As Hallie Grimes thought about how to fill the empty stall in her barn in Brewster, New York, her mind went to the 6-year-old bay gelding BP Bouladuff she had in England. While Grimes normally waits until her young horses are 7 to import them, she’d ridden “Duffy” quite a bit on her regular trips abroad and liked how he was progressing.

While the Irish Sport Horse (Aganix Du Seigneur—Cape Royale, Cavalier Royale) had been well produced by British show jumper Louise Simpson, who Grimes had asked to continue his training while he was in England, she had to build her own relationship with the gelding.

“He was really anxious, so, for me, I just wanted to make every day fun for him,” she said. “I think that’s something where people try to overproduce, and the horses get really resentful, and I don’t think they enjoy jumping, and that’s a horse that loves to jump. So I just tried to make every day fun. He never wants to put a foot wrong, so I never wanted to make him feel like he was making a mistake; I just wanted to maybe show him a new way of doing it. He’s not complicated at all. He’s so talented, but I really just had to let him figure it out for himself.”

With a lot of trail rides and pats and a little bit of work on the longe line, Duffy started to transform.

“He came around really fast,” she said. “That’s what they said about him in Britain also. He’s just a little anxious and doesn’t like new places, so I think it just took about a month or two to warm up. But now he loves it. He fell asleep on my shoulder the other day and nickers anytime one of us walks in the barn.”

Grimes first tried Duffy as a 5-year-old at his breeder, Olympic show jumper Greg Broderick’s farm, in Ireland. She described the trial as far from idea—he was “electric careful and spooking”—but she has a history of having bad trials on some of her best horses, so she wasn’t deterred.

“There was just something about him that I just loved,” she said. “I thought his natural balance was incredible.”

She also likes the way Broderick produces his youngsters, focusing on simple, important things like going forward in a straight line.

“I think people really overcomplicate young horses these days, and they try to make them super rideable or this or that. … I think it takes way too much out of them. They’re focusing on all the wrong things,” she said. “[Duffy is] a horse that has such a great brain and a great instinct that I think, if he had been somewhere else, I don’t know if he would be as great as I think he is, just because he is anxious, and he is a thinker, and you want him thinking about the jumps instead of whatever else.”

Since Duffy arrived stateside in June, Grimes showed him twice in Tryon (North Carolina) and twice at HITS Hudson Valley (New York) before heading to Michigan to compete at the USHJA Young Jumper Championships. There they logged a win in the qualifier before topping the CWD 6-Year-Old Final. She also rode Ashton DVO Z to second in the North Star 7-Year-Old Final.

With their big goal complete for the year, both Duffy and “Ashton” are heading to Ocala, Florida, to enjoy a field for a couple months before ramping back up to compete some during the winter circuit at the Winter Equestrian Festival in Wellington, Florida.

As for herself, Grimes, 22, is gearing her top horses Chaccato PS and Karoline Of Ballmore to compete in the FEI World Cup qualifiers.

“It’ll be really nice for me to sort of focus on the older horses for that circuit just because I’ve been doing so many young horses this summer, and frankly it’s like driving a go-cart and then an F-1 car. It’s just not the same sport.”

She spent the summer jumping those horses primarily in two- and three-star classes to give herself a bit of a break, and now she’s hoping to qualify for the Longines FEI World Cup Final in Basel, Switzerland. But the native Texan’s ultimate goal is to compete the 2026 final scheduled to take place in Fort Worth.

She’s also juggling her final year at Boston University, where she is studying history. While this semester she only attends classes on Tuesdays, in previous years she was in the classroom more often throughout the week, so she relied on her business partner Sarah Scheiring and barn manager Nickki O’Donovan to help keep everything running smoothly.

“I can’t say enough about Sarah and Nickki; having those two behind me means a lot,” she said.