Laine Ashker: Don’t Give In To Doubt. Keep Fighting

Eventing is always what I’ve wanted to do and what made me the happiest. Even as a young kid growing up, riding a wooly pony around that we pulled from a field, I knew eventing was my calling. I’d gone to the Olympic Games in 1996 in Atlanta. My mother was volunteering. Karen O’Connor signed a poster, which I promptly hung on my ceiling to stare at while I dreamed of all of the gold medals in my future.

The first time I attended the “Event Formerly Known as Rolex”, I was 14. My mother and I had just moved to Virginia from the California, and Kentucky was still a long-format event. I had recently moved up to the Preliminary level, and let me tell you, I thought I was hot you-know-what.

So it was a given that I’d make what was then known as Rolex my big goal. I was working my way up through the levels with Eight Saint James Place, an off-track Thoroughbred whom my mother lent me as my first Young Rider mount.

I have a lifelong tendency to learn lessons the hard way. As a kid, I didn’t have the experience that my mentors and many of my peers did. I was competitive, sure, and maybe a bit talented. But what I was lacking was the mental fortitude that comes in clutch when trouble comes to call. And it was that missing piece which taught me a lesson when I drove through the gates of Kentucky Horse Park several years later, at age 21, this time with a horse in tow.

Coming to Kentucky as a competitor is incredibly different. That first time, in 2005 when Kentucky was in its last year as a long-format CCI, I felt like I was about to be somebody. Suddenly, people were asking for my autograph because I was a rider. I thought I was hot. I wish I could reach out now and slap myself back to reality.

What I was lacking was the mental fortitude that comes in clutch when trouble comes to call.

After a barely-qualifying dressage score (which I was stoked about), it was onto cross country. I remember there was a big box jump, set downhill, followed by a bending three-stride line to two angled and massively tall tree stumps. Everyone was having run-outs there, so I rode backwards and made Jamie add a fourth stride, which wasn’t like me to do, especially on him. Then I galloped down to the footbridge, which was a lot bigger than it is today. It was set on a long, downhill approach and I just remember not seeing a distance and pulling. I kept pulling to the point where poor Jamie thought he was supposed to bounce the footbridge, which he valiantly did. I wasn’t expecting him to bounce it – truthfully, I’m not sure what I was expecting – and I was pitched off to the side.

Back then you were still allowed to get back on and continue after a fall, so I swung my leg back over and got back on my way. Jamie was thankfully uninjured, and we ended up finishing, but I found out later that I’d broken the C6 and C7 vertebrae in my neck and subsequently withdrew. My first Rolex would go on record as a withdrawal.

It was far from the weekend I’d imagined. Rather than a four-star win at 21 (or at least the coveted USET Markham Trophy for top-placed young rider), I had a crushed ego and a broken neck. Thankfully, I had a sound horse who was ready to keep giving and the determination to get up and try again...

...It’s still difficult for me to rebound after a tough ride. I put a lot of pressure on myself, and I think that has been a cause of some of my failures – my horses could feel that pressure. But I am steadily getting better. Now, I can continue on to my next rides with a clear head rather than letting my negative self-talk prevail. The thing about me is that I am, at the end of the day, a competitor. I love to witness greatness, and this is one way in which I strive to emulate it.

excerpts from article written by Laine Ashker - CC14 event rider