Liz Halliday (full name Elisabeth Halliday) is a US event rider who has been placed at five-star, ridden at the Olympics and won medals at the Pan American Games.
Liz is from Southern California and wanted to ride from an early age, although her parents Debby and Don are not horsey.
“It was all I wanted to do – I was riding the tree in the back yard with a jump [skipping] rope as reins,” she says. “I started riding when I was about eight at a little barn down the road.
“My family didn’t have loads of money and made me really work for it, which I respect – some kids get everything bought for them. I had to show I was dedicated before I got breeches and boots. I had to go to the barn and do all the work. We leased random horses.”
Liz currently lives in the US and spends winters in Ocala, Florida, and summers in Lexington, Kentucky.
However, for a long time she was based full-time in Britain. She first came to the UK when she took a year out of university and based herself with William Fox-Pitt – it “became a lot of years… I sort of never went back”.
After about 15 years in Britain, Liz spent time during the winter of 2014/2014 in Ocala, which led to about five years of splitting her year between the US and the UK.
“It was fun, but you can’t do that your entire life,” she says. “It’s insane going between the two and it’s not financial reality.
“We thought we had to make a decision one way or the other. From a business perspective – giving clinics, teaching and turning over sale horses – and to get me in front of the selectors to help my team aspirations, it made most sense to be in the US.”
Liz retired from racing cars in 2012, but for many years she combined eventing with being a professional racing car driver.
“It was crazy – for a lot of years I raced and rode together,” she explains. “It was pretty cool when I was young – I was on a plane or in a car or on a horse. I just bombed around the world doing crazy stuff.
“It was a really fun part of my life and I’ll never regret it, even though I’m sure I would have achieved better things with horses earlier in my life if I hadn’t been racing.”
Liz’s father Don raced cars and was an instructor as a hobby, which is how she started driving – she initially competed chiefly in sprint races in Don’s “funky historic car”, but she later particularly enjoyed endurance races, competing three times in the Le Mans 24-hour race where three drivers take turns in the cockpit.
Liz was a commentator and live pit reporter for Eurosport at the Le Mans 24-hour race for 10 years after she stopped driving there.
Liz was selected for the Tokyo Olympics with Deniro Z, with whom she has achieved her best results at five-star – the pair finished eighth at Luhmühlen Horse Trials in 2018, 15th at Burghley Horse Trials in 2019 and 10th at Kentucky Three-Day Event in 2021. Sadly, Deniro had to be withdrawn from the Olympics when he suffered an injury just before the team went into quarantine.
She made her Olympic debut at Paris 2024 on Cooley Nutcracker, finishing 19th individually.
Liz’s first podium finish at five-star was in 2023 at Kentucky on Miks Master C, when they landed third place. The pair went on to be team silver medallists at the Pan American Games that summer.
Liz Halliday first rode at five-star on HHS Cooley, completing Kentucky in 2016, and Fernhill By Night, who later became a prolifically successful campaigner at CCI4*-S level.
Liz was previously married to British ex-policeman Al Sharp and competed under the name Liz Halliday-Sharp. The pair married in November 2010 having met in 2007. They are now separated.
Sharpen your focus on Liz Halliday-Sharp facts – how much do you know about the leading US event rider, who has also been a top-level race car driver?
US event rider Liz Halliday-Sharp talks about her memories of being based with William Fox-Pitt during a golden era for his yard
Originally from California, the rider has split her time between East Sussex and the USA for the past 20 years, but she has spent all this year in the States
Liz Halliday-Sharp has paid tribute to her "horse of a lifetime" HHS Cooley, who died in a cross-country fall
