The Tamie Smith season so far
How Tamie Smith is dominating the 2026 eventing season globally and why the record books may already be on watch.
The Series leader Tamie Smith currently has the most international wins gloablly in 2026 with eight. The next closest is Julia Krajewski on six. Eight wins by the 18th of May is a number worth contextualising.
Last year, Lara de Liedekerke-Meier set a new all-time record of 21 wins in a single season. It was one of the most extraordinary individual seasons the sport has seen. When you look back at where she was at this exact point in 2025? Six wins. Smith is already two ahead of that pace.
To be clear: matching 21 wins in a season would require an exceptional volume of runs across the rest of the year, and with a potential trip to Germany for the World Championships, where you arrive with just one horse, wouldn't help the tally. But the trajectory is striking regardless.
What makes Smith's eight wins particularly notable is what level they have been at. Four of them have been at the CCI4* level. Across de Liedekerke-Meier's entire record-breaking 2025 season, she recorded only three four-star wins. Smith already has four CCI4*-S wins and it is only May. One of those victories also came with the lowest international dressage score recorded anywhere in the world in 2026. The level at which she is winning matters as much as the volume.
It is also worth pausing on the context of this season. Last year, Mai Baum, one of the greatest event horses the US has ever seen, retired. That is no small thing to absorb. And yet Smith has come out in 2026 with what may be the strongest string of her career, producing results at a rate that puts her among the most dominant riders in the world right now. Last year she was second on the global win count behind de Liedekerke-Meier on ten. This year she is first... and it is only May.
We know we have been talking about Tamie Smith a lot but the numbers keep giving us reasons to.
Read our full feature on why the data points to her as the 2026 Series favorite here.
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