April 21, 2026 
Ali Kuhn is a Wisconsin-based eventer who made her four-star debut at the Kentucky Three Day Event in 2025. This is her story, brought to you by Three Mares.
People said I needed to do all these other four stars first. That it was crazy to jump my first four star at the Kentucky Three Day Event last year. But the actual story? It’s so much crazier than people know.
That cute little course of jumps out there in Lexington ain’t nothing compared to what I’ve seen.
And it could have just as easily never happened. When John Crowell called to offer me the ride on Little Hail, I was in a really rough place. I wasn’t sure I should take it.
I had worked for John and his wife Dorothy until about 2018, so I knew Hail. I’d hacked him on occasion. I’d had a flat lesson on him with Dorothy. We got on like a house fire, but I’d never jumped him. And when John called I had lost three eventing horses in four years and was less than a year out from an emergency hysterectomy.
It was so traumatizing. All of it. I was at a point where I seriously thought about becoming a groom. Or getting out of horses altogether. Like maybe it’s a sign from God that I shouldn’t ride horses.
And the deaths were all freak things. Things where the vet says, “We’ve never seen this before,” and you’re like, “I don’t want to hear that.”
The first horse I put through surgery because he had an abscess that travelled up his leg and exploded in his tendon sheath. I bet you didn’t know that could happen. When he came back home and we put him in a small outdoor stall, he pulled the posts out of the ground with his teeth, tried to run around the farm, and destroyed his leg. There was nothing left for the vet to do. That was 2018.
The second one was in 2019. Imagine gangrene in a horse. He stepped on something so microscopic we didn’t even find the source until the autopsy. We treated him for two months, and he just got lamer and lamer. My vet was obsessed with trying to figure it out. We ended up euthanizing him because he stopped eating. He was just done. It turned out he had a pinprick of a puncture wound that got infected, and his leg actually was dead.
Then in 2020, I almost bled to death at 27.
I had massive issues with my uterus and ovaries. I had polycystic ovarian syndrome. I had endometriosis. I had a hole in my uterus. I was bleeding internally and externally at all hours of the day. I lived in and out of the ER and was taking 16 ibuprofen a day to try to stop the pain.
And I kept getting the same answer: “Oh, that’s just normal for a woman. Periods are tough.”
When I finally found a doctor that would take me seriously and demanded a hysterectomy, they were like, “Well, you’re married so we would need your husband’s permission to take your uterus out.” And I lost my sh*t.
By the time the surgery was scheduled two weeks later my blood pressure was so low they nearly couldn’t operate. After, the doctor said, “You’re not going to believe this. Your uterus was actually black. It was dead and you were going septic. You were actively dying.”
It took six months for my body to recover. Then I got COVID.
I sold a mare to my mother because I couldn’t ride for several months after the hysterectomy. She started acting colicky one Friday, so we took her to the clinic. When they opened her up for surgery, her small intestines somehow had traveled through a hole in her diaphragm and attached to everything, and she was bleeding to death from the inside. The vets said she might have been born that way, and again, there was nothing they could do.
That was in April 2021.
A few weeks later, John called to offer me Hail, and I was like, “I don’t know, I’m not sure I’m really good right now.” In my mind it was, what if he dies?
****
My husband pushed me to take the leap. And here we are, five years later.
I got Little Hail in June of ’21. I picked him up at a truck stop. Literally loaded him up between all the semis.
He was a fat, little, out-of-shape gremlin.
The first time I got on him at home in Wisconsin, he tried to unload me. Like immediately. And I’ll never forget the first cavaletti I took him over. I think we almost touched the ceiling of my indoor arena. I was like, Oh my God, what have I taken on?
It was a long road with him. I love Hail. I love him dearly, but he is not for the weak of heart.
He’s a bully. He’s so egotistical and he’s so cocky. Hail in his life has never had a regret. He doesn’t even know what that means. He is confident in every single one of his life choices and he would tell you that every mistake we’ve ever made is absolutely my fault.
He’s not that friendly. He likes two people and I’m not even one of those two. It’s my sister and one of my grooms. It’s a little hurtful honestly.
I’m like, I love you so much and I want to kiss your face. And he’s like, I don’t want that at all. He chipped my groom’s tooth at Rebecca Farms. She kissed his nose, and he headbutted her, and she had to get dental work done.
He likes treats though, so that works a lot in my favor. He’s very treat-motivated.
For the first three months, we just did flat work. Endless dressage lessons. In my mind, it was: we are going to learn how to do this and we’re going to do it well. And at first he was pretty averse to it. Now he likes that work.
It took about four months to get to our first Beginner Novice and then we worked our way up, baby.
****
I think the turning point with Hail came after we ran our first Preliminary event.
I had only done one Beginner Novice, and then a Novice or two in 2021. We didn’t get to go to Florida that winter, because he had a reaction to a shot—he had this huge neck abscess I had to get lanced, and it immediately put me in a tailspin. I already broke you. Perfect, I’ve had you six months. Yeah, the trauma runs deep.
In the spring, we moved up to Training level, and he was great. Then we did Prelim, and it was, Oh, you’re having a good time! I felt like he finally decided to participate. Our next show was the Prelim Championships, Area 4—because why not?—and we won it.
So I wanted to keep moving up.
Hail had done one Intermediate with John, and at that point we were getting 20s in dressage. But they changed the rules, and my qualifications had expired, so I had to go to Florida and run a bunch more Prelims first.
That was really frustrating. But at the same time, those extra reps were good for us.
In April 2023, I finally did my first Intermediate ever, and we won. It felt like we really clicked. Like we were starting to hit our stride and maybe hit a level together that we’re meant to be at.
After that, we had a phenomenal run. We did 11 intermediates—I think we won nine of them. And two of those were three stars.
I was so focused on just getting to run Advanced at that point, I never really looked beyond it. Here I am, a girl from nowhere, no one knows who I am, and I’m on a scrappy little Thoroughbred. I was so happy to get that far!
So when people started to ask, “Have you thought about what’s next?” my response was, “Did you see me survive today? Can we celebrate that?!”
But we looked into it, because of course you do, and I only needed one more three-star result to qualify for the CCI4*-S at Kentucky. The only one coming up was Bouckaert. So we routed there.
And it was a disaster.
****
With horses, when you need something to happen, obviously it won’t. And it didn’t.
Bouckaert was a hot mess in every phase. Hail reared down centerline and did some flying changes that we didn’t need in dressage. Show jumping was just a “toss ‘em style” sticks. And in cross-country, I got run away with.
Then we went to Terranova to do an Advanced before Kentucky, and that was a little bit scary too. It’s probably the only time I’ve ever been scared leaving the start box, to be honest. When I walked that course, it felt like they were waiting for you to make a mistake. Maybe it was all in my head. I don’t know. But we definitely had a run out there that was my fault. And then I had a really bad frangible later.
I did not leave feeling like the greatest rider in the world. But I also was like, you know what? You made some mistakes, but you answered some incredibly difficult questions.
For most people, that would have been a solid reason not to attempt your first four star. But most people don’t have a Hail. I knew he could do Kentucky because he had been around the Horse Park a thousand times. That was home turf for him.
I ran the three-star there the fall before and won it. The horse had been up every bank. He’s done every water. He’s jumped every ditch. So it’s not like he didn’t know that the combination for the coffin was coming. He knows there are ditches there.
So we just said to ourselves, if we walk the course at K3DE and there’s something totally inappropriate out there for us that we’re not ready for—it’s going to create a disaster or it’s unsafe—whatever, we don’t go. Or we go until that point and we pull up. Hail’s safety is paramount to me, and our confidence and all that stuff.
So we had a plan.
****
The 12 days leading up to Kentucky were the most stressful of my life. I was convinced something was going to happen and we wouldn’t be able to go. But when I walked the cross-country course, it was…fine. Like, yeah, absolutely I can do this. There’s nothing out here that scares me.
My goal was to finish with a number. I’m not going to finish in the top. I have the least experience in the field. None of the other noise matters.
I never even looked at the scoreboard. I put the watch on for cross-country because it’s part of your getup, but I don’t think I ever set it. My goal was to ride good fences and make good choices.
And it rode exactly the way I thought it was going to, and it was amazing.
There’s just something about galloping down to a big table with the perfect canter and seeing the perfect distance and being like, this is going to be so fun. There’s a video of me jumping one of the huge tables at Kentucky, and literally I go “Whoop!” over it.
And that’s how I felt.
You’re just running around with your best friend.
I think I had the most fun out of anybody out there. Because when you’re doing it for you and don’t let anyone else’s opinions about who you ride with or how you got there or if you should be there—you don’t worry about any of that—and you let yourself be fantastic, it’s amazing what you can do.
If you listen to the videos, you can hear me singing the chorus of “Pink Pony Club” to him, which I really did think was in my head. But on every recording, there I am singing again.
It was one of those life moments you never forget.
I felt like I was fighting for the little guy, you know? You don’t have to be some big-name person. You can be on a tiny, angry Thoroughbred and just have a really great group of people around you that believe in you. It’s really all you need.
****
It’s weird when people suddenly know who you are. The next morning at the jog, Brian O’Connor introduced himself and said, “It was an honor to announce you on cross-country yesterday. You were the most fun person to announce. Truly a privilege to watch you ride around this course.”
Thank you, Brian O’Connor.
Then he announced me as the “Kentucky favorite” as we rode in for show jumping. The crowd went wild. Hail was like, I’m going to turn into a feral dragon. And all I can think is, Thanks, Brian. Can’t wait to disappoint all these people.
Show jumping is already scary because the colorful sticks go boom. Show jumping in front of 11,000 people with compulsory retirement if you have five rails—it’s a whole ‘nother thing.
And we’re not bad show jumpers. Truly, we’re not. Hail is very tidy with his knees, and if I don’t jump up his neck and try to kiss his ears, we’re pretty good. But jumping in front of 11,000 people is not something we’d ever done. You’re just trying not to poop yourself.
So when the start bell rang, I panicked. I was like, Oh my God, I only have 45 seconds to get to the first fence, Igottagetthereimmediately. Let me just turn on the dime to fence one, destroy my canter, and then jump up your neck to a vertical.
And Hail was like, Great, I’ll just punch this one right away.
The crowd goes, “Ooooh!”
We got it together for a couple of fences, then came to the triple line. It’s right next to the crowd. You could high five people as you’re jumping in. Hail and I are collectively spooking left over each one—and I can just hear the rails falling.
Now we have four rails, and we don’t do that. Ever. This is just embarrassing.
But at that point, you have nothing left to lose. You’re not winning it anyway. The only thing you can do now is take a deep breath, remember who you are, sit up, and find yourself a good canter. I literally started counting my canter. If you zoomed in on me, you’d hear me, “One, two, three, one, two, three.” And then we jumped awesome.
We landed from that last fence, and I think I let out ten years of breath at once. The crowd is going wild like I just won the Olympics when really I just tore down half the course.
But they cheered. They cheered because it felt like it was somebody they knew. Somebody like them. Someone they could have a beer with and they knew bombed distances in lessons too.
****
I don’t cry. It’s not really in my repertoire. I cried for every phase in Kentucky. I cried after dressage. I cried after cross-country. I cried in like three interviews. I cried after show jumping. I cried the entire time because you just never know if you’re going to get to go back.
And my husband cried with me.
I’m just a normal gal who likes horses at the end of the day. I’m not anything special. I’m still broke. But I’m also somebody who wasn’t afraid to take a chance. I wasn’t afraid of the people who told me I couldn’t do it. I was like, watch me.
Because there’s not just one recipe to success. There’s a lot of recipes to get here, and sometimes people are just a little bit afraid to cook in the kitchen.
Just go for it. Do it your way.
This story is brought to you by Three Mares, a collective of equestrian brands that donates 100 percent of its profits to organizations working to make equestrian sport more accessible, safe, and inclusive for all athletes. Learn more at thethreemares.com.
