Kim Severson Is Back at CCI4*-L

Kim Severson is one of the most successful riders in the history of US eventing. With Winsome Adante she won Kentucky three times in four years, took team gold at the 2002 World Championships and won Olympic silver and bronze in Athens in 2004. That year she was ranked FEI World No.1.

This week she starts her first CCI4*-L in nine years. The last time she started one, she won it: Blenheim, September 2017, on Cooley Cross Border, finishing on her dressage score of 25.2 with an HPR of 102. HPR rates the quality of a single performance against the field and the course.

She comes back with Cooley Corraghy Diamond, known as Cory, a 9-year-old grey Irish Sporthorse owned by Ros and Bill Johnson. He makes his own CCI4*-L debut, and Severson rates him very highly.

The EquiRatings Prediction Center gives Cory a 3% win chance, joint eighth in the field, with 13% to finish in the top three and 39% to finish in the top 10.

Severson's run with Winsome Adante set the standard for a generation of US riders. He won Kentucky in 2002, 2004 and 2005. He was sixth individually at the 2002 World Equestrian Games in Jerez, where the US won team gold. At the Athens Olympics in 2004 he took individual silver and team bronze. He also rode at the 2006 World Equestrian Games in Aachen, where the US finished fourth, and was third at Badminton in 2007.

Severson has said that success builds confidence, and that each horse adds something new to the process. That mindset delivered her biggest results. Cory is the latest horse she believes can add to it.

Cory won the 7-year-old USEF Developing Horse Series in 2024. He is the No.2 US 9-year-old on Elo, on 536.

He won the Virginia Horse Center CCI3*-S in May on 39.2, then the Bouckaert CCI4*-S in August on 41.3. He has had two runs since. He picked up 20 cross-country jumping penalties at The Fork and finished 12th. At Stable View Oktoberfest on September 25 he went clear cross-country with 26 time penalties and finished 13th.

His one long-format run came at the Maryland CCI3*-L in October 2024. He finished fourth on 33.5, clear across country with 2 time penalties and clear in the show jumping. The question this week will be the length of this course.

Severson's history here goes back more than two decades. She won the CCI1* at Morven Park in 2002 on Aces High and again in 2003 on QT. In 2016 she won the Morven Park CCI4*-S on Cooley Cross Border, on her dressage score of 31.1, a year after finishing third in the same class.

Since 2008 she has eight CCI4*-L starts and one win, and the win came last. The horse is new to the level. The rider has won at the top of the sport. Let's see what they can do this week.