A Stonington Teen With A Love Of Riding

Ask anyone where 17-year-old girls like to spend their free time and the answer will probably be something along the lines of at the mall.

But, you won’t find Stonington’s Clare Bornstein, 17, at the mall, or the movies, or any of the other normal teenage hangouts. Most days Clare can be found at Mystic Valley Hunt Club in Gales Ferry, where she hopes she will some day be able to turn her love of horses and riding into a career.

“It’s really cool to work with an animal so much bigger and more powerful than me, and create a real partnership with the animal,” Clare said.

The junior spends everyday after school at the barn sometimes saying until 7 or 8 p.m., before going home to start her homework in her two Advanced Placement and all honors courses.

“Sometimes, I’m up all night doing homework,” Clare said. “I put horses above everything. I gave up a lot of normal things like going to the movies. Most of my really good friends ride.”

Her passion and dedication to riding and the animals is clear the minute you see Clare with the horses. There is a natural easiness, quietness and confidence about her. It’s those abilities and that passion that Clare hopes she will get to use in the future first at an as of yet unknown college where she plans to focus on equine studies and later as a trainer.

The only one in her family to ride, Clare said she thinks her parents and her sister find her love of horses a bit odd, but she said, “I’ve always loved it.”

Colleen Bornstein, Clare’s mother, suspects her fascination started when Clare’s father Kevin took Clare to visit a co-worker’s farm and horses around the age of five or six.

“Clare has always had a connection with animals, which is something you definitely need if you are going to ride horses,” Colleen said.

Clare started taking regular horseback riding lessons around the age of seven at small family farm in North Stonington. For several years she competed in the American Quarter horse circuit, but the farm in North Stonington closed every winter and Clare managed to talk her parents into letting her try a lesson at Mystic Valley Hunt Club in 2008.

It was there on a snowy Christmas Eve, Colleen said, Clare fell in love with jumping and began competing on the CHJA, CHSA circuits and with the local IEA team.

The love of jumping her mother could have done with out.

“My mom gets so nervous she doesn’t watch me show,” Clare said. “She makes my sister film it, and will watch it later.”

“I do get very nervous watching Clare and at most of the shows I will end up not watching her—I do trust that Clare knows what she is doing and has the best trainers, but not being a horse person myself—it just makes me nervous,” Colleen said, adding, “I am getting better.”

This winter Clare is busy preparing for the upcoming season. She is working on finding one horses to compete for the CT Hunter Jumper Finals Association in the summer and taking some of the qualifying classes.