Unexpected Journey Christine Turner’s
FROM WESTERN PLEASURE TO OLYMPIC EVENTING
WHEN Christine Turner’s husband Thomas purchased a farm for her for their twentieth wedding anniversary, she didn’t really have any idea what they were in for. With an Arabian she liked to ride around in a Western saddle, Chris says that at the time she didn’t have any use for the three arenas and cross-country course on the 58-acre property. She was just happy to have a barn and room to ride out across the Texas hills near San Antonio.
Trakehners and Eventing But with that farm and its impressive facilities, it seems inevitable Chris would eventually become more seriously involved with horses. Today the Turners and Indian Creek Farm are connected to some of the top eventing horses in the world. When they bought the farm in 2009, Chris knew they
had to have more than one horse. She found a Western horse for her daughter Tommie, but Tommie wanted to ride English. After a year they purchased a Trakehner gelding, Zarr, for her. The family loved him so much they went back and bought his mother, Zenith. Chris noticed how well she was bred, so with an American Trakehner Association (ATA) inspection in Denton, Texas, about five hours away, she made the trek to see what people thought about breeding Zenith. Tim Holekamp, then president of the ATA and owner of the stallion Windfall, saw Zenith’s papers and a deal was made for a breeding. As she was from an area more focused
By Amber Heintzberger
Christine Turner and daughter Tommie spectate at Fair Hill while Boyd Martin competes her horse On Cue.
on Western riding, Chris turned to Tim for advice about how to train this new English horse in her barn. He invited her to his farm in Missouri during a clinic to see how it operated. While they were there, the family met Tupelo, a three-year- old mare, and her half-brother, Tsetserleg (Thomas), who was five at the time and participating in the clinic. Thomas had gone Training level and Chris thought
he was the perfect match for Tommie; for the next year Tommie rode him, but she never competed him. When Tommie went away to college in 2013, Chris sent all of her competition horses to Michael Pollard to compete on the east coast. Michael took Tupelo through the Young Event Horse program as a five-year-old and he placed fourth in the nation. In January 2016, Thomas was moved to Boyd Martin’s barn in Pennsylvania. The Holekamps were glad to have Thomas sent to train-
ers that would set him on a path to success. Tim told the U.S. Eventing Association (USEA) in September 2018, when Tsetserleg represented the United States at the World
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Photo by Amber Heintzberger
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