents’ place in Flagstaff, Ariz., for the summer. Jonathan Elliott and his sister would spend the summer there and Kim Severson too. I got the bug. I turned much more seriously to the eventing part of it. Through high school I had other jobs during the summer, and they were indoors, and I knew I didn’t want to do that. I just wanted to do the horses. After college that was it.

Q. How did Gryffindor come into your life? 

A. I had moved to Washington, and I had a horse that had all the athletic ability to be a big time horse: a fancy mover, a big jumper, but no heart. One time he’d canter around a course and not even bat an eye, it was so easy. The next time he would see something and decide he couldn’t do it and run back to the start box. He was so inconsistent, and it wasn’t something we were going to work through. I stuck with him longer than I probably should have.

Generally I have a hard time finding horses I want to own. There are lots of horses you look at and say: “That is a phenomenal horse, but I don’t want to ride it on a daily basis.”

I was at a show in Auburn, Wash., and Meika Decher had been galloping racehorses for the owners of a nearby farm. There were several she liked, and she had told the owners if they ever came up for sale to let her know. Well she bought one and took me to see the other one. Before we left, she showed me the one she had bought.  When I saw him, he was lying on the ground, and he still had his racing plates on. Meika went into the paddock and was loving on him. She said, “This is my horse.”

I said, “Meika, that’s the one I want!”

She was moving to the East Coast and had a bunch of horses sidelined, so she decided to sell Griffin and gave me a call. I was 95 percent sure I wanted him, but I said, “Let me at least see him move.” I had literally only seen him lay down. It was love at first sight with him.

Q. What does that mean: love at first sight?

A. Karen [O’Connor] talks about the look of the eagle. At that point in time I wasn’t thinking I was looking for a four-star horse; I was just looking for another horse. There was just something about his eye that I fell in love with. It was instantaneous. I’m a sucker for a pretty face and a nice eye!

He’s a very polite horse, a complete gentleman. There’s nothing quirky about him. He doesn’t have an outwardly cheeky personality. There’s this quiet assuredness about him. There’s nothing you can say or do or put him through that will change his mind on who he is and what he’s capable of doing. There are certain things in life, like when you look at a college, which are intangible. There were some places where everything on paper was exactly right for me, it was beautiful, and I walked in and knew it wasn’t for me. I think horses are that way too. You have to listen to your instincts and your heart.

Q. The name. Did he come with it? How did he get it? 

A. Do you remember the Budweiser commercials with the frogs? Lose the last frog and that was his race name: Budweise. He was too dignified and beautiful to be called Bud. I was reading the Griffin and Sabine books by Nick Bantock. So I called him Griffin because I loved those books. I was going to call him Moonstruck for his show name. And then I picked up Harry Potter. He was already Griffin, and I got to the part with the sorting hat and it was him. It was perfect. Right then and there he became Gryffindor. He’s my literary horse.

Q. Are you into books? 

A. I love books! I could be around books, movies and music all day long, and I’d be a happy person. I was an English major in college. My homework was to read books? Great! I love the classics; I’m a huge Jane Austen fan. Mysteries aren’t my favorites. I’m kind of a science-fiction geek. I like more reality-based science fiction like Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon. I love Arthurian legend. I like the kind of stuff where you can relate to the people. Maybe it’s a different time or place, but the situations, the conflicts, the issues are all things you would see in our lives in our world. Barbara Kingsolver is one of my favorite authors. So is Jodi Picoult.

Q. What has been your greatest moment with Gryffindor so far?

A. You know, it’s funny. Rolex Kentucky 2007 was my biggest high and my biggest low. Him getting hurt was pretty low. He’s always defied expectations. When I got him I was hopint to do a three-star. I never thought about doing a four-star. I thought, “I’m no Phillip Dutton, I’m not brave enough. I’m not going to get on a horse and go ripping around a cross-country course.”

For me it’s the daily process; it’s the relationship. There are sparkling moments within it, but it’s having the relationship with him. I will have other great horses in my life, but he’s my horse of a lifetime. I got him early in my career, but he’s it.

He kept defying everyone. I had him for sale before he had even done a two-star. He was a nice horse and had potential, but nobody ever thought he would do what he’s done. Nobody wanted him. Some couldn’t ride him or he wasn’t right for them.

Bruce Davidson came and did a clinic in Washington, and another girl I worked with had a fancy horse from New Zealand who was flashy and a great jumper but not the bravest thing. He was a little bit like the horse I had earlier: He had all the makings, but you couldn’t trust him to do the job. Bruce said that horse wouldn’t be the long haul horse. But about Gryffindor, he said, “Now this is going to be your experience horse. He will do the job time and again.”

Every time I asked him to do something more he’d step up, and he continues to do that. I love him for it.

Q. What have been some of the hardest moments?

A. In spring of ’08 he got hurt, and that was tough. He had diffuse tendonitis in both front legs. It started in the left tendon, and I didn’t catch it so then he was compensating and ended up with it in both. That made me look at my program and what I was doing. Where did I go wrong? How did I let it get to this point? You start beating yourself up about it.

Q. How do you stop beating yourself up about it?

A. I don’t know if you do. You’ll always have the “what if.” You explore it all and change the parts you can change, and in the end you know that you’re the one who rides your horses every day, and sometimes you feel something, but you want something so badly. Did I feel a twinge and think, “He’s not really off because he was never really lame?” At what point did I choose not to feel what my horse was showing me? Was it at the beginning of the season? Was it because the Olympics were coming up? That’s where the beating yourself up comes in. It’s been a long haul bringing him back, and I didn’t necessarily think he would come back.

I learned a lot more about tendons than I necessarily would have! The first time I heard about it I thought, “OK, that’s not so bad, you can get better from that.” Well, that’s not necessarily the case, and not necessarily the case in an older horse. You have fantastic treatments for a lesion in a tendon, but you can’t do that with tendonitis. It’s just a stretched out rubber band. All you can do is try and get some coherency back in the tendon fibers, some strength.

In the end it turned out to be a tougher injury than a lesion. It took 2½ years before he could show and do his job again. Listen to your horse. You start to know when one little step is not quite right.

And this is hard for me to say, but sometimes money plays a part. It costs money every time the vet comes out and has to do an ultrasound. But, it’s the difference between an ultrasound now and your hopes dashed later. It’s better to do the ultrasound now. That was a tough, hard lesson learned. A lot of people do this on a shoestring budget, and I’m one of them. The only thing I can hope to share is that you have to listen to your horse, and you have to find a way to pay the vet bill.

Q. What are your hopes for your partnership?

A. I’m hoping to do Fair Hill in the fall. I want to get our feet back underneath us. Gryffindor didn’t do anything for two years, and I didn’t do anything above preliminary during that time!

Q. What would you do if weren’t eventing?

A. I thought about teaching, but that seems like a tough job. It’s difficult to keep your joy in the job. Maybe other outdoor jobs. I love to landscape and garden. I would love to be a landscape designer. My junior year in college I was in France and went to Versailles and some places in England that had beautiful gardens. A lot of my friends are phenomenal gardeners. In the Seattle area you can grow anything. Peonies are my favorite, but they like hard winters and a lot of sun so I couldn’t grow those. I would love to go to Japan and see Japanese gardens. That’s their version of listen to your horse: Listen to nature and what it wants to be.

Q. What would you say to an eventer who has aspirations to be a top rider?

A. Spend a lot of time with your horse. Ride anything you can. Seek out good instruction. Ask questions. Learn horsemanship from the ground up—talk to farriers, vets and grooms, as well as other riders. Watch as much as you can (all three phases!). Realize that you will never know all there is to know in this sport and always be open to learning more!

Courtney Young conducts in-depth interviews with the elite of the equestrian world on her blog Three Days Three Ways. Check it out for a behind-the-scenes look into three-day eventing.