2025 Thoroughbred Makeover: Sibelius Takes to Dressage

Part 2: After winning $1.8 million on the racetrack, Sibelius is heading to the 2025 Thoroughbred Makeover.

When Sibelius left the racetrack in 2024, he did so as a decorated champion. Over four seasons he had earned more than $1.8 million, won nine races—including the prestigious 2023 Dubai Golden Shaheen—and carried owners Delia Nash and Jun Park, trainer Jerry O’Dwyer, and their team on a ride they’d never forget. His flashy blaze and lively personality had made him a barn favorite. And his grit on the track had cemented his reputation as a world-class sprinter.

But when a suspensory ligament injury prompted his retirement, Sibelius was still just 6. Once he recovered, he would be ready to start a new chapter. After all, Thoroughbreds are athletes, and Sibelius’s obvious attributes certainly would translate into a meaningful career in another sport. For that, Nash and Park turned to an accomplished trainer who specialized in retraining ex-racehorses and who already knew Sibelius from her husband’s racing string: professional eventer and dressage trainer Alison O’Dwyer.

“He was always very mild-mannered,” O’Dwyer said of Sibelius during his racing career. “I would feel comfortable holding him and walking him for Jerry and stuff like that, where maybe some of the other ones, I wouldn’t want to touch some of those other dragons on the racetrack!”

Sibelius’ gentle but inquisitive nature was evident even during his high-stakes trip to Dubai’s Meydan racetrack. There, he stood at the rail each morning simply watching the action before he trained. That nature was a good indication that he was an intelligent, observant animal who would be receptive to learning a new job. “He seems very forgiving and genuine,” O’Dwyer said, “and that does make you think he could go in almost any direction.”

Learning ‘We’re Not Racing’

The direction O’Dwyer, Nash, and Park had in mind led to Lexington, Kentucky, for the 2025 Thoroughbred Makeover. Hosted by the Retired Racehorse Project, the national retraining competition offers numerous equestrian disciplines to showcase the versatility and athleticism that are hallmarks of the Thoroughbred breed. To date, O’Dwyer has won the event’s dressage division four times.

Fully recovered from his injury, Sibelius joined O’Dwyer’s retraining program in Wellington, Florida, in January 2025. O’Dwyer plotted his course to the Makeover at the Kentucky Horse Park, Oct. 8–11, 2025. This involved teaching him the basics of an entirely new activity with a highly technical, famously subtle new language between horse and rider: dressage.

In Florida, Sibelius was gentle but fresh, O’Dwyer recalled. “He’s obviously very good, but little things would trigger him,” she said. This included other horses coming at him. “In the arena, if I was trotting on the rail and a horse was coming at me, he kind of spin away from them, which is a pretty typical racehorse problem.”

O’Dwyer and Sibelius spent a couple months on long, relaxing hacks, working in fields, and hand-walking down the road to a nearby arena. “He needed a month or two where I was like, ‘We’re not racing, we’re just walking in the backyard. What do you think about that?’” O’Dwyer said.

When the O’Dwyers returned to Kentucky in April, Alison moved Sibelius to a boarding facility outside of Lexington. “Once I was in an atmosphere with other horses and an arena, we really took off,” she remembered. “I felt like he just completely flipped a switch. He got extremely reliable and quiet, and he started to handle horses in the arena; even in a couple head-on interactions, he was fine. My confidence really took off with.”

Dressage: Different Demands

Dressage, balletic and graceful, calls for technical precision and controlled power. To a spectator, it can appear (and should look) almost effortless. But that’s deceptive: dressage is a physically challenging sport. And it makes different demands on Sibelius than his race training did, which has required careful physical and mental management as O’Dwyer introduced the gelding to new movements like circling, leg-yields, and bending around his rider’s leg.

“Even though the flatwork looks pretty basic, a horse is having to use his body in brand new ways, especially for a dirt sprinter, right?” she explained. “He’d been trained to go very fast in a straight line. So, I really had to start teaching him to bend his body and flex his body in ways he had never been asked to do before.”

At first, Sibelius moved like “a two-by-four, very straight and strong,” O’Dwyer said, but months of dressage have strengthened and reshaped him. Now, instead of launching his power into a single explosive burst, he has learned to “sit and load his hind end and do some collection,” she explained. “He’s having to carry himself much differently, but I think his biggest strength is his desire to do well. He cares a lot, and with him you have a horse that is trying for you at all times. I think that will be a strength in anything he does moving forward: his work ethic. But he also actually has great lateral movement. We definitely will be highlighting his leg-yield—it’s very, very strong. He can move sideways better than I ever expected him to do. He likes his stretchy work, too, where he gets to put his nose long and low and stretch over his back.”

Nutrition Needs

A thoughtful nutrition plan has supported Sibelius’s transformation. At one point, as his new job was becoming more demanding, O’Dwyer noticed he wasn’t carrying weight evenly. “His butt was big and his neck was big and his belly was big, but he wasn’t carrying it through and across his rib cage,” she said. “So, we started giving him Equi-Jewel^®.”

The heat-stabilized rice bran pellets with calcium carbonate, which add calories to a horse’s diet without risking grain overload, helped the gelding bloom. “He’s gained about 150 pounds in the last four weeks,” O’Dwyer said.

Sibelius also has benefitted from the natural vitamin E found in Elevate^® Maintenance Powder and Elevate^® W.S., a fast-acting water-soluble liquid that aids muscle recovery and supports normal neurological function. Vitamin E is an essential nutrient for horses, but they can’t synthesize it themselves; they get it from grazing fresh, green pasture—or, when that isn’t available to them, through supplementation.

“Sibelius and my other Thoroughbreds have been on that at all times,” O’Dwyer said of Elevate’s highly bioavailable natural vitamin E. “I believe most horses that are stalled for any amount of time can really benefit from the vitamin E. For his belly—because sometimes he can be a little bit emotional, and he cares a lot—he gets his Neigh-Lox^® daily, too.”

Holding His Breath

Sibelius’s frame has filled out and changed somewhat, but he still retains some habits familiar to his fans from the racetrack.

“He loves his moments of standing and watching,” O’Dwyer said. “It’s what kind of made him famous initially in Dubai: He loves just to stand and watch things.” But there are times he just “wants to walk and chomp on the bit a little and think about things,” she added. “So I’ll just kind of sit there, drop the reins, and wait for him to take a deep breath.

“I think he tends to hold his breath, so I’ve gotten very attuned to waiting for those exhales from him,” O’Dwyer said. “He doesn’t do anything bad; he doesn’t lash out or anything. But I just have learned to be very sensitive to ‘OK, just because this horse isn’t showing me physical signs of stress, is he breathing? Is he happy in his work?’”

Mental and Emotional Training Components

It’s important not to overlook the mental and emotional components to training horses, O’Dwyer noted.

“His job before was fairly simple and straightforward,” she said. “But when a racehorse is asked to do multidisciplinary work off the racetrack, one day I’m asking him to jump, one day I’m asking him to trail ride. The next day I’m asking him to do dressage and leg-yielding. It’s a lot of variety, and Sibelius definitely had things to learn.

“I think he’s a little bit secretly emotional,” she continued. “He’s used to being good at things. I think there are some moments here and there where I say, ‘Hey, that’s not what I want.’ And he could get his feelings hurt. He tries extremely hard, and it’s a good thing. But you have to be careful with horses that try that hard. You don’t want to put them in a place where they can’t succeed, because they care a lot. So it’s about being mindful of personalities like that and setting him up for success as much as I can, while still giving him a new education.”

The strategy seems to have paid in the lead-up to the Makeover, according to one of Sibelius’ owners. “Sibelius has taken that same intelligence, honesty, and laser focus he exhibited on the track to the dressage arena and once again shown he’s a special horse,” said Delia Nash. “Not that I’m keeping count or anything, but he’s secured a few blue ribbons in his prep competitions along the way!”

A Hometown Hero

Ultimately, Sibelius may or may not become a dressage mount in his next career, but his training in the discipline will provide a strong foundation for whatever he does post-Makeover.

O’Dwyer doesn’t want to predict too much about Sibelius’s future, though she’s confident that he’ll acquit himself well. And just as he handled the electric atmosphere of Meydan in Dubai, she believes he’ll thrive in the Makeover’s busy environment. “I feel very strongly that he will be a reliable, present horse on the day of competition,” she said. “More than anything, he deserves a job and a purpose that is nice to him. He’s so kind and he tries so hard, I just want him to feel success every day.”

So do his many fans. Sibelius’s story still resonates with racing fans who cheered him on from the Keeneland to Saratoga to Dubai. “Everybody is rooting for this horse,” O’Dwyer acknowledged. “He’s a little hometown hero. I think we’re going to have a lot of people following us around at the Horse Park. And that’s going to just be so much fun.

“I’m very honored to have the opportunity to ride him,” she said. “I’m just very thankful to Jun and Delia for trusting me with him.”

The journey has been fun, said Nash. “Jun and I have followed Sibelius’ transition from racehorse to the dressage arena with a lot of pride. Regardless of the outcome, he will always be a champ in our eyes. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t feel privileged to be in his life and so very grateful for the journey he has brought us on.”

Makeover Details

Sibelius and Alison O’Dwyer are scheduled to compete in the Thoroughbred Makeover’s Dressage Division Wednesday afternoon. Then they’ll ride in the Freestyle Division late Thursday morning. For more information on the horses competing in the Makeover, click here.

Read 2025 Thoroughbred Makeover: Reliving Sibelius’ Big Racing Win.