Wannabes vs. Gonnabes 1 What Makes the Difference? Why should I be presumptuous enough to think I have anything to tell you about how to become a better rider? Here s the answer: I ve been involved with horses for almost sixty years. I ve competed in trail riding, saddle seat, hunters, jumpers, eventing, and dressage. My primary career has been as an eventer, but I ve competed in the National Morgan Show, I ve ridden in point-to-point races, I ve done endurance riding and completed the 100-Mile Tevis Cup. I ve ridden Quarter Horses, Arabs, Paints, Thoroughbreds, Morgans, and Warmbloods. I ve helped win a team gold medal for the United States at a World Championship. I ve served on the Executive Committee of what was the American Horse Show Association and is now the United States Equestrian Federation; I ve been vice president of the US Equestrian Team and have twice served as president of the US Eventing Association. My Tamarack Hill Farm has stood successful stallions and bought and sold horses. In other words, in the world of horse sports, I m quite an experienced and successful person.
Fig. 1 Paint was the ideal first pony for a wild Indian kid like me. He was steady, reliable, and most of all, he was tolerant: tolerant of my ignorance, my uneducated riding, of all the mistakes I must have constantly made. I could gallop him all around the neighborhood with just a halter and a lead rope, and he and I became gymkhana champions of Western Massachusetts in the mid 1950s. This photo is from my first competition, April 23, 1954, at the Stoneleigh Prospect Hill School gymkhana, Greenfield, Massachusetts. I also know lots of people all over the horse world, because since getting Paint, my first pony, at age ten, I ve spent as much of my time as possible in the company of other equestrians (fig. 1). The huge majority were backyard riders people who just loved horses, but whose riding skills were no more than average. However, I ve also spent a great deal of time with some of the really superb riders of the world, men and women who ve become gold medalists and superstars in their disciplines. I ve done a lot of different things successfully in my riding career and I think I m in a position now to help you avoid some of the mistakes I made along my journey. I can imagine an aspiring horseman coming to me and saying, I d love to be successful as a rider, a trainer, a person in the horse world. How do I do it? Can you summarize and explain what you feel is important to becoming a good rider and horseman if you were to start over again? 2 How Good Riders Get Good
And I would have to say, It s not a short answer. In fact, if I really answer your question, you will feel you re trying to drink water from a fire hose. It s more information than you might have expected to have to assimilate. This book is my answer to that imagined person who s looking for the key to getting better. It s my answer to you, if you have dreams of becoming a good rider and questions about how to make it happen. How I Plan to Help You Wannabes vs. Gonnabes I ve had the idea for this book in mind for quite a while. In fact, Trafalgar Square Books asked me to write a book about how good riders get good more than two decades ago, but I was still competing so intensely that it was hard to be as reflective about the topic as I needed to be. Since then my goals have evolved, my experience has broadened, and now I m ready to share what I ve learned. And let me be clear that when I say good riders, I don t only mean good in competition so if competing is not one of your priorities, you will still find this book helpful. I have organized the following chapters so you can find the pieces that apply to you. In these chapters, I ve defined seven broad Areas of Choice that will collectively determine whether you are one of those people who becomes a gonnabe you re going to get it done or whether you ll be stuck in the wannabe category for decades. Here s what I plan to talk about in the following chapters, and why: 1 The horse sport you choose (p. 9): You need to figure out right at the beginning which horse sport you are going to pursue. If you re a Western rider, which of the Western disciplines? If you re an English rider, which of the English disciplines? Are you a breed enthusiast whose riding and competing (if you compete) will be exclusively with one particular breed? Or are you a believer in Handsome is as handsome does, regardless of breed, color, or appearance? You re not going to get as good if you re in the wrong sport for you as you will if you re in the right sport. It s as simple as that. Yes, you can change 3
and adapt to a sport that s less than ideal for you but it s easier if you re not trying to hammer the square peg into the round hole. (Remember this image from a simple toy we probably all enjoyed at some point in our early life, because it s going to come up again.) 2 The cards life deals you (p. 19): We all start out on our quest with what I call life circumstances including where we live, whether our family is well-off or struggling, our innate athletic and intellectual talents, even our personality (more on that later). But these circumstances are just the starting point; I ll explain how your choices can make them either the springboard to getting better... or an excuse for why you don t. 3 Your support network (p. 43): I m going to talk about how to get along with the people who are in a position to help you, or hinder you. Possibly you haven t realized how large the network of those who affect your effort to get better really is. This information is important because your support network can either make you, or break you. 4 Your character (p. 71): I ll talk about your emotions, because how well you control them has a lot to do with how well you control and deal with your horse. I ll show you why some personality traits of which you may say Well, that s just the way I am, are actually traits that prevent your becoming the better rider you want to be and they are aspects of yourself you can choose to change. It is up to you. 5 Your body (p. 109): Here s the physical equipment you bring to your endeavor, the body you use to climb up on your horse. There are some things about it you can t choose to change for instance, whether you are tall or short. (Your basic physical parameters will also, to some extent, make certain choices in the horse sports field more appropriate for you than others.) Beyond that, however, you ll find you have dozens of daily choices that determine whether your body does the best job for you that it possibly can. 4 How Good Riders Get Good
6 Knowledge (p. 137): Here s a great untapped resource that anyone can use to get better. No matter how much knowledge you have, there s always a lot more to get some of it in areas that might not have occurred to you. 7 Your horse (p. 157): I ll talk about your choice of horses because this decision is the one in which you hold the most cards. A wise, analytical choice of horses can put you on an upward path. Conversely, a choice based on a whim or emotional impulse one that pairs you with a horse that can t do the job for whatever reason puts your riding on a seemingly endless plateau or even a downward spiral. Wannabes vs. Gonnabes How Your Choices Will Work for You You know that old saying, Even the greatest put on their pants one leg at a time? It s as if, in some way, this simple, common trait brings everyone down to an average, human scale. And it s true that in most respects the greatest riders are just like everybody else until they climb on the back of a horse. Then they are about as much like everybody else as eagles are like penguins! But great riders aren t born great riders, any more than great violinists, or great statesmen, or great pastry chefs are born that way. I don t think the genetic code that predetermines much of what we become is the key ingredient for a rider, though it may well be the key ingredient for success in some endeavors. (If I m not genetically destined to grow to more than four feet, eight inches tall, I m not going to make it as an NBA basketball player. If I am gifted with an extraordinarily high mathematics IQ, I m more likely to get into a top engineering school than if that gift isn t there some facts are simply facts.) So don t despair if the genetic code fairy was out eating pizza the night you were conceived. There s ever so much more to making it as a rider than your legacy from all the ancestors in your human pedigree. In my years of teaching, studying, and living around thousands of riders, I ve pondered the question, What do the great ones have that 5
g o o d r id e r p r o file: b e e zie m a d d e n Beezie was a crucial contributor to team gold medals at both the 2004 and 2008 Olympics. At the 2006 World Equestrian Games, she was individual silver medalist and a member of the silver-medal US team. Beezie Madden on Authentic in the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China, where she won two team gold medals and an individual bronze. Discipline: Show Jumping The first woman and first American rider to reach the Top Three in the Show Jumping World Ranking List (2004), Beezie went on to win the $1 million CN International at Spruce Meadows (Canada) and the $200,000 American Invitational in Tampa, Florida, in 2005. She is the first two-time winner of the USET Foundation Whitney Stone Cup, awarded for a distinguished record in international competition while also serving as an ambassador for equestrian sports. 6 How Good Riders Get Good
Life circumstances: My family had horses before I was born. They had a little business: They would buy young horses hunter prospects, mostly and bring them along for resale. Hooked on horses when: Since I was born or since I can remember, for sure. My family had horses at the Milwaukee Hunt Club when I was little; there was a riding school there. You had to be three years old to take lessons and I m told that before I was three I would ride a saddle on the saddle rack, pretending it was a horse. I think I got good because: ; I wouldn t say I was much more naturally talented than a lot of other riders maybe not even as much as some! But I think I have a way of communicating with horses, a feeling for what they need: when they can take some pressure, when they need a little break. ; My family had gotten to know top equitation trainer Mike Hennigan when I was very young; he leased their stable in Wisconsin for a while. They contacted him when I was ready to aim for the national equitation finals, and I rode from his barn during my last year in the juniors. Beezie Madden ; One year after the juniors, I went to work for international jumper star Katie Monahan Prudent. I did a little of everything: managed the equipment, taught a little, rode a little, exercised horses, braided I think all of that helps your riding in the end. Katie really shaped the beginning of my career in the jumpers. My most important advice: Be willing to start off by doing anything you can for good people. Sometimes aspiring riders pass up good opportunities to work with top people because they want more of a riding job, and the honest professionals will tell them that they don t have much for them, riding-wise at least to start with. But you have to learn all aspects of the business. If you go to work for top people, you ll go to the best competitions and meet all the right people and get exposed to everything that s available to you out there. You need to see what it means to compete against the best; even once you re good, you need to keep going to Spruce Meadows and Aachen. Even at my level, if you don t go to the very hardest competitions you can let your expectations or your level of competitiveness lapse. 7
almost everybody else lacks? I think I am beginning to see the answer. Recently I had dinner with my old friend Michael Page, an Olympic threeday event rider in the 1960s, and today one of the most sought-after eventing and jumping clinicians in America. We discussed an interesting phenomenon: We ve both given clinics year after year in the same places, sometimes seeing the same riders for ten or fifteen consecutive years. Many of those riders never got better, not even a little! They stayed at exactly the same low level of riding despite the passage of time. I recalled the old joke about asking a wood carver how he created such lifelike duck decoys. The reply: I took a piece of wood and whittled away everything that didn t look like a duck. So, I wondered aloud to Michael, why can t those people whittle away the pieces of themselves that don t look like a good rider? It s not as if they haven t been told a thousand times how to improve. Are you a realist? If you really do wish to become a better rider, can you look at that block of wood that is you, and know what pieces you have to whittle away to reveal the good rider hiding somewhere inside it? If you truly are going to be a better rider, it will happen because, when you re confronted by a choice, as much as possible that goal will guide you. In the chapters that follow are dozens of examples of little choices, medium choices, and huge ones that will collectively determine whether the wannabe within you can turn into a gonnabe. As an integral part of this book, my editor Sandra Cooke interviewed twenty-three top equestrians eventers, hunter riders, show jumpers, dressage riders, carriage drivers, and stars from the Western disciplines who have attained the highest levels of achievement in their sports. They are real life examples and they will tell you how they got good; in other words, they all exemplify gonnabes. Every profile is different, Sandra reports, but they all have one thing in common: Each equestrian s experience in reaching the top ties in directly with one or more of the crucial choices talked about in this book. 8 How Good Riders Get Good