In 1991, McLain Ward was part of the gold medal team at the North American Young Riders Championship, and that same year earned the AGA’s Rookie of the Year award. He went on to become the youngest rider, at the age of 24, to pass the 1 million dollar mark in Grand Prix winnings, which he did in 1999 by winning four big classes at the Cosequin Winter Equestrian Festival in Florida. At 14, he’d become the youngest rider to win the USET Show jumping Talent Derby. Ten weeks later, he became the youngest rider to win the USET Medal finals and, in doing so, the first rider to win both titles in the same year.

Most recently, Ward earned a silver medal for the team competition at the 2004 Olympics in Athens. Ward and his horse “Victor” came this close to winning the World Cup Final last year in Leipzig, where three rails in the final round took them from 1st to 4th to tie with Leslie Howard and her mount “Priobert de Kalvarie”.