By Max Huibregtse
At the start of 2025, a lot of things were going well for Katherine Tracey. PonyPals, the lesson program she had founded in 2020 with one pony named Checkers, had outgrown three facilities before leasing their own farm – not just any farm, either, but one Tracey had dreamed about since her childhood. In 2023, she was honored with a Stevie Award for Women in Business, for excellence in coaching. The business was thriving, with 20 horses supporting around 100 students every week.
By the end of the year, PonyPals had closed, after a failed surgery left Tracey unable to run the program she had lovingly built over the past five years.
“I closed the program in August of 2025…because I snapped the titanium pins in my ankle,” Tracey says. “I miss it,” she admits, “but I literally couldn’t walk.”
Now, Tracey is not only walking, but riding again, redirecting her energies as a para dressage competitor and coach, who encourages her clients to pursue equestrian excellence even as they struggle with disability.
“I think a lot of adult riders will resonate with physical limitations and what it takes to overcome those limitations,” Tracey says.
She knows a bit about overcoming limitations. The snapped pins were only the latest catastrophe in a long line of health struggles and chronic illnesses, many imperfectly understood or difficult to have diagnosed. When we spoke, she had a diagnosis of psoriatic arthritis – “just like Phil Mickelson,” she jokes – and was exploring a potential lupus diagnosis. Whatever the label, the end result for Tracey is the same: chronic and often debilitating pain.
“It’s very, very painful to exist some days,” she says. “There’s nerve pain; there’s joint pain – it’s delightful,” she adds sarcastically.
In September of 2023, Tracey attempted to address some of these issues with a surgery to fuse some of her ankle bones. It was this surgery that failed so spectacularly two years later, forcing Tracey to reevaluate her relationship with the sport she loved.
Reconciling the physicality of competitive dressage with the limitations of chronic pain has been a journey, at various points both physically and emotionally painful. For Tracey, though, the effort was always going to be worth it.
“If you’re passionate about it, you’ll push through and you’ll do what it takes to be there,” she says.
Tracey knows where to draw the line, though, between working for your sport and making your sport work for you. She is eager to discuss the specialized adaptive equipment she uses to make dressage accessible, even with her disabilities.
One of her sponsors, Custom Saddlery, has made her a specialized Gemini saddle that helps her maintain her seat while minimizing her joint pain. Tracey describes the saddle’s effect on her riding as “magic,” and she encourages other riders to look for adaptive equipment that helps them experience their own magic.
“We should be talking about these [adaptations] more in the mainstream and helping the riders who need adaptive equipment,” Tracey says, whether that is an expensive custom saddle or more affordable joint-friendly stirrups. “There should be more discussion in the adult amateur community.”
Here, the often-traditional world of dressage has made some steps forward in recent years. The elimination of the tall boot requirement for competition below Fourth Level in 2024 has allowed riders like Katherine to compete in more forgiving equipment, like half-chaps, that mimic the elegant look of tall boots without activating her joint pain. Tracey herself favors boots and chaps from Romitelli, another sponsor.
While the rule change has been helpful for Tracey and her coaching clients, it will take more than half-chaps to make the world of competitive riding more open to disabled riders. Equestrianism has long been associated with disability in the form of equine-assisted therapy, a broad term for a variety of therapies, backed by varying degrees of scientific proof, that employ horses or other equines to help patients with their physical or mental health. However, Tracey is interested in working not with patients looking for health improvements from riding, but with clients interested in improving their riding while disabled.
“If you haven’t got the mobility…it’s hard,” Tracey admits, but she hopes to help riders answer the very question she struggled with after becoming disabled: “How can I [ride competitively] in a way that I can still feel like I can experience success?”
Her approach to coaching has been informed by her own experiences working with excellent coaches in the past.
“Some of my big influences in my life have been some unnamed heroes…that are unbelievable horsewomen,” Tracey said.
She started her riding career training under Kathy Connelly, before working with Joy Congdon and then Leah Jamieson. For many years, Tracey trained under Sibley Hannigan and her daughter, Grand Prix and 2008 FEI World Cup Dressage Final competitor Jane Hannigan.
“I’ve worked with some pretty incredible clinicians throughout my…career as well,” Tracey said.
Her experiences working with such skilled trainers inspired Tracey to pursue her own career in coaching and now, para coaching.
“Originally [after her injury], I thought I was going to be working towards being a judge,” Tracey said. “Now, I’m working towards being a traveling instructor, working with adults who have physical limitations.”
Her focus, she says, is about improving performance for her riders, whether that means working with, through, or around their physical limitations. This demographic, she feels, is often underserved by traditional coaches without direct experience of disability.
Tracey’s coaching style is defined by care and compassion, according to former client John, a self-described “82-year-old horse nut” who worked with her while leasing Shane, after a six year break from riding after his previous horse passed away.
“She [is] a caring and dedicated horsewoman who above all loved her horses,” John said in an email. While worsening health issues meant John’s time working with Katherine and Shane was short, their “really intense lessons…helped [him] improve his riding and communication with Shane.”
That relationship-centered approach has certainly worked for client Michele Abate, who has worked hard to reconnect with her riding after breaking her leg twice in three years and suffering a lower back injury caused by a fall from a spooking horse.
“Those events have created a lot of anxiety and fear,” Abate said in an email, but “Katherine is excellent at recognizing and assessing the anxiety…she knows how to instill calmness, allowing me to get comfortable with the horse.”
Abate appreciates Tracey’s compassionate, personalized approach, especially as it relates to Abate’s anxiety. Tracey employs a mix of traditional coaching techniques, like encouragement and analogy, and more psychological or meditative techniques, including redirection and meditative visualization. All of these, along with Tracey’s focus on the connection between horse and rider, has helped Abate overcome her fears while riding.
“Horses are very intuitive and therapeutic,” Abate said, “and Katherine has a unique ability to tap into that and make the horse human connection for riders. She seems to know what [and] how the horse is feeling, too.”
That penchant for connection has come in handy in Tracey’s own competitive career, where she’s currently working with a Friesian cross a friend bought at auction after he was rescued from an Amish farm.
“I love to get the Amish rejects,” Tracey said. “As a foster kid who was also a reject, [I] identify with the underdog,” a compassionate approach that applies to her relationships with both horses and clients. “He’s like my best friend,” Tracey says of Falcor (Good Luck Will Find You). “He’s the cutest little crapper you’ll ever see.”
Tracey sees big things ahead for herself and Falcor.
“We’ll see if we can make it to Devon, maybe to some regionals,” she said. “Who knows?”
