Undaunted by three bad falls, in which she broke two different bones and once had a 1,000-pound horse almost land on top of her, 14-year-old Freddie Alcalay is still passionately pursuing her dream of becoming a champion equestrian rider – and enjoying quite a bit of initial success.

Freddie is one of three local girls, along with Liza Guettler, 12, and Morgan Thompson, also 12, who are spearheading a very active local equestrian scene in Vero Beach. Freddie and Liza attend St. Ed’s school while Morgan is a student at St. Helen’s school on the mainland.

Freddie had been riding horses for as long as she can remember, first riding ponies at fairs when she was a baby and then switching to real horses when she was just 2 or 3 years old. Despite once breaking her wrist and another time fracturing a bone in her shoulder, she has stuck with the equestrian sport until she became the grand champion in her class in October at the Equestrian Sport Production (ESP) Fall Finale III at the Wellington International Equestrian Center.

Riding her own horse, Perry Girl, a Westphalian warmblood, Freddie had the fastest times at the Wellington circuit and made three clean runs, meaning she got no penalty deductions for either veering off-course or knocking down one of the barriers.

“I was really proud of her for that,” says her mother, Barbara Bollinger, who has supported her daughter’s passion despite the occasional scares with the seemingly inevitable accidents.

“I know she was worried about me those times that I fell and broke something,” Freddie says, “but she didn’t make me quit, which I really appreciate.”

Freddie won one of the runs with the fastest time and placed third in another, which made her the overall winner and the Grand Prix champion with her three-day average score in the top category where the horses jumped over .80-meter obstacles. She edged out her teammate, Liza Guettler, who rode Zeus, an Oldenburg warmblood horse, to a second-place finish.

The third member of the local Vero Beach team, Morgan Thompson, riding Maverick, a Dutch warmblood, won a blue ribbon in the lower category where horses jumped over .65-meter-high obstacles.

Freddie says she watched some of the equestrian Olympic events held this past summer at the palace of Versailles outside Paris – the equestrian jumping events are the only Olympic sport in which men and woman compete against each other as equals. However, Freddie doesn’t think she’ll continue to train to eventually be able to compete at that level.

“For one thing, they jump so high – to 1.60 meters (5-feet-3) – which is double the height that we jump over,” Freddie said. “I don’t jump that big. That just seemed like a stretch to me. I don’t believe I want to make it a career. I think I just want to keep doing it as a hobby.”

The girls were planning to compete again in similar events at the World Equestrian Center in Ocala Dec. 11-15, and in Wellington Jan. 14-19, Feb. 11-16 and March 11-16.

Horses that compete in equestrian events are trained as warmblood jumpers and Freddie always wanted to be a jumper. Her teammate, Liza, on the other hand, started out riding in Western-style shows before switching to jumping, and still other horse enthusiasts train saddlebred horses for fancy high-stepping competitions like dressage.

Perry Girl, along with the other horses, are stabled and cared for at The Barn of the Stardust Equestrian enterprise at 455 74th St. in Vero Beach. Stardust Equestrian is owned and managed by Meghan Green, a native of the horse breeding center of Saratoga Springs, New York. Green has established her reputation as a champion trainer.

Freddie says she has formed a real emotional bond with her horse, Perry Girl, to the point where they can read each other’s emotions perfectly.

“When I’m angry, it’s like she gets angry with me, too, for being angry, and she won’t behave right,” Freddie says. “But when I’m happy, I can feel that she’s happy, too. And when we’re both happy, we make a great team together.”