The Race Car Driving, Skydiving, Astronaut-Marrying Eventer

Race car driving. Skydiving. Eventing. What do these three things have in common? All are sports that amateur Janine Shoffner has had a hand in. Did I mention her husband, John, is an astronaut and has just returned from a historic 11-day mission to the International Space Station this week? 

On behalf of World Equestrian Brands, we interviewed Janine to discuss the similarities between her two hobbies: race car driving and eventing at the two-star level. Our conversation took us from her career teaching competition-level skydiving to how the first horse she ever sat on was an unbroken three year-old — but while I would have originally called her an adrenaline junkie, she says that’s not quite the case. 

Skydiving over Lake Tahoe. Janine Shoffner is in blue, her husband John Shoffner is in beige

“I don’t know, I think I’ve lost all the adrenaline,” says Janine. “I think I may have started out as an adrenaline junkie, but over the years, I have tempered it with a lot of caution. I mean, I have over 300 base jumps. I’ve jumped off buildings and bridges and cliffs and stuff like that. But when you really get down to the bare bones of this kind of stuff, I think it’s a path to knowing yourself. And I think most sports are like that. We discover ourselves and who we truly are by competing.”

So, how did Janine go from adrenaline junkie to calculated risk taker? And what the heck does race car driving have to do with eventing?

Janine seems to have first started off in all of these fast-paced sports, including eventing, the same way: almost entirely by accident. She got into race car driving, she tells us, because of her husband’s midlife crisis: she encouraged him to get a fast car, but after he did, she was worried they’d both lose their licenses driving too fast, so they took it to the race track. “We went to Germany and to the Nürburgring, which is the world’s longest most dangerous track, and we learned to race there,” Janine says. “Within 18 months, we did our first race at the Nürburgring and we started an endurance racing Pro-Am team in Germany. That was 10 years ago.”

Her path to eventing was similarly direct. Janine and her husband had bought an 800-acre ranch near Lake Tahoe in California. Originally they bought the property because it was near an excellent jump zone for skydiving. But it came with one other unique addition – horses. They leased part of the property to cowboys who kept their horses on it, and while Janine says that she “didn’t know one end of a horse from the other” at the time, she would go out and give them scratches and love on them. 

One day, a cowboy said she could get on one of the horses. “The cowboy said, ‘Oh, you can ride him if you want, just jump up on him. Just grab a halter and a lead rope and you’ll be fine,’” says Janine. “Well, that f*&^#r was lying. It turned out they were all unbroken three and four-year-olds.”

After Janine figured out how to stay on, she took a few lessons, although it wasn’t quite what she originally expected. “That was my rationale,” Janine laughs. “‘It can’t be that difficult, I see people do it on TV all the time! You sit on the horse, go for a gallop, get off and drink a cocktail.’”

True to her personality, the first horse sport she tried was fox hunting. That early experience has led her to develop a unique style of eventing. As she says, “When you see me ride you’ll understand that I can get shit done, because that’s how I learned. I learned to stay in the tack, but I’m not the most elegant of riders. But I’ve managed to stay in the tack mostly and be reasonably safe over the last 24 years, so it seems to be working.”

Kilkenny Star and Janine Shoffner. Photo courtesy of Janine Shoffner.

Three years after she took her first riding lesson, Janine competed in her first one-star event (now a two-star). Today, she owns several horses, the majority of which are named after Quentin Tarantino characters. (I can’t say I’m surprised. Somehow I can’t imagine Janine enjoying a relaxing chick flick.) Her personal string includes O-Ren Ishii, a nine-year-old three-star event horse; Big Kahuna, a show jumping mare who is putting in an impressive 1.60m jump at home and is slowly moving up the levels in competition; and Komanche, a young clone from her first FEI horse, Kilkenny Star. Janine also owns Stuntman Mike, ridden by Harriet Mchord and Isselhook’s First Sight TSF, an eventing stallion currently ridden by Doug Payne, as well as being a part-owner of Turbo, ridden by Sorrell Klatzko, who is hopefully on track to be selected for the Irish dressage team for the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Janine has now been riding for almost a decade longer than she’s been racing cars, but her race car driving career is even more decorated than her riding career. “My claim to fame in racing – although I was Amateur Champion at the Nürburgring in 2021, which is very cool – is that I did a four hour race on my own,” Janine says. “That is unheard of and had not been done before. So it was quite a feather in the cap.”

Amateur race car driver Janine Shoffner in her AMG GT3 race car at the 2020 Nürburgring 24 hour race. Photo courtesy of Janine Shoffner.

While she loves both sports with a passion, Janine says that they’re quite opposite environments. “The racing is more glamorous; like, I turn up at the track and I have two engineers and six mechanics that work on my car. I don’t ever touch it, you know?” Janine says. “I get a big trailer with slide outs. There’s a girl there that makes me my cappuccino in the morning, just the way I like it. So it’s all very luxurious. And then I step into my car and I have to perform.”

On the other hand, the eventing competition atmosphere is quite different. “With horses, you take your muck bucket and your trailer to the show and you’re shoveling shit all the time,” says Janine. “And then you have to work your horse all the time. So you have to train it at home to get ready for a one or two star, which involves six months of training or fitness. Everyday, six days a week, you’re working on your horse.”

Janine also finds that eventing is different to racing in the number of factors that you have to consider when you’re competing. “Eventing is very different to racing. In racing, as soon as they plug you into the car, you go as fast as you possibly can. There’s no gray area,” Janine says. “Horses are very gray. There’s a lot of gray areas that involve the levels of training, rider ability, and fitness and health, both of the rider and of the horse.”

According to Janine, while race car driving and eventing are as different as “chocolate and cheese,” there are similarities as well — particularly when it comes to the mindset needed to win. “I think you can only really perform correctly if you’re out of your own way, like if you’re in your zone and everything’s kind of working automatically,” Janine says. “I think on a technical level there are similarities, too. In order to drive a car fast, you have to balance the car. In order to be effective on a horse, you have to balance the horse.”

While both sports require mental fortitude, nerves of steel, and great feel, Janine says that the type of balance is logistically different. “It’s a different balance because with horses we are always trying to lighten the forehand. And then in the car, we’re trying to load the forehand because that gives us better turning around the corners. So it’s a different balance, but it’s still balance and a similar skill set involved in achieving the correct balance in the correct way.”

Janine & John Shoffner’s 1952 Grumman Albatross airplane. Photo courtesy of Janine Shoffner.

Throughout my conversation with Janine I was often so stunned by her casual revelations – for example that time she and her husband refurbished a 1952 Grumman Albatross plane and flew it for Red Bull – that I’m afraid I probably sounded like a record of surprised noises stuck on repeat. But, after so many times of saying “Wow, that’s amazing!” Janine reminded me that “with enough money and time, there’s a lot you can get done.”

I often joke that horses have played their cards right. They used to be the ones pulling the wagon, now they’re riding in the backs of our trailers. Janine seems to have a knack for both modes of transportation, whether that’s modern race cars or performance horses. 

This article is brought to you with support from World Equestrian Brands — proud supporters of all riders, including the most adrenaline-driven amongst us! You can equip your equine athlete by visiting www.worldequestrianbrands.com.

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