Champion hunter and breeding stallion Popeye K died Oct. 20, at longtime rider Tommy Serio’s farm. He was 27. In his memory, we are looking back this week at our 2019 Stallion Issue and the “Horse of a Lifetime” story we did on the Dutch Warmblood stallion and his remarkable career.
He became a legend in the early 2000s when he dominated the conformation hunters, but owner Rachel Spencer cherishes her stallion more for the new world he opened up for her and the sport.
By the way the school children clutched their posters, you’d have thought their favorite baseball player or country music singer had traveled to the Salem Civic Center that third week of June in 2004. Instead, the famed guest about to appear in Salem, Virginia, for the Roanoke Valley Horse Show was of the four-legged variety. Out of all the best Saddlebred, harness horses, hunters and jumpers, one stood out to the fans: Popeye K.
Gail Guirreri-Maslyk painted his portrait on the show’s 33rd poster, and there was no misidentifying the famous combination of “Popeye”—with his bold stockings—and Tommy Serio. Serio’s Summerfield LLC stabling was situated right across from the shaved ice vendor, and the kids would flock to Popeye’s stall, posters in hand.
“I’d have to sign autographs, and they would hang on him around his stall and stuff like that,” said Serio. “He was into people. He loved people. And little kids kind of fascinated him. He was on the front of the program, and you had to sign the program, ‘Popeye and Tommy.’ ”
Despite being a breeding stallion, Popeye didn’t display studdish tendencies. He’d keep munching his hay as a child peered into his stall. If Serio wasn’t rushing off to show another horse, he’d bring Popeye out for his fans—pointing out the dent on the Dutch Warmblood’s right side where his dam stepped on him as a foal, leaving a perfect hoof print.
“They would pet him, and he’d put his head down,” said Serio. “He drew as much popularity as anything. One, he was so flashy. No matter whether you’re leading him around or sitting on him or showing him, he had a fan club.”
Owner Rachel Spencer described the experience as surreal.
“As a horse owner, you’re not thinking about being famous,” she said. “We all have a favorite in the barn or maybe a favorite in a region or something, but you don’t think about it extending to the broader market. Having kids see him on a poster—you try to stop and get what that means, but at the time you’re getting such a kick out of it. It’s kind of funny. You’re like, ‘Why would you want something signed from Popeye?’ But then the reflection down the road is, he was just that famous. At the time you don’t quite grasp it. It’s the perspective of time that gives you a better look at that. Gosh knows I’ll never have another one that’s that famous.”
That’s The One
One day in November 2002, Spencer drove her truck and trailer the familiar 12-minute route to Summerfield in Keswick, Virginia. With her flashy amateur-owner hunter Small Talk in tow she pulled into the driveway, unloaded, and headed to the outdoor ring.
She worked on some final details before the crew trekked to the Winter Equestrian Festival (Florida), and as they wrapped up the lesson, Serio casually mentioned, “Yeah I’m getting ready to get on the stallion.” And Spencer’s ears pricked.
Spencer had been hearing Serio go on about this nice 5-year-old stallion from Canada named Popeye K. He stood in the first stall as you walked into Summerfield, and Spencer, who’d taken a look through the partition, didn’t quite grasp the full extent of the fuss. Sure, he was cute, with his four knee-high stockings and white face on a blood bay coat—with an added Marilyn Monroe freckle over his left nostril—but she needed to see him move.
So instead of driving home, Spencer waited as they pulled out the 17-hand stallion (Voltaire—Eloretta, Ronald) for Serio, donning his trademark jeans and fringe half chaps, to swing his leg over.
“Tommy was always happy to have people stick around and watch what was going on,” said Spencer. “I enjoyed that part of that barn because he always had an interest in young horses. So, I stuck around, and he came out, and I was like, ‘Oh, he is very attractive out of the stall.’ Then he picked up the trot, and I was like well he’s a nice mover but—Small Talk I don’t think ever lost a hack.”
But her perspective changed the second he picked up the canter. Then Serio pointed Popeye to the outside line. The jumps were nothing spectacular—white winged standards holding up hunter schooling rails with some flower boxes underneath, no more than 2’9″ or 3′. But Popeye made it extraordinary.
“I still vividly can see that moment in my mind—and it’s been that many years,” said Spencer. “It really was that moment you went, ‘Oh my God.’ He went down there and jumped it so incredible. And I was just blown away.”
Spencer only watched two jumps.
“I called my mom because we’d been looking for a nice young horse,” she said. “And I said to her, ‘I found the one.’ ‘What do you mean the one?’ ‘The one.’ ‘How do you know it’s the one?’ I’m like, ‘There is absolutely no doubt in my mind. It’s the one.’ ”
Luck Lines Up
Serio hadn’t predicted Spencer would fall in love with the stallion, let alone offer to buy him. Popeye had only traveled stateside to add hunter expertise to his résumé and further promote his breeding for Ashland Farm in Ontario. Even before entering Serio’s barn, he had hundreds of foals on the ground in Canada and had won the prestigious Governor General’s Cup for the best Canadian-bred horse suited to become a sport horse at the Royal Winter Fair (Ontario) as a 3-year-old.
Canadian Olympian Ian Millar started Popeye and had shown him a bit, with Scott Hofstetter briefly giving some mileage to the young stallion. Serio met Popeye when he taught a clinic at Ashland. The farm’s co-owner Darlene Tierney wanted to see Serio ride her flashy youngster. They were considering sending Popeye to Florida with Serio, but they needed to make sure it was a good fit.
“Tommy was like, ‘Yeah, so normally people send their horses, and I make the decision on whether I want them or not,’ ” said Tierney. “But I said, ‘This is not a normal horse, Tommy. I’m telling you, this is not a normal horse. So I need to see it for myself before I make a decision.’ ”
Around 8 that night, Serio stepped into Popeye’s stirrups for the first time.
“I mean right away you could tell he was a really quality horse,” said Serio. “He had a great jump to him—granted it was an indoor ring; it was one or two jumps—but he had such a loft and such a scope off the ground. If you would put it all together, you could see—it would take a blind person not to see his talent.”
But Serio still wasn’t totally convinced he’d be a conformation hunter.
“And I’m like, ‘Yes he is! Yes he is! I promise you he is,’ ” said Tierney.
Soon thereafter Popeye arrived at Summerfield to start his hunter training before making his conformation debut at WEF. He’d come with instructions and advice—warnings that he would jump out of paddocks and not tolerate clippers.
But for reasons Serio can’t quite articulate, he and the stallion instantly clicked.
“He really sort of fit right in, and he took a liking to me I guess,” said Serio. “I waited until everybody went home one day, and while he was eating his hay, I tied him up in his stall and just turned the clippers on and sat there with him for a while, sat in the stall with the clippers running, and then finally I clipped him all over. He was loose after a while—I just turned his head loose, and he was loose eating his hay. I clipped him all over. They couldn’t believe it.”
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Quickly Popeye fell into the routine at Summerfield, and his easygoing personality mirrored Serio’s.
“I’m sort of laid back myself a little bit,” said Serio. “Some people accuse me of being a little too slow with the horses or young horses. But you have to be able to communicate with them. Believe me I’m no horse whisperer, and I’m not sure I believe in a lot of the stuff. [But the horses] tell us all the time what they’re thinking of. What they’re doing. How they’re doing it. And to me, we have to listen to them. I just trusted him, and I didn’t really train on him. I trained with him. I just got his trust, and that was it. He liked the ride.”
Serio said he treated Popeye with respect but that the horse also had a “pet side” to him.
“He liked the attention, that part of it,” said Serio. “After a while there was no twitch or anything to trim his ears or muzzle or anything. Just sort of dropped the rope, and he learned to stand there. And he was into treats. He could tell by a look in your eye you had something for him. He was always on a diet because he’d always get way too fat.”
Spencer had been looking for a young horse for Serio to bring up in the professional divisions and for her to eventually campaign in the amateurs. A stallion wasn’t necessarily part of that picture—but once she discovered Popeye, the idea of tackling the breeding world also excited her.
However, Spencer and her mother Elizabeth Spencer ran into a small issue: Ashland Farm didn’t really want to sell him, and the months-long negotiation process reflected that.
“We were getting ready to do that Littlewood horse show—the last one before circuit, which is now part of circuit,” remembered Rachel. “I was going to go watch him, and Tommy comes back and goes, ‘You need to make a vet appointment for that one.’ And I was like, ‘What?’ And he’s like, ‘Yeah that man accepted your offer.’ So we walked up to that ring to go do the ticketed warm-up on Tuesday—it was the first time he was out in Palm Beach or outside of Tommy’s barn. And I had no less than five different people come up and ask if he was for sale. It was like the barest nick of time and just really lucky that we got it when we did.
“Some things are just meant to be, and that one was just kind of meant to be. It just happened,” continued Rachel. “It was just luck. A lot of luck.”
Breaking In
As fast as people offered to buy Popeye, they also approached Rachel wanting to breed their mares.
“It was a very steep learning curve,” said Rachel, a Texas native who’d traveled all over to groom and compete but didn’t have any experience with breeding. “People were like, ‘Can I have a contract?’ And I was like, ‘Contract?’ ‘Yeah a breeding contract.’ And I was just like, ‘Um well we’re—maybe?’ I didn’t know how to answer any questions.”
With the help of associates at Blue Ridge Equine in Charlottesville, Virginia, especially Reynolds Cowles, DVM, Rachel learned the breeding business. Then through Select Breeders Services she absorbed even more, trying to find the best methods to accommodate Popeye’s show schedule and allow him the most accessibility to breeders. But in order for him to become valuable to the American market, Popeye needed to start winning.
“He was for sure not an inexpensive horse, and I sweated bullets for half of that first year going, ‘Oh my God, if this thing is not everything I say he is, I am set back. I’ve been telling my mom it’s the one; it’s really the one!’ ” said Rachel.
Popeye was 6 and still green, having young horse moments, and it took the judges some time to like his style. While warmbloods had been introduced into the hunter world, many conformation judges still preferred the more refined frame of the Thoroughbred.
“When I got him to Wellington, he was a little overwhelmed,” said Serio. “His first classes, they were green, and he was looking out of the ring and doing things like that—stepping off his lead or something going around, just kind of gawking at something. He would jump all the jumps; if anything, those jumps were no problem. He’d jump maybe too high. The first season we had him, it was up and down. His attention span—he didn’t have a whole lot of focus.
“He definitely capitalized on being beautiful, and he definitely capitalized on judging warmbloods in the conformation division—it’s a little different than judging Thoroughbreds you know,” continued Serio. “Once somebody swallowed the bullet—they took the bullet and let him win the model—then he did break into that.”
While he’d earn a blue ribbon here or there and took home a reserve tricolor, it wasn’t until the Bluegrass Festival (Kentucky) in mid-August that the pieces started snapping into place. There he earned his first championship, and he went on to end his year with a reserve championship at the Pennsylvania National and a championship at the Washington International (District of Columbia) in the green conformation.
“Those last shows of the year you really started to see what he was,” said Rachel. “There’s a little bit of momentum that happens in the show ring. When you’re in Florida, especially in Wellington, this is where the judges are seeing all these green conformation horses, and this is their first year in this division. So they’re all trying to figure out how they stack up against each other and where they’re going to use them and how they’re going to use them. One judge might love him, and then the next judge is like, ‘I don’t think it should win.’ As the year went on everybody got more excited about him and more on the same page about him. And he got more consistent in the ring.”
Popeye already had a following in Canada, but when he began winning in the hunters, American breeders took notice as well.
“So, it really snowballed, but it was not of my doing is what I always think,” said Rachel. “I did my best to make him available, but the rest of it was just how things sometimes go.”
Popeye mania had landed in the United States.
Done It All
Once accustomed to the hunter ways, Popeye collected more and more tricolors.
“I don’t know how many championships he won, but I know how many times he didn’t win, and that wasn’t very many,” said judge Frank Willard. “The thing about him was, he jumped every jump identical. From 3′, 3’3″, 3’6, 3’9″, 4′ he jumped them all the same. You don’t get that. If you do, it costs more than your house does. You don’t see that today. Mainly because today [owners] want Tommy or me or somebody to get them ready for [a junior or amateur] to ride him. [Rachel] was great—once they saw how great he was, leaving him with Tommy and letting him make his reputation.”
From their first season in 2003 until 2007, the public never saw Popeye without Serio. During one span of 2 ½ years in the regular conformation, they donned two Upperville Colt & Horse Show (Virginia) championship tricolors and one reserve tricolor, two Capital Challenge (Maryland) championships, a Pennsylvania National championship followed by one champion and one reserve championship again at Washington. In 2005, Popeye earned the Chronicle’s Hunter Horse of the Year title as well as the Show Hunter Hall of Fame Show Hunter of the Year honors.
After a clean sweep of the regular conformation division in 2007, Popeye and Serio walked under the oaks of Upperville to collect their final ribbons, marking the end of an era. Arthritis had started to set in, and there was nothing else the stallion could win.
“He just kept getting better—and really and truly that’s all you can ask from them,” said Serio. “His consistency carried him so far. And his jump just kept getting better. It was more educated. It was more refined. His technique was really good for him. To see a horse improve and keep on improving—he never hit a plateau where he leveled off.”
Serio doesn’t play favorites, but Popeye earned a special place in his heart.
“Yeah, I’d put him down in the books as one of my favorites. Disposition-wise and things of that nature, he stepped up to the plate every time,” said Serio. “I did [the WCHR] night class once or twice with him [in Wellington]. At nighttime he was impressed, and he would jump way too high for a hunter. You’d look at him, and if he wasn’t slow you would say, ‘Oh my God he’s going to be a jumper.’ And then he knew when he was done. I’d make a circle and put the reins on his neck, and he’d always drop down and either steal a mouthful of grass or do something on his way out—just kind of his character. He’d jump and jump his heart out, and then at the end he’d stretch down and put his head down and nose around to see if he could pick up something to eat.
“He gave me an awful lot of pleasure because the jumps were so athletic, and his consistency was so good after a while,” continued Serio. “You just depended on him to be able to put those rounds in for you. He kept your smile on.”
A New Type Of Relationship
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After that final championship with Serio, Popeye went to Select Breeders in Maryland. The number of people who wanted to breed their mares to him had reached new heights. He devoted the rest of 2007 to putting more foals—often stamped with his trademark four stockings—on the ground.
But in December, he stepped off the trailer at Rachel’s farm in Wellington. For the first time, Popeye fell completely under her care, and she began to learn the intricacies of his personality.
“He had been off for like five or six months or something,” said Rachel. “It was like all right, let’s put him back into work. It was very intimidating, mostly because it’s a big horse, and it’s a stallion, and it hadn’t been ridden in a long time. And then there’s the aspect that it’s Popeye. I did a ton of flatwork to get him fit and strong, and we worked through his issues that he had going on. Then it was like, ‘Well I guess we should horse show.’ ”
With her mare Pop Town, Rachel had challenged herself to compete in high amateur-owner jumper and grand prix classes, hoping to feel competent enough to one day show Popeye. “It pushed me to do things like the grand prix [classes] and jumps like that that I probably never would have done—it’s always funny what pushes you,” said Rachel. “I wanted to ride that horse and be worthy of sitting on it.”
In 2008, she finally got her opportunity.
“It was hard doing it without Tommy in some ways. But it also was nice to get to know him on my own terms,” said Rachel. “I could just do what I wanted, and I didn’t have anybody talking in my ear, and I had nobody naysaying or trying to change up what I did. I just got to be me, and I got to have him be Popeye with me. I probably would have been too nervous to show otherwise. There was no pressure this way. Honestly there was no expectation. My expectation was just to go out there and have fun and get to enjoy this really cool horse.”
For two years Rachel and Popeye contested the adult amateurs, also displaying the stallion to a market that perhaps couldn’t watch him go in the performance hunters during the week.
“I could be champion or reserve and then typical amateur, here we go chipping. It was a cool experience to do that because it was Popeye,” said Rachel. “We weren’t out there setting the world on fire or anything. We certainly were successful enough, but it was just fun to be out there. [The amateurs] are the people who are going to breed. It’s your amateur customers who are doing the majority of the breeding out there.”
In 2009, Popeye retired from competition.
The Ripple Effect
In April 2004, a little Thoroughbred cross filly arrived at Rachel’s farm in Virginia. Out of her show horse Goosebumps, this little bundle Rachel named Vivienne was her first foal by Popeye.
“I had never had a foal before. I had never been around the babies or anything,” said Rachel. “That one was the one that I would go out to the barn and play with. I would go into its stall and scratch on it and love on it, spend a ton of time with it. You would go in its stall when it was laying down and start rubbing on it, [and] it would roll over on its back to have its stomach scratched. It was more like a dog than it was a horse.
“It’s kind of what you always dream about when you think about having your foal on the farm,” she continued. “You have that stereotype or that idea in your head. It’s that you’re going to go out there, and you’re going to spend all this time, and you’re going to play with it—well that was the one.”
Rachel never made a business out of selling foals—if she had to guess she had seven. But starting with Vivienne to her last foal Hip Pop (Popeye K—Pop Town), she broke and trained each one.
“It was so fun to have this horse that I showed the mother, and I had the father, and I showed the father, and now you have this foal on this ground,” said Rachel. “I did all my own breaking and training. I started all of my babies myself. I was always the first one on them. I never put a pro on them until they were relatively far down the road.
“For me, my fun has been breaking the babies and going, ‘Gosh this feels just like Popeye,’ or ‘This feels just like its mother,’ ” she continued. “Having that aspect and that knowledge of the parents is really—I don’t even know how you describe that because that’s a different kind of joy and a different kind of fun. It has nothing to do with being in the show ring. It has to do with the joy of the horse and where it came from and the journey of that.”
A Storybook Situation
At her Spencer Ranch, Rachel has a Popeye bookcase filled with tricolors, trophies and photos, marking memories from when he earned Show Hunter of the Year titles and back-to-back Performance Horse Registry Silver Stirrup Hunter Sire of the Year honors. But the awards aren’t what she appreciates most.
“He really has opened a lot of doors and exposed me to a lot of other things that I would not have otherwise been exposed to,” said Rachel. “Everybody loves to win ribbons and be champion and this and that. And we certainly did our fair share of that, but it’s gotten to continue outside of the ring. I don’t think unless it’s a mare and somebody’s breeding it, then you really don’t have that continuing relationship like that. To me he’s kind of a cornerstone of our horse business, such that my mother and I call it. He’s been a professional business thing as well as this education—it’s so many things rolled into one.
“He kind of encompasses all of our sport,” she continued. “I think that’s a better legacy than saying he was grand this or grand that. It’s nice when there are other parts to it as well. I enjoy the other parts.”
Through the breeding business, Rachel added a professional aspect to her amateur appreciation for the sport. “For me the breeding with him has been the biggest part of the journey,” she said. “I did get to show him a little bit at the end; I’m really grateful for that, and it was really fun—but it’s also not the biggest part of him for me.”
Though she doesn’t have an exact number, Rachel’s rough estimate of Popeye babies tallies around 1,000. In 2008 and 2009 he earned the U.S. Equestrian Federation Hunter Breeding Sire of the Year distinction. After three of years standing at Hyperion Stud, he’s retired from the breeding shed and returned to his paddock in clear view of Rachel’s kitchen window, where she can quietly watch the 22-year-old as she sips her morning coffee.
Frozen semen is still available, but Popeye’s current occupation is modeling for Rachel’s photography experiments. With the lights and backdrop set up, Popeye calmly stands without a halter as she snaps away.
“I think he was a good ambassador for breeding in this country,” said Rachel. “People were a little terrified of having a stallion in the barn. We were kind of programmed in our industry at that point to steer away from it. Amateurs didn’t have stallions, and professionals weren’t really riding stallions—maybe in the jumper ring but for sure not in the hunter ring. So, I feel like he was a great ambassador for stallions: They can come in and live in this way [and] have it be good and not a disaster. He broke that stereotype in a lot of ways.”
Now Popeye’s legacy extends to the third generation, with his offspring’s progeny coming up through the ranks.
And he’s redefining what a “once in a lifetime” means to Rachel.
“Horse of a lifetime, it can mean so many different things to whoever. And sometimes it’s because of what you did in the ring,” she said. “I think people get so many different things out of horses that it’s not necessarily performance related. That’s the cool thing about horses in general and what they give back to us on an emotional level or spiritual level. It is different for everybody.”
To Rachel, he represents many forms of opportunity: to have a horse business, to have a breeding operation, to have a horse that’s competitive at the most prestigious shows.
“I’m just a barn rat kid from Dallas, Texas, who grew up doing whatever with horses,” she said. “As a kid I never dreamed I’d be at the same horse shows as a lot of people I idolized. So, to have a horse like Popeye that really made some of those things happen—that’s the part that makes him a horse of a lifetime.”
“You aspire to have horses like that,” said Serio. “I tell people all the time, [who are] like, ‘Aw, we want to have a breeding stallion, and it will be just like Popeye K,’ I say, ‘Let me tell you what, that was a storybook thing. That couldn’t have worked any better in any scenario. That was a storybook situation.’ She bought him. He got campaigned. He got promoted. And then he turned into leading hunter sire a couple years in a row. Things don’t happen like that. Usually you get something, and it hurts itself or it hits a plateau, and it levels off and things like that. This was a storybook thing. This horse, he went where he wanted to go. He went up to the top, and he pulled his strings with the big guys. It was a fairy-tale story.”
This article originally appeared in the Dec. 2-16, 2019, issue of The Chronicle of the Horse. You can subscribe and get online access to a digital version and then enjoy a year of The Chronicle of the Horse. If you’re just following COTH online, you’re missing so much great unique content. Each print issue of the Chronicle is full of in-depth competition news, fascinating features, probing looks at issues within the sports of hunter/jumper, eventing and dressage, and stunning photography.