When Jamaica appears on the list of countries in Pan Am Games three-day-eventing, or for that matter other events like the WEG, Badminton or Blenheim, it’s because Samantha Albert is competing. The 36 year old Jamaica native has not lived in her home country for the last seventeen years, but she proudly wears its flag on her coat and saddle pad. Only one other Jamaican eventer has ever competed at the Pan Am Games; it was in 1991 when Samantha also competed, finishing just off the podium in fourth place. Rio de Janeiro is only her second Pan Am Games, but she has other major championships on her curriculum vitae, including the 1998 and 2006 World Championships. Her aim in Rio is not just to improve on her placing in 1991 – she is on a hunt for points to qualify as an individual to the 2008 Olympics in Hong Kong. If she achieves her goal she will be the first Jamaican to ever compete in equestrian events at an Olympic Games.

Raised on Race Horses

Samantha recalls her first time riding at the age of three. “My dad’s always loved racing. One day he took all three of us, my two sisters and myself, riding. They hated it and I loved it.” At that time Samantha’s family was living in Canada, first in Montreal, and later in Ontario. “My dad bought a huge 16.3 hand paint. He used to get on and I’d sit on the front on a cushion. We’d go off riding for hours.” It was a professional jumper trainer who put the idea to Samantha’s father that perhaps it was time to buy her a pony. “He said, ‘she wants to go on ponies, not on a big horse with you’.”

When her parents divorced, Samantha moved back to Jamaica, and immediately found a way to continue cultivating her growing passion for riding. “Most of the horses in Jamaica are Thoroughbreds off the race track,” she says. She began getting horses off the track and retraining them. “Even back then I was producing my own horses.” Competition opportunities in Jamaica were a bit limited, and everyone would do all the disciplines. “You had one or two horses and you did dressage, show jumping, a little eventing, whatever you could.” An English woman named Judy Bradwell who did some teaching and judging in Jamaica, encouraged Samantha to go to England, where the next stage in her career began.