October 1, 2026 
Kristen Vanderveen is trotting the globe—quite literally.
Over the past nine months, the 37-year-old American has campaigned eight horses—six under the Bull Run moniker—at 25 shows in eight countries—from Doha to Italy, France, Monaco, Britain, Belgium, The Netherlands and, as of this week, Barcelona, Spain.
She’s an equestrian missionary of sorts—and she’s on a five-star tour of grand proportions.
It’s also one that’s wildly outside the norm of the Wayne, Illinois, native—much like her career.
Vanderveen doesn’t hail from a horse family. She stumbled into the sport.
“I’ve always loved animals, but horses really came by chance,” she told the Brussels Stephex Masters in August.
“We had neighbors who had pet horses. If I cleaned their stalls all week long, I could get walked around on Sunday. So Sunday was a big day.”
Those walks became riding lessons around age nine. At 17, she turned pro. Because she could.
“My trainer and our family were going to split ways, and my parents said that the money they would have given me to go to college, they would support me with if I wanted to give professional riding and the business a try. But I had to pick one: either take this seriously and become a professional, or go to college and pursue another career.
“I jumped at that opportunity and really haven’t looked back since.”
Vanderveen founded Bull Run Jumpers, now based in Wellington, Florida, and has approached the business of horse sport the same way she does a jump-off—fearlessly and with a healthy appetite for risk. But until this year, the stage has been set primarily in America, with the occasional field trip to Canada or overseas.
Now 20 years in, she’s having the best season of her career. She’s ranked no. 39 in the world, has nine five-star wins on the world stage, and is making her senior team championship debut this week at the Longines League of Nations Final. And she’s doing it on horses she owns and has named after biblical terms: Bull Run’s Amen, Celestial, Creation, Jireh, Lioness, and Mary among them. Her equine apostles, if you will.
(Related aside: her tattoos are also expressions of her faith.)
“Pursuing show jumping at the very highest level comes with the horses that come into my life,” she explained, after winning the CSI5* 1.55m Grand Prix qualifier in Brussels.
“I have this awesome opportunity. I have some really nice horses and some good owners who have given me the opportunity to be in the top sport. I’d love to continue pursuing that as long as the doors are still open.
“I also love training horses and training students. I like seeing people improve, horses improve, and seeing them become the best they can be. There is a lot of fulfillment in this sport other than just top sport. But top sport is awfully fun in and of itself.”
She’s fun to watch too.
Vanderveen doesn’t play it safe. She plays it at speed and with a self-directed confidence that is unusual in American horse sport, where mentors and trainers are the norm. In Europe, where self-taught riders are more common, Vanderveen, may not feel outside the norm at all.
