October 17, 2025 
“It’s 100% focus when you’re in there,” Monica Spencer gushed of her ride on the second day of the MARS Maryland 5*. “At that [final] salute, I thought, yeah, I think I did a good job.”
A good job is putting it mildly. Spencer and the 14-year-old Artist scored a personal best of 23.7 to take the lead from USA’s Boyd Martin.
Affectionately known as Max, the off-the-track Thoroughbred has been under Spencer’s saddle since he was four years old. When she first laid eyes on him, she was drawn to his movement and expression and immediately made an offer to his owner. The rest is history.
“He’s just been such a great horse for me,” she said through tears at the press conference.
“He’s taken me all over the world. He tries so hard, and he’s just been so trainable for me. It’s really special to be at a five star and to be back at Maryland, where our American adventure began.”
Spencer, her husband Andrew, and their three-year-old son Gus made the move to the U.S. in 2023, hoping to stand out from the European crowd where many others of New Zealand’s high-performance team are based. Now, she is becoming a household name on the American eventing scene.
She and Max rode for New Zealand at the 2022 FEI World Championships in Pratoni del Vivaro and made the world sit up and notice when they scored a 25.6. They’ve also represented New Zealand at Aachen and have finished top 12 in every CCI5* competition they’ve completed.
Max himself, however, is renown in his own right.
“I walk past multiple people a day at these big events, and they say, ‘Oh, Max, he’s our favorite!’” Spencer laughed. “Or if I meet people, they say, ‘Are you Monica? Do you ride Max?’ So it’s him that’s famous. It’s not me.”
As Spencer came out of the ring, it was herself in the lead and countrywomen Jonelle Price in second, and Tayla Mason in third, putting a New Zealand spread across the podium.
“We didn’t come here to mess around, so we’re trying to do it for down under!” she laughed.
With dressage complete and cross country looming, Spencer and Max have a 33% win chance based on the Equiratings Predication Centre. Their closest challenger is Caroline Pamukcu and her Paris Olympics mount in HSH Blake with a 18% win chance as she sits in second overnight.
“I was a little bit too cocky thinking that, ‘Oh, I can just jump on [after giving birth] and get right back to my form [in February],’” Pamukcu said about a return to the low scores with Blake. “We just needed a second. It took us a while to get fit and then restart our basics.”
Their 28.2 was one of only three scores to break the 30 barrier. But Pamukcu is focused on Saturday and Pierre Le Goupil’s debut cross country course.
“I wasn’t too nervous for dressage, because it’s a cross-country competition,” she remarked. “The points here and there—if you didn’t have a perfect change or you jigged in the walk—to me, it didn’t really matter. Tomorrow it’s a tough, tough, tough track.”
Spencer agreed. “You didn’t come to a five star to take options. I’m keen to give it all a go straight through all the way so we’ll see. If Max is up to the challenge and he usually is, so gallop on boy!”
Final overnight podium position is held by Felix Vogg (SUI) and Cartania on 28.3. The pair made the trip from Germany to be the first Swiss rider to contend the Maryland 5 Star.
“I have been around [Le Goupil’s courses] a few times. I think it [checks] all the boxes: difficulty, stamina, mentally, stuff. It’s a proper track, right up there with all the other ones in England.[Cartania], she’s more a Badminton, Burghley horse, not a Pau horse. So this course here, I think it’s better for her.”
Five star cross country competition begins tomorrow at 1:30 pm EST and all the questions about fitness, terrain, and cantilevered log combinations will be answered.
