With the onset of the cold weather, it’s a great time to cozy up and get to know some of your favorite riders. We’ll be posting Q&As with riders throughout the upcoming months, giving you an inside look into their life as equine professionals and getting tidbits of advice that we can all put to good use. Do you have a rider you’d like us to profile? Email [email protected] and we’ll get the chinchillas on it!
Leah Lang-Gluscic and A.P. Prime at Richland Park. Photo by Kasey Mueller.
Leah Lang-Gluscic left her investment banker job a few years ago to try her hand at becoming a professional in the event world. She produced her OTTB, AP Prime, into a three-star horse who is now qualified for Rolex in the upcoming year. We asked Leah a few questions to get to know her a bit better. Enjoy!
EN: If you could take six months off, without worrying about keeping your business going, who would you go and learn from?
Leah: There’s about 500 people I would want to learn from. I’m going to not reinvent the wheel; Jock Paget went to Michael Jung’s barn and shadowed him, I think that’s what I would want to do. His farm isn’t huge, so I would be really curious to see how he utilizes his acreage because I know he has a ton on that property and I would want to learn that system, really live and breathe it. That would be really cool.
Or George Morris. It’s George! He’s like my own personal idol. Clinicing with him is great, but can you imagine training with him for six months? You’d be the best kind of robot.
EN: What’s your most embarrassing horse-related moment?
Leah: Last year at Rocking Horse, I came off cross country and the whole back side of my britches were open, and I have no idea how long they were like that. I’m hoping no one saw but I’m sure someone did, so I apologize for that. So whoever got that view, it is what it is.
It was mortifying because I had a potential buyer there watching the horse, and when I came off and we’re all excited, and my working student said, “Leah, your britches!” It was one of my shining moments. Stuff like that doesn’t happen to me all that often.
EN: Do you have any superstitions or good luck charms?
Leah: No, I actually try to make it a point not to have any. I will say, though, at Fair Hill they give out these little lucky pony figurines and when I clean out my track trunk I can’t really bring myself to throw those away.
Other than that I try intentionally not to have any routines because I don’t want to be a basket case if I can’t do it for whatever reason. I don’t want to set myself up for that.
EN: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?
Leah: I’ll go with a recent one. Last winter, I got really focused on the business side of things and making ends meet. Peter Gray actually kind of pulled me aside and said, “if you want to get good, you really need to focus on your riding and your lessons.”
It was kind of a huge reality check that I needed, one because I’d kind of lost a bit of the joy of this at that point. I do this because I love learning and being a part of the horse’s learning and I had lost a little bit of that.
I just added a few lessons here and there, but just changing my perspective and focusing on it being about the learning process and the journey was helpful. It was really instrumental advice at that point in my career.
EN: What advice would you give to someone who wants to be come a top rider?
Leah: Go be a working student for six months and find out exactly what it takes to make it and run a successful business. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, starting a business. Make sure that you’re ready to be your own slave labor!
EN: When you’re looking for a new horse, what is the first thing you look for?
Leah: I just look at the whole picture. When I found AP, I didn’t know why I liked him, I just knew that I did. From riding so many horses over so many years, knowing what I liked and associating it with the way the horse is built, over time you build a picture in my mind of what you like. You start to know the characteristics you like in a horse.
But now I’ve studied conformation and know what angles to look for, but you still have to get a feeling about them. You look at some and you get a gut feeling like “that’s a horse I want to ride every day.” I’m sure I’ve passed up a lot of horses based on gut feeling, but I also don’t have many horses I’ve regretted.
My horses all move like athletes. They’re very catlike. The best horse in my barn is a bit of a whacko, and I say all the time she’s either going to be a broodmare or she’s going to go the Olympics. What a gift for me to have to get better to learn how to ride her!
EN: When did you know you wanted to be an pro event rider?
Leah: I kind of decided I wanted to go to the Olympics when I was 10 years old, and that was for dressage. I guess I was one of those psycho kids, I never lost sight of that. The time when I actually tried to go for it I was working as an investment banker and I was home for Thanksgiving. I told my parents if I just had horses and a barn and a dog I would be so happy.
I live and breathe to train young horses and I was trying to make money as a banker to do this and it just wasn’t cutting it. And that’s what kind of got the ball rolling. So I put together a business plan with my nifty Excel skills, and that’s when I really decided to give it a go. It’s pretty vindicating to make my own three-star horse in three and a half years.
You sacrifice everything. I’ll be here in Florida alone on Christmas. I have no money. I have no social life at all. But you just keep at it. If it’s what makes you happy and it’s what you love, then go for it. But there’s definitely something wrong in my brain that keeps me driving on!
EN: Describe yourself in one word.
Driven.
EN: If you weren’t an eventer what would you be doing?
Leah: I’d probably be an investment banker still. I’d have money! Maybe I’d own some event horses, or be involved in some way. I never really enjoyed academia so I can’t imagine I would have found a meaningful job outside of horses, just something to be good at.
EN: Is there a horse past or present that you’d like to be able to ride now?
Leah: I would really actually love to have a show jumping round on a horse as careful as Gem Twist. It’s on another level of anything I’ve experienced show jumping. I have so much respect for the precision. I try to be a George Morris disciple to the best of my ability, I just haven’t ridden a show jumping horse that good in my life, and to have that experience would just be incredible.
EN: What are you very picky about around the barn?
Leah: If there is any slime in the water at all, I hate it. Last year, I threatened to have the last person responsible for the water drink out of the bucket if I saw slime! I never actually did it, but I threatened it many times! Crystal clean water for the horses at all times is a must.
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