Match-making is a key to success at the Ardalan family’s breeding, training, importing and sales business.

by Kim F. Miller

The Ardalan family’s Caspian Stables is a major source of jumpers for every level of the sport. Patriarch Arsia and daughter Tara are busy and familiar riders on the West Coast circuit and go-tos for professionals and amateurs looking for quality horses, from prospects to Grand Prix mounts. Through breeding, training and importing, the program based in San Diego County’s Valley Center prides itself on having a horse for virtually any rider at any given time.

A project horse becomes a graduate course in horsemanship for San Diego trainer.

by Wendy Lee Thompson

To an outsider, Simpatica 33’s fourth-place finish in her first Grand Prix, the  $24,500 Del Mar Finale Prix in October, might have looked like an overnight sensation. But the 10-year-old mare’s story is anything but. In fact, her five-year journey to the Grand Prix ring has been a graduate course in horsemanship for veteran trainer Wendy Lee Thompson of Coastline Hunters & Jumpers.

Here’s their story…