About Liz
With an outstanding background as a professional International dressage rider and trainer and over 30 years
of teaching experience, Liz Hopps McConnell brings both her passion and her expertise to the arena, helping you believe and achieve.
Liz has been training exclusively at Inside Dressage Farm since the winter of 2017, dedicating her time to importing and training horses from Europe and teaching national and International students alike. Her daughter Megan had huge success riding sales horse, Eros, to a silver medal at the Dressage4Kids competition in Saugerties.
In 2018 Liz coached Bajan rider, Roberta Foster, to qualify for and compete at the CAC Games in Colombia. Roberta and Chic Chic had amazing success and qualified to compete for Barbados at the Pan Am Games in Peru in 2019!!
In 2016 Liz coached her client in Switzerland at the FEI Pony/FEI Junior level. They trained daily, and competed at most of the top competition in Europe including at the Balkan Games in Greece where her student achieved the incredible results of 3 Gold Medals and 1 Silver Medal at the FEI Junior level.
Additionally her rider finished in the top 10 at all of their CDI competitions, consistently achieving scores over 70% at the end of their time together. They were ranked 14th in the FEI World Rankings for FEI Pony riders. Liz was also able to secure her Winston who was ranked 5th with the FEI at the U25 level, and they went on to achieve great success at the Young Riders level.
Liz has herself competed and won at numerous CDI competitions throughout Canada, the US and Europe. She represented Canada at the World Equestrian Games in Rome in 1998. She rode her own horse, Elymas, who she purchased as a 3 year old and trained by herself to Grand Prix.
Liz/s training philosophy is classical, methodical and unconfrontational. It is based on a clear and concise understanding of the aids and their application. She developes a strong foundation of dressage basics before moving the horse and rider up through the levels of training.
Liz has had the opportunity to train with top dressage trainers through her career including Uwe Sauer, Kyra Kyrklund and Steffen Peters to name a few.