Olympic Medalist Training Near Collierville, TN Jill Hennenberg is new trainer at Shady Side Farms By Nancy Brannon Jill Henneberg was the youngest person ever selected to the U.S. Three-Day Eventing Team. She and her horse Nirvana were on the U.S. Silver Medal team at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, GA. Jill started coming to the Collierville area four or five years ago to give clinics to Pony Club riders. She likes this area and was looking for a change. “I have been coming to the Memphis area monthly for the last six or eight months, and I see a lot of interest in eventing,” Jill said. Now, after years of people begging her to move here, Jill Hennenberg is the new trainer at Shady Side Farms, 9933 Paul Jones Road. Jill’s reputation with her mare Nirvana precedes her. Nirvana was Jill’s first horse, “bought off the track for $600 when I was 13 years old,” she said. “I was a working student at a farm in Pennsylvania at age 16, and I evented her at training level. The lady who ran the program there took me to a lesson with Bruce Davidson. He challenges you in a good way and the mare just rose to the occasion. The bigger the jumps got, the better she performed; she was up to the challenge. When she went preliminary, she started being noticed on cross-country; the professionals asked about her. She almost always went clean. Out of hundreds of events, she only had about 10 rails down. She was a fantastic cross-country horse! She was a brilliant jumper, but stood only 15 hands 3 inches with shoes and studs.” When Jill graduated from high school, she got an invitation to be a working student for Michael Godfey, who had been on world championship teams. She worked for him for four years and eventually ran his barn. “I worked with Jane Savoy for four summers and trained with others including Paul Belasik, Capt. Mark Phillips, and Stephen Bradley,” Jill added. “Nirvana did her first Advanced Horse Trials in 1993 and we ran Advanced that whole year. At the 1993 Rolex I won the J. D. Reeves trophy for the highest placed young rider in that division. I won the Markham Trophy at Fair Hill. In 1994 we placed 8th at Rolex and won the award for Best Conditioned Horse. We were the second alternate on the short list for the 1994 World Games.” A remarkable feat, since Jill was only 19 years old and had only one year of Advanced Horse Trials. “But in the fall of 1994 the mare fractured a splint bone and we had it removed, but the surgery didn’t go well. In 1995 we were on the short list for the Pan American Games, but we had to pull out. Then I found Dr. Brendon Furlong, serving as USET veterinarian, who figured out her problem and got her sound. We went to Rolex in 1996 and placed tenth. That put us on the short list and we began rigorous training with Mark Phillips at the Davidsons’ and the O’Connors’. We had two mandatory outings and after the second outing, the team and individual members would be picked. It was a very intense moment!” And the rest is Olympic history. Jill’s advanced training had helped her develop a training approach that is designed to fit each horse’s specific needs, while generally developing in them “the basic fundamentals that don’t change,” Jill explained. “I believe in not fighting with horses, but I am a disciplinarian. I try to make the program work for the horse, not the other way around. I tweak the program to accommodate the individual horse. I want to emphasize that safety is first and foremost with both students and horses. This is very important! When you make mistakes, as we all do, I expect riders to own up to them, learn from them, and correct them.” Jill enjoys teaching riders and bringing them along to the best of their abilities. Her immediate plans are to take her students to Jubilee Horse Trials, to River Glen and other fall horse trials. She would like to build a cross-country schooling course on the 30 acres across the road from the barn. She hopes to re-energize interest in eventing in the Mid-South area.