Born to Ride: Equestrian Lily Capone’s Love of Horses Goes Way Back
Lily & Cambridge, at Marshall Sterling Finals.
Lily Capone likes hanging out at the beach. She likes mango water ice. And she likes Italian food. But what Lily Capone loves … are horses.
And it’s been a love affair ever since she can remember.
“My parents took me to Gloucester County 4-H Fair when I was 2 years old,” says Lily. “I wandered off into the stalls with the horses and my dad lost me.”
Lily’s mother Melissa also remembers the moment. “My husband Kevin was yelling, ‘Lily! Lily!’ He couldn’t find her anywhere. And then he was backtracking and walking up and down the aisles of the stalls and there she was, standing with this massive horse. And she was petting its legs. Mind you,” she adds, “it was Hagen, the largest horse in the county.”
A few years later, the family returned to the fair. And, once again, Lily was smitten, falling under Hagen’s spell.
“I saw him, and I said, ‘Oh, that’s Hagen,’ recalls Lily. “I remember walking and trying to go back to the stall and my dad grabbed my hood and pulled me out, and he said, ‘Oh, no, not so fast.’ I remember that.”
Kevin Capone knew that day was a turning point in his daughter’s life. When she came out of the stall, she said to her father, “I’m going to ride that horse.”
“But she didn’t ride that horse,” interjects Melissa.
“Right,” says Kevin. “But now, she’s riding horses bigger than Hagen.”
“That’s true,” Lily says, and smiles.
On this day, Lily and her mom Melissa are at Mike’s Seafood and Dock Restaurant in Sea Isle City, where Kevin works as a chef. He occasionally walks over to their table, punctuating the conversation with anecdotes and milestones of the sport that’s embraced his 16-year-old daughter. At one point, Kevin comes sauntering toward them, crooning the lyrics of “The Time of My Life,” the title song from the 1987 film “Dirty Dancing.” This is a fun, close-knit expressive Italian American family, a brood that also includes Rhys, Claire, Connor and Regan, who also ride.
While Melissa, Kevin, and Lily reminisce about the day Lily wandered into the stall, their conversation is fluid. Sometimes it’s hard to tell who starts or finishes a sentence. They are a mother, daughter and father in tune with each other and Lily’s journey with her chosen sport … or you might say, the sport that chose her. Even before age 2, the toddler loved pony rides.
The Capone family (top row, from left) Rhys, Lily, Melissa, Claire, Timothy; (bottom, from left) Connor, Kevin, Gertrude, Regan.
At 5, she started taking legitimate lessons and began competing in the Western division. Today, Lily prefers English riding, and the Equitation style because it’s challenging, which she finds fun.
To see Lily ride is like watching a dancer. Lily has an elegant, long, clean line to her slightly over 6-foot-1 frame, and as she jumps in unison with her horse, it’s beautiful to behold. Watching Lily, it seems as if horse riding is almost as natural as breathing. But that comes from years of practice, training, confidence, and talent. She makes it look easy. It’s anything but.
Riding makes her legs hurt. But it doesn’t damper her enthusiasm.
“It’s very physical,” Lily says. “They say the horse does all the work, but that’s the biggest lie I’ve ever heard. The horse does the least amount of work possible. It’s all the rider, making the horse do what it needs to do.”
Today, Lily rides a horse named DeVito, a Dutch Warmblood, who makes her job joyful. “I call him a unicorn, because he’s like a dream,” she says.
And speaking of dreams, this talented young lady, who won a team third-place ribbon in the Team Interscholastic Equestrian Association nationals, envisions a future where she and her sister Regan own a farm and teach kids to ride.
Lily posing at the IEA nationals in Harrisburg, Pa.
Not much slows Lily down. But she’s had health issues and physical challenges, like a diagnosis of Marfan syndrome, which caused scoliosis, and she had to have titanium rods put in her back. Marfan also is the cause of Lily’s aortic aneurysm and mitral valve prolapse. A heart issue that is separate from Marfan which Lily suffers from is Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome with ventricular tachycardia, and Lily had to have an 8-hour heart ablation surgery. In addition, sometime in her 30s or 40s, Lily will require major heart surgery. “You have to be tough in this sport,” she says. “My trainer tells me, ‘Toughen up, buttercup, this is the horse world.’”
For now, Lily embraces everything about horses and enjoys the moment. “It’s a part of my life. It’s like what I do every day. I wake up and I go take care of the horse. I do what I have to do, I go to work,” says Lily, who has part-time jobs at Rita’s Italian Ice and Dalrymple’s Card & Gift Shoppe. “But basically, I’m at the stalls almost all day long.”
From that small child, who was awestruck by the magnificence of a stunning creature, Lily’s equestrian world seems almost magical, like the Disney princesses she grew up relating to.
“For Lily, it was never about Disney princesses per se,” says Melissa.
“It was Disney princesses with horses,” adds Kevin.
“Yes,” agrees Lily, “princesses like Belle and Merida.”
Watching his daughter do what she loves is what matters most to Kevin Capone.
“It’s not about the ribbons,” he says. “The thing I want most is for her to be happy.”