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Teenage Rider May Reset the Bar

Reed Kessler, 17, is competing for a spot on the United States show-jumping team, which has four riders and one traveling reserve.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

MIDDLEBURG, Va. — At 13, an age when many young riders are still cantering fat ponies over low picket gates, Reed Kessler was urged to think about the London Olympics by her coach, the international show jumper Katie Monahan-Prudent.

“I was thinking, ‘O.K., Katie,’ ” Kessler recalled.

“And here we are,” Monahan-Prudent said.

After tying Margie Engle, then 53, for the victory at the Olympic selection trials in March, Kessler sits first and fifth on the Olympic long list for American show jumpers with her horses Cylana and Mika.

Kessler, a 17-year-old from Armonk, N.Y., now faces a series of competitions observed by the United States team’s Olympic selection committee. She could become the youngest rider in Olympic show-jumping history (the records are incomplete). The first event, the Hagyard Lexington Classic, is Friday in Lexington, Ky.

She will be riding for a spot on the team — four riders in addition to one traveling reserve — alongside international stars more than twice her age, like Beezie Madden, 48, who won consecutive team gold medals at the 2004 and 2008 Olympics.

“If you asked somebody before the trials if she was going to do as well as she did, a majority would have said, ‘No way,’ ” said Madden, who is on the Olympic list with three horses. “But I think she proved in the trials that she’s definitely worth consideration.”

At the last Olympics, three of the four American show jumpers were in their 40s. Mclain Ward, who won gold in 2004 and 2008 with Madden, was 33. The minimum age requirement in show jumping is 18; Kessler’s birthday is 18 days before the London Games begin.

Kessler became eligible to jump at the Olympic height, just over five feet, this year. Her first competition at that level was with Mika in February, about a month before the trials.

She was not planning to do the trials on her new horse, Cylana, who had never competed at that height. But the mare jumped beyond expectations this winter.

“Even though she’s very green and I’m really green, we got to do one big class before the trials,” Kessler said of Cylana. Two weeks later, they won; Kessler also finished third with Mika.

Since completing her first Grand Prix in Switzerland at 13, Kessler has compiled plenty of wins, including young riders’ team victories in the United States and Europe and a Grand Prix win at the glamorous Gucci Masters in Paris two years ago. Last year, she won a Fiat in Italy, which she named Piccola before her parents had her sell it back to the dealer.

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Kessler has significant financial backing from her parents, who are also competitive riders.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

But the national team’s chef d’équipe, or manager, George Morris, pointed out Kessler has never ridden in senior-level competitions like the Nations Cup or the Pan American Games.

“She’s always been a very talented girl, very athletic, very gutsy,” he said. “It is a wonderful thing that she’s done what she’s done, but the jury is out.”

Morris said the selection committee for the Olympic team would take into account a horse and rider’s competitive history in addition to performances at events this spring.

“She has a very good body of work,” he said of Kessler. “But it hasn’t been at the level Beezie or Laura Kraut or Mclain have exhibited over the years.”

Ward, a two-time Olympic gold medalist who shattered his knee at a Grand Prix in January, received a bye from the trials that Kessler won and returns to competition this month. Madden also received a bye on her horse, Coral Reef Via Volo, as did Kraut and her 2008 gold medal partner, Cedric, because it was deemed in the best interest of the horses.

Engle, who tied with Kessler at the trials, is second on the Olympic list with Indigo, a horse Engle co-owns in a partnership that includes the former Miami Dolphins quarterback Bob Griese and his wife, Shay. Engle competed at the 2000 Sydney Games riding Perin.

Unlike many riders who depend on sponsors, Kessler has the advantage of significant financial backing from her parents, Teri and Murray Kessler, who also ride competitively. Murray Kessler is the chief executive of Lorillard, a tobacco company.

Monahan-Prudent said that Kessler had made sacrifices some wealthy young riders were unwilling to make. “They want everything, they want to go to college, they want to travel,” she said. “You don’t get to the Olympics with that attitude. You can’t have it all.”

A handful of riders under 30 also made the Olympic long list, including Charlie Jayne — who at 22 was the second alternate on the 2008 Olympic team — and Jessica Springsteen, 20, Bruce Springsteen’s daughter.

Now that she is atop the Olympic list, Kessler recognizes that “people will stop seeing me as the kid and start seeing me as someone they have to compete with.”

“My mind frame has changed from, ‘You know, I’m just going for experience,’ to now, ‘I want to be on the team and I have a chance.’ ” Kessler said. “I’m going to go in there like I’m Beezie and lay down the best performance that I can.”

Madden acknowledged: “She beat us all. We have to go on now. That was pretty cut and dry.”

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section B, Page 20 of the New York edition with the headline: Teenage Rider May Reset the Bar. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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