In her profile on the website for the 2024 Real Rider Cup retired racehorse competition/fundraiser, Gabrielle Nguyen wrote of her mount Pet Me Pet Me:

 

"She's a very class mare that has competed up to the Advanced/4* level with her owner Kaelen Speck. She is a queen and she knows it. She makes sure everyone caters to her needs and will make sure you do things to her standard."

On Sept. 13, Nguyen and Pet Me Pet Me won the individual championship at the annual show jumping event at Fair Hill, Md., to benefit Thoroughbred aftercare. The winner of one race and $14,055 in her nine-start career, the 17-year-old bay mare epitomizes how far horses can go once their days on the racetrack end.

Pet Me Pet Me was bred by Eileen Hartis and foaled in Texas May 12, 2007. By multiple graded stakes winner Midway Road, she is out of another graded stakes winner -- the Maryland-bred Oh Say mare Balotra. Bred, owned and campaigned by Will Farish of Lane's End Farm, Midway Road stood at the flagship property in Versailles, Ky. He was transferred to Lane's End Texas, near Hempstead, for the 2006 breeding season.

Unraced at 2 and 3, Hartis sent Pet Me Pet Me to the Southern California barn of trainer Vladimir Cerin in 2011. She made her first four starts at Hollywood Park; her best finish was a fourth in her debut. Late that summer Hartis shifted gears, sending Pet Me Pet Me to Jonathan Sheppard in Unionville, Pa. The filly won her East Coast debut in a $7,500 maiden claimer at Delaware Park Sept. 19, 2011. It would be her only win. She lost her next four races, all low-level claimers for non-winners of two, by a combined 51.25 lengths.
The overwhelming consensus in the Sheppard barn was that Pet Me Pet Me had zero interest in racing.

A Sheppard staffer contacted event rider Erin Sylvester Kanara, based in nearby Cochranville, who saw potential immediately, took the mare and began the retraining process. None of this is unusual for this corner of the Thoroughbred world. Your Thoroughbred isn't much of a racehorse? No matter. Make a phone call to someone in your network, and that horse transitions seamlessly into a next career. With horses, and real estate, it's location, location, location.

To help with expenses of a new business, Kanara was going to swap Pet Me Pet Me (rechristened "Mimi") for an Arabian pony owned by a young student in her lesson program. The girl had outgrown the pony and needed a horse. Veterinarians discovered a bone spur in the mare's right hock, so the buyers passed.

Another student, Speck, was also moving up from a pony and her family didn't hesitate to make the purchase.

"We've had her since she was 7, and I started riding her when she was 8," Kaelen Speck said. "The barn manager at Jonathan Sheppard's pulled her for Erin because she didn't want to race anymore, and she was lying down before they could get her into the starting gate, so that wasn't going to work. She's got such a people personality, and I believe that's why she was pulled. Most people would look at her and say, 'This horse can't do anything; she doesn't want to work.'

"And I've been with Erin the whole time. I used to take lessons with Boyd Martin as well, and he would always tell Erin that she needed to find a way to buy Mimi back because she was so incredible. But we are never going to sell her."
Growing up together, Speck and Pet Me Pet Me completed two four-star events.

"I last competed her in 2021, and she had done the tendon in her left front in 2018; the year I went to college. We rehabbed that injury, brought her back to the second four star in 2020, and she reinjured the same leg in a different spot so we gave her a bunch of time off and tried to bring her back, and she just wasn't really wanting to jump bigger jumps, especially into the water. She wanted to retire from the upper levels, which was fine."

Enrolled in dental school, Speck looked for a student for an on-property lease for Mimi. Another Kanara client stepped up and rode the mare until starting her own family.

Nguyen, now 20, started riding with Kanara in January 2022.

"Gabby is dating my brother," Speck said, "so this really is a family horse. Because she's so quirky, we just want to make sure Mimi is treated well and loved for all that she's done. And Gabby loves her."

Nguyen and Mimi compete in novice level eventing and 3-foot jumper classes.

"Mimi is teaching me more about eventing because my own personal horse has no interest in it, so I use him for dressage," Nguyen said.
"She is a great teacher; she has been there, done that and is just perfect."

Nguyen has been riding Mimi regularly since June of this year. Watching them during the Real Rider Cup in September, you would think they've been together for much longer. Completing the course in :45.370, they were a full five seconds faster than the next horse.

Several hundred miles away in South Florida, a total stranger was moved to tears by news of the win. When Shannon Spies learned that a daughter of Midway Road was competing, she followed every update with keen interest. Spies worked for trainer Neil Howard from 1998 through 2006. Among her charges was Midway Road, who finished second in the 2003 Preakness Stakes-G1 and 2004 Pimlico Special-G1. Their connection was deep, and Spies never forgot the idiosyncratic son of Jade Hunter.

Spies visited the stallion at Lane's End Texas in 2010 before he was sold and relocated to Richard Hessee's Trophy Club Training Center in Royal, Ark.

In April 2016, Spies' friend Lisa Coates stopped at Trophy Club. Inquiring about Midway Road, she learned he was retired from breeding and serving as the farm teaser. Coates snapped a photo with her phone and texted it to Spies with the message, "Recognize this guy?"
Naturally, Spies did.

Coates mentioned to the farm manager that when they were ready to pension Midway Road, she was certain his former groom would love to have him. Four months later, Coates got word that Midway Road was Spies' horse if she was interested.

"Lisa called and said, 'Do you want your boy?' " Spies said. "I was in shock; it was like 'Is this really happening?' ''
Hessee recommended a shipper to transport the horse from Arkansas to Florida.

"He gave me a suggestion of what to try, and this really sweet 'Grandma and Grandpa' outfit drove from Texas to pick him up in Arkansas and brought him to me in South Florida," Spies said. "And they literally checked in with me every step of the way."

On Sept. 6, 2016 -- to great fanfare -- Midway Road arrived at his forever home with his former groom. He is now thriving at 24 and still a stallion.

"I don't even know how to describe it. It was very surreal," Spies said. "To lead him off the trailer and get him settled in, then to start grooming him again, it was like major flashbacks. He still had the same habits. I feel like we just fell right back into our routine after 11 years. I don't think they forget."

Two Thoroughbreds have connected three people who've never met. Speck and Nguyen were fascinated to learn about Mimi's sire, and Spies is beyond proud to hear about his daughter's achievements. Even her attitude reflects back to her sire.

"She is The Queen, and she embodies that name well," Speck said. "She thinks she runs the barn, and she pretty much does."
Spies laughed at the description.

"She gets that from her daddy," she said. "I love this mare. I don't even know this mare, and I love her. He was never going to have many offspring, so this is a huge deal for him to have a daughter who went on to accomplish big things like this."