c) (gentle music) - [Narrator] As the sun rises across Eastern Nebraska, Jami Kment and her daughter Lexi carry out their daily chores on the farm.

(gentle music) (gentle music) - [Jami] No matter if you're sick, if it's a blizzard, if it's raining outside, it's hot, you're tired, you have to take care of them.

(gentle music) They depend on you and so it helps you get grounded, especially as a teenager, being more excited to go see your horse then to go see boys and friends was always a good thing.

- I'd say my relationship with the horses is friends for sure, best friends.

They're the ones that when I have a really hard day at school.

I can just come down here and hang out and just kind of tell them my life problems and they're just like, "Okay, treats now."

They're always willing to listen.

(upbeat music) - [Jami] They have the look in their eye, how they twitch their skin, how they move their ears, and yeah, but it takes time to get to know a horse and to know their personality and what they think about things, but it's a really neat connection to have with them.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] This mother and daughter share a mutual love for horses and a passion for the sport of dressage.

It all started years ago when Jami was a little girl and her father would drive by a pony club on their way to a local lake.

- [Jami] My dad actually knew the guy that owned the place.

His name was Lowell Boomer and he's actually the founder of dressage in the US and so from that day on the boat never went back into the water and for $5 every Sunday we could come out and rent a horse.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] G Lowell Boomer also had a deep love for horses.

As a young man, he witnessed a military dressage competition held in Lincoln, which ignited his interest in the sport.

Later he founded the Nebraska Dressage Association and played a pivotal role in establishing the US Dressage Foundation.

(military band music) Dressage is the art of training horses where the horse and the rider perform a series of precise and predetermined movements from memory, but the origins of the sport are rooted in military combat on the battlefield.

- [Jami] The horse could give the illusion of stampeding towards you when really it was in place.

Or if you had your sword, you could go quickly to the side to be able to get your enemy or you could be able to turn it quickly to get someone behind you.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) - [Narrator] As athletes advance in dressage, the difficulty of movements increases.

- [Jami] You will have a half pass and that's when a horse goes sideways and crosses its legs as it's going apart, (upbeat music) or you'll have flying changes where a horse is skipping in the air and going, it's at the canter where you go from one lead to the next lead and you can do it even every stride and that's where it looks like a horse is skipping.

Then there's the passage, which looks like a slow motion trot that's very elevated in the piaffe where the horse trots in place.

(upbeat music) Horses are really good about yielding to pressure.

If you weight your left seat bone, they want to move to the left seat bone, so if you do a half pass to the right, you weight your right seat bone and then you use your left leg to show them where to go, and then they'll start crossing their legs to go that way.

- [Narrator] Dressage has both national and international championships, but the level of competition at international events is much higher.

- [Jami] You have to have a passport for your horse and there's a lot of more stringent drug rules.

- [Narrator] Jami has won many international competitions, but when she's not competing, she guides others in the sport.

- [Jami] I have 12 full-time clients that work with me four to five days a week, 52 weeks of the year, and then I have other clients that are outta state that I teach virtually.

(upbeat music) - [Lexi] I won my first national championship when I was 13, (upbeat music) so that was at Festival Champions.

- [Jami] Probably one of my funnest accomplishments as a coach is having my daughters there, and Lexi was a triple gold medalist, meaning she won every gold medal there was at the North American Youth Championships.

- Sometimes I get emotional, my first national anthem play.

There's a picture of me on the podium and I look like I'm really mad, but I'm just trying not to ball my eyes out.

- [Narrator] Injuries are also a part of the sport.

Lexi had to put a halt to training when her horse Monty was hurt.

She worried they wouldn't be able to defend their titles in the coming year, but after a grueling off-season, Lexi stood atop the podium again.

- The first time was more of a surprise and more of like a, "Oh my gosh, I can't believe we did that," a not quite real feeling.

The second time was a more of a, "Okay, I can do this.

I can come back from hard things and we can still be good.

We don't have to just have one time that we're great and have it be over.

- [Narrator] Jami and Lexi's journey in the world of dressage showcases a deep bond between horse and rider and between mother and daughter.

(upbeat music) - [Jami] I feel like a very proud mom and a proud coach, and it's fun to be able to wear both of those hats at the same time, but at a competition, I'm definitely more of a coach than I am a mom, and then we get to go home and I get to be the mom.

(soft music )