Haylie and Oliver Rolfe: It Runs in the Family
- Lindsey Oaks
- Feb 26
- 4 min read
When Haylie Jayne (now Haylie Rolfe) rode HiDeHo to victory in the $5000 Littlewood Mini Prix back in 2000, she never could have known that 25 years later, her oldest son, Oliver Rolfe, would ride HiDeHo’s daughter, Uhara ODF into the ribbons in the 1.05m Junior Jumper Classic at the infamous Winter Equestrian Festival.
It’s not surprising that 9-year-old Oliver is jumping around the Junior Jumper tracks, given that not only is his mother a professional show jumper but he is a 7th generation rider in the family! (Do you even know what your family was doing 7 generations back? Mind Boggling!)
When I bring up this point to Haylie, she laughs, “Yes, but he likes to have a normal life too. He’s in a science club, a book club, and a chess club. He plays soccer and flag football too! So he kind of does it all.”
It would be easy to think that Oliver just rides all day long. The Jayne family have all the bases of “A” level Hunter/Jumperland covered. Haylie, her sister Maggie, and her brother Charlie all work out of their Wellington location for the winter. They’ll split up a bit for the summer, Charlie heading up to Kentucky, Maggie heading up to the family farm in Elgin (Our Day Farm) with Haylie and her family joining in when school lets out for the summer.
“We have three kids now, Ollie being the oldest. When he was in kindergarten, we really liked the school down here (in Wellington). It’s only a mile down the road! So, we made Florida more of our home base,” Haylie explains.
Listening to Haylie talk about working alongside her family is wonderful, she’s clearly proud for them all. When I ask about HiDeHo (back to the mare she rode to victory 25 years ago), she lights up.
“Her name was HiDeHo and I rode her when I was 11. Before me, my brother Charlie rode her, and maybe even Maggie rode her… although maybe not,” more evidence of the family-centric, horsey lifestyle from Haylie. She continues, “She took me from the children’s jumpers to my first WEF Circuit Champion on her to my first little Mini Prix on her! Then she was sold right after that to Kristen Vanderveen to be her Junior Jumper so she was still in the area and we saw her often.”
But the years passed, and for a while no one saw HiDeHo on the circuit, until one day, “I went to a horse show in Indiana and probably freaked out the kid who was riding her when I saw her. I couldn’t believe it was her. She was around twenty years old by then! I called my dad to tell him who I had just run into and he went over to the trainer, Richard Rinehart, who is a good friend, and bought her back on the spot!”
HiDeHo showed a couple more years with a kid at Our Day Farm before moving into Haylie’s father, Alex’s new breeding program. She produced four babies for the Jayne’s, carryng Uhara (who Haylie’s son Oliver has been riding) at 27-years old. You heard correctly, TWENTY SEVEN YEARS OLD!
The apple didn’t fall far from the tree with Uhara. “My sister Maggie showed her in the Young Jumpers and won a lot with her in the Six and Seven Year Old Classes. Then she went around the Adult Amateur Jumpers with a client for a bit, and now she’s showing Oliver the ropes,” says Haylie. Again, the family history and equine history intertwine.
There is so much history to the family and to hear Haylie rattle off where this horse came from or that one, it seems like she could be guilty of not realizing the impact her family has had on equestrian sport in the Midwest. Go to any horse show in the Chicago area, and you’ll hear the famous “ODF” suffix on the names of several horses competing. This means they’ve come from the Our Day Farm program.
This interview with Haylie was supposed to focus on Oliver and Uhara, but the more Haylie goes on about riding this horse’s mother or that one’s son, the more in awe I am of how the legacy of the Jayne family continues to shape the equestrian world. It’s a testament to the strength and closeness of their family that they continue to leave their mark on this industry.
Haylie told me at the beginning of our interview that horses “run in the family,” but that feels like an understatement. Horses are in the Jayne family’s DNA, in the heart and soul of their program, passing through time in a beautiful legacy.
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