USA Team Jumper Rider Lillie Keenan Credits Mental Attitude Required of Dressage for Boosting Competition Success
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July 14, 2022
By KENNETH J. BRADDICK
USA team rider Lillie Keenan credits the mental attitude required of dressage for helping boost her performance in jumping including a top 10 placing in the CSIO5* Nations Cup at the World Equestrian Festival in Aachen, Germany this year.
Lillie, based at home in Wellington, Florida for the winter circuit but in the Netherlands for the rest of the year, was on the American team with McLain Ward, Adrienne Sternlicht and Chloe Reid at Aachen, considered the most prestigious and competitive horse show in the world.
The 25-year-old rider has excelled in jumping, winning team gold medals at the North American Youth Championships in 2012 and 2013 when she also took individual gold. On U.S. senior teams, Lillie earned both team and individual bronzes at the Nations Cup Final in 2016 and competed at the Final in 2021.
In dressage, she competed at international dressage Small Tour as an amateur at the World Equestrian Center in Ocala, Florida in April for second place in Intermediate 1 Freestyle and third places in both Prix St. Georges and Intermediate 1.
The 25-year-old Lillie isn’t ready to give up jumping for dressage but in the future would consider participating if she had a dressage horse capable of international competition. As an example, she finds the dressage and show jumping skills of Germany’s Olympic eventing multi gold medalist Michael Jung “really cool.”
“The biggest thing in my time doing dressage, how it’s affected my show jumping is my mentality,” she explained. “I started doing dressage with no intention to compete, honestly for fun. The first time I did it, one of my best friends had a horse she was trying to train on the ground and she needed someone on the horse to sit quiet.
“So I did that and I was laughing the whole time, I thought it was so much fun, so cool. It was like dancing.
“If I move an inch he won’t do it right… the nuances of it made me giggle, how technical.
“When you watch it if you haven’t done it before it’s very hard to appreciate how difficult it is.
“Once she convinced me to compete, for me there was no expectation. And that is what has changed my mentality and helped me with show jumping.”
Like many kids, Lillie started riding because she loved horses, the ponies she got to groom–“that’s all I wanted to do.”
“Our sport is so competitive and I’m ridiculously privileged to do it but when you go to a show every single week as everyone dreams to do you can lose the joy, forget how lucky we are to do this,” she said.
She remembers her first dressage test. She went to do a single flying change and instead did a halt “because I was so nervous I was clamping around the horse with my legs not even realizing it. The horse was a schoolmaster and thought, ‘Oh, that means a square halt.’ I couldn’t help but laugh.
“That reminded that it was truly the reason I do this. For sure the flat work and the discipline has helped me immensely but I would say the biggest change for me and my riding is a reminder to really appreciate how lucky I am to be able to do what I do. The joy is what makes people the best.”
