By L.L. Martin Nina Fout is tall and slim with a quick smile and a close affection with her animals. Talented in her taste and living in simple elegance, she may well be the most over looked member of the 2000 Olympic Three Day Team riders.
Of all the riders on the team that live and train in the Middleburg Area, Nina alone can claim it to be her home from birth. Her rich heritage is horses. She is the daughter of Even and Paul Fout. Her father is a long standing Virginia horseman and trainer.
Nina's mother is well known both for her art and for her long involvement with Pony Clubs in the Middleburg area. Her brother, Doug, is a successful trainer and horseman.
From Nina's modernized log cabin situated down a serene country road adjacent to the family horse training center in The Plains, she reflected on her Olympic experience and the challenges to her horse, Three Magic Beans, and herself.
" I was thrilled with his dressage test," Nina says of the horse he calls Beans. "He reacts to the atmosphere. It makes him more exuberant than I want him. But he did well." Nina's test was ridden on the first day of the two-day dressage testing. "The judges aren't as forgiving on the first day." Three Magic Beans scored lowest of the 4 team horses, but in keeping with Nina's philosophy of Eventing, that you are competing against your last best effort; she was thrilled with his score.
" My trainer was thrilled too." Nina's dressage trainer is Dutch born Jules Nyssen, now living in Seven Pines, South Carolina. "Jules is well versed in Dressage and was excellent in getting us both trained. Mark had no problem with Jules being there."
Mark is Captain Mark Phillips, a former British team member and an Olympian. He was team coach for the American Three Day team.
"But you have to realize that dressage wasn't the thing that got Beans on the team" Insists Nina. " It's his jumping ability. It's his job. He has had a consistent career."
Nina said it wasn't the obstacles in the endurance phase of the Three Day competition that gave them the most challenge, but the horse's frame of mind. "The course was in a very limited amount of area. We kept lapping other horses."
She said every time they passed another horse, Three Magic Beans would become excited. " It never gave him a chance to settle. Between each horse that passed, I would work hard to settle him. He finally got to the point that he was telling me: ' I know there's another horse coming. I'm not relaxing.' He was pulling my arms out the entire time."
According to Nina, there are four parts to the endurance phase. The first is the warm up. Horses trot this part. This, she said, is the first part of 'two roads and tracks' portions. " Even though riders started at 5 minute intervals, we still passed five or six horses."
The second part is the steeplechase. "He's an ex-racehorse and in the steeplechase, we basically had to go as fast as we could while jumping 9 fences. It was a tight circle and the same three fences, three times each. You can imagine how excited he got by the end of that." She smiled.
The second 'roads and tracks' portion was longer and less horses passed them. "My job was to keep him balanced and relaxed. I was handicapped with a horse that is an adrenalin junkie. The third part was a little easier, with a lot of long straights and a canal we rode by."
The last part of the endurance phase was the cross-country course. " We had a lot of time faults, because I spent so much time trying to relax him between the combinations. You walk the course maybe a dozen times before you ever ride it, but it's still so different when you are actually on the horse and in front of the crowds."
"In some aspects this wasn't my personal best. It was a great frustration to me that I couldn't get him to relax." Nina insisted." I know he has a lot of respect for me. If he was easy, it wouldn't be a challenge. The challenges just make you a better rider."
The show jumping phase was more of the same. Nina trying to relax her horse and trying to keep him balanced between fences. She and Three Magic Beans completed the course with out knocking a rail, but they accumulated time faults.
Her entire performance provoked this comment from Three Day Event icon Jimmy Wofford: "Nina probably rode better than any of the team members, as she had the most difficult horse to ride." This was a glowing compliment by her former riding instructor. Jimmy was one of the supporters who went to watch the Three Day competition at Sydney.
Nina and Three Magic Beans are veterans of International competition. They have competed at Badminton, (which is considered the Super Bowl of Three-Day Eventing) Burgley, both in England, and Punchess Town in Ireland.
Nina says the victory ride after they received their medals was sort of funny. "Here I was riding this horse who is so excitable and we had these bouquets in one hand and our medals around our necks. The medals are heavy and have long ribbons that hang down to here, " she points to her waist line, " And every stride the medals were flying up and hitting us in the head. I was laughing the whole way around."
The bouquet is now dried and hanging in Nina's dining room.
Linden Wiesman's Olympic experience was a bit different than her teammates. As an alternate she never expected to make the team. Her teammates, Nina Fout, David and Karen O'Connor, knew since mid-summer they would be on the team, barring some unforeseen injury to horse or rider, or other unknown that might have kept them or their horses form training.
Linden was named to the team the night before official entry. When Abigail Lufkin's team horses were withdrawn from consideration due to injuries, Linden moved up.
"It was exciting for me that the first tem I got to be on was with David and Karen." Olympic team members David and Karen and David O'Connor coach a number of aspiring Event riders. Linden is among them.
"It was such an honor. I was there in Sydney to represent my country. I didn't want to disappoint anyone."
Linden's participation was cut short when she fell a second time in the Cross Country phase. "You never know what will happen in Eventing. And I made a mistake."
According to Linden, in team competition the lowest score is thrown out. She says that pout more pressure on the rest of the team members to do their best.
" They could not have put together a better group. We all got along really well. Even though I didn't get to finish competing, they made me feel very much a part of the team. When something like that happens, you go and support the rest of the team. I was there in the audience, but I couldn't help feeling disappointed."
"Karen made me feel a lot better about it. Everyone was joking, that I was trying to be like her. She fell in her first Olympics too." Smiled Linden, remembering.
" It's very unusual for a young rider to win their first time in International competition." Nina Fout said of her teammate, Linden. " She did well her first time out."
"The victory gallop was a little rough. I didn't fall off, but my horse did run away with me." Linden Wiesman laughed form her farm in Bluemont. She was the youngest team member at 25. This was her first International competition off United States soil.
Linden's Olympic medal and souvenirs from the Sydney 2000 Olympics are carefully laid out on her pool table in her sprawling modern house, waiting to be permanently displayed. They are fond and tangible reminders of her first Olympic competition.
For Middleburg Life
