Nina Mallevaey

About Nina Mallevaey

Nina Mallevaey (born 3 January 2000) is a French showjumper from the Lille area whose rise is among the fastest the sport has recorded: from roughly 320th in the world in June 2024 to the top ten by January 2026, a career-high sixth that spring, and seventh — the highest-ranked woman in the world — on the July 2026 list, with selection for France's World Championship team at Aachen.

She grew up with four or five small stables and a modest arena at the end of the garden. Her father Christophe, a passionate amateur rather than a professional, trained her until she was eighteen, drove her to shows and found affordable horses — including Xilote, with whom she jumped two clear rounds in France's 2013 European Children team gold at thirteen, and after him the pony Rominet de Bruz, who added European Pony team gold in 2014. Her parents insisted she finish school; at eighteen she joined the Sadran family's Ecurie Chev'el, learning from Eric Louradour and Julien Epaillard, then in 2021 approached Eric Lamaze at Knokke, passed a riding trial, and joined Torrey Pines — where she first rode an eight-year-old mare called Nikka vd Bisschop and met the owners who changed everything: Tara and Mark Rein.

The Rein Family programme made her a professional with unusual autonomy — Mark Rein has publicly credited her with running the operation around horses, staff and vets — and 2025 was the breakthrough: the French Pro Elite title with Nikka, U25 world No. 1 for half a year, a senior European Championship debut, fifth in the Aachen Rolex Grand Prix, and then the Brussels week — the only French double clear in a winning Nations Cup, followed by the Rolex Grand Prix itself, her first at five-star level. With Dynastie de Beaufour, the trust-dependent Diamant de Semilly mare who 'grows under her' in big arenas, she then ran fourteen consecutive clear rounds at 1.60m, a sequence that ended only at Wellington in March 2026.

She is not yet an Olympian — Nikka's Paris 2024 appearance belongs to Canada's Erynn Ballard — and A Coruna remains her only completed senior championship. But with three proven mares, Destine To Be as ranking depth, Helena Stormanns as trainer and a calm that she says comes naturally, she goes to Aachen as a genuine French pillar: a top-seven team finish would carry France directly to Los Angeles 2028, and her along with it.