September 9, 2025 
Last spring, an Australian study found that growing a human baby in utero requires significantly more energy than previously thought: Some 50,000 calories over nine months—about the equivalent of 50 pints of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.
That’s a lot of caloric work, Chunky Monkey notwithstanding. And it doesn’t even include the other physical changes to a woman’s body and brain; the emotional and hormonal adjustments, the cravings and fatigue. Not to mention the increased demands on her time for things like doctor’s appointments, re-organizing, and nesting.
And yet, while many dedicated equestrians decide to put a pin in their riding careers through some or all of their pregnancies, many female athletes continue to train and even compete with a baby on board.
Case in point: Real-life action hero Ros Canter, who won back-to-back Burghleys this week aboard Lordships Graffalo, proving that bloating, nausea, and fatigue couldn’t keep her down any more than the famous Cottesmore Leap.
But Canter’s not the only dressage or eventing athlete to win a major title while in a “delicate” condition. These four lady riders climbed to the top of the podium while pregnant and—literally and figuratively—brought their future little ones along for the ride.
Ros Canter
Knowing she was pregnant with her second child, Ros Canter withdrew her name from consideration for the European Championships later this month so she wouldn’t let her team down if she was to withdraw. This made the 2025 CCI5* Defender Burghley Horse Trials her last big hurrah before taking some time off from competition—and boy did Canter make it count.
Riding her top horse, Lordships Graffalo—“Walter” to his friends—the world no. 2 rider finished on a score of 23.6, with 9 penalty points separating her from second-place finisher Austin O’Connor (IRL). In doing so, Canter made history in more ways than one, beating her own score from 2024 to set a new record for the event.
“I’ve actually felt better and better, to be quite honest,” Canter said after her win. “The more I’ve done, the more active I’ve been—I got my diet a bit more sorted. I felt pretty full and bloated and uncomfortable, and I’ve [tweaked] a few things, and felt better and better. I think the more I think of myself as an athlete, the better I feel.”
And apparently, the better she rides. With this win, the reigning European Champion becomes only the second rider ever to win three, 5* events in a single season, capturing Badminton, Luhmühlen, and now Burghley. (The first to do it was Grand Slam of Eventing winner Pippa Funnell in 2003.) Not a bad way to kick-off your maternity leave.
Jessica von Bredow-Werndl
The third championship outing was the charm for Germany’s Jessica von Bredow-Werndl back in April of 2022. That year, she and her Olympic partner TSF Dalera BB won the FEI Dressage World Cup Final at Leipzig, Germany on a score of 90.84% when she was then six months pregnant with her second daughter, Ella Marie.
In doing so, von Bredow-Werndl earned a trifecta of dressage titles, becoming the reigning individual Olympic, European, and World Cup Finals champion. She also rose to the no. 1 spot in the world, a position she earned and held onto thanks to her 14, consecutive, FEI victories following the Tokyo Games in 2021.
Alas, von Bredow-Werndl did not officially take the ‘Triple Crown’ of dressage, which includes the European, Olympic, and World Titles—being forced to sit out from the World Championships in August of 2022 because she was, well, giving birth.
Instead, von Bredow-Werndl said, she spent at least some of her time in the maternity ward cheering on her older brother, Benjamin Werndl, who helped the German team to the Bronze medal aboard Famoso OLD.
Mary King
Mary King is a six-time Olympian for Great Britain who was also part of two, gold medal-winning teams at the 1994 and 2010 World Equestrian Games—and that’s just the start of her trophy case. King also won four team gold medals at the European Eventing Championships, including in Protoni del Vivaro, Italy in 1995, when she was then more than five months pregnant with her daughter Emily (King won Individual bronze that year as well).
The British rider intentionally kept her pregnancy a secret at the time, and when word got out, she faced the anticipated backlash from British papers, including a front-page story in The Times. Years later, it may be King who got the last laugh, as that same daughter, Emily, is now a 5*-level eventer in her own right.
“So many people said I’d lose my edge when I had children,” King told Country Life in 2008. “But, much as I love them, the drive’s very much still there.”
Anky van Grunsven
There’s perhaps no more coveted a prize for equestrians than an individual Olympic gold medal, and one rider who knows all about that sensation is three-time Dutch Olympic Champion Anky van Grunsven.
In 2004, van Grunsven already had one Olympic gold under her belt with Bonfire in 2000, so she was well familiar with the challenges and pressure of the Games when she arrived in Athens in 2004. But she didn’t arrive alone.
At the time, van Grunsven was already four months pregnant with her son Yannick. “I didn’t tell anybody because it was so hot in Athens, and I didn’t want anybody to worry,” van Grunsven has said.
Once again, though, the Dutch phenom didn’t miss a beat, and she didn’t miss a beat again at Beijing four years later, earning yet another gold. In doing so, van Grunsven became the only rider in history to win three, consecutive, Olympic individual gold medals—nine Olympic medals in total—and to do so before, during, and after being pregnant with not one but two children (Ava Eden was born in 2007). Super-mom indeed.
