Featured Rider - Leslie Law

Leslie Law (Part 2 of a 4 Part Series)

Hello!

Well for our second installment I’m afraid there really isn’t that much to say specifically on our Bean and Leslie so I warn you I may go off on a tangent! His training sessions on the flat have perhaps increased ever so slightly in intensity, he’s up to three, five min gallops twice a week and no matter what he does he always finishes his day with a forty minute walk/trot down the roads. He competed at his first event this past weekend ~ the intermediate at the Florida Horse Park. I competed there too doing my first intermediate in ten months, post ten week baby and busted leg and I gotta say, I was feeling fairly proud of my dressage test until Leslie and Bean stepped in the ring and, as per the norm, blew us all outta the water with a twenty-someodd. Without blowing smoke up anyone, it is a fact that our Leslie is by far one of the most talented dressage riders of all the Eventers so you put that together with Bean who is a natural talent on the flat and out comes one heck of a test. Bean may not have the biggest trot but he has a to-die-for canter and a natural carriage and presence that few other event horses have. He’s gotten so trained and disciplined now that bar some mistake, you can count on them to lead it unless perhaps Buck shows up with that dreaded My Boy Bobby! They followed it up with a real pretty fault free show jump round and a perfect cross country to win the event on their dressage mark. Not a bad way to start one’s season.

Leslie took Bean xc schooling once prior to competition and as I’ve mentioned previously, the xc is the phase Leslie has to manage the most on Bean. When he schools it is not as you might imagine a seasoned advanced horse just needing to get his toes wet and jump a ditch before starting the season. His school was intense and every jump, every stride before and after, every ear twitch, is monitored. These advanced horses are gems but it doesn’t come without serious work on the part of the Riders. We get so many people coming to us with their horses who believe that if they just work hard enough and do all the right things they too can go intermediate or advanced. But it just doesn’t work that way. Few horses have the ability to go intermediate, fewer still to do it well, and it is one in a million that become a true four star horse. The truth is that as well; the same applies to Riders. The true four star horses and Riders are in many cases freaks of nature. Take our fellow correspondent Bruce, forget about his age which makes him even more remarkable, he has something about him xc that is just a little bit magical. Leslie always says, “Watch his hands! Watch his hands!” as we’re not sure what he does but somehow he gallops his horses down to those jumps and they get to the base and just leap up into his hands and throw the most wonderful shape every time. I’m not sure if he even knows what he does but when Bruce goes xc you should watch closely because it’s magic.

Watching is something that has been lost on the majority of my generation of Riders and the ones behind me I think. They’d rather be at the food tent or looking up their photos then running out between their rides to watch how Karen or Buck show jumps even if its only at the training level. I attended the Bernie Traurig clinic in Ocala a week ago to watch for one morning and in a town full of Eventers I was the only one there. Sadly for us, most of us do not have that which Bruce and Leslie were born with so the rest of us have to work our butts off just to try to close the gap. My gaping hole is that although I can do the circles and jump the jumps, I have a hard time making the time at advanced with my strong horse. So I constantly have to go watch and ask myself, “How does that peanut Karen O’C make the time on that strong horse?” or, “What does Bruce do when Cruise Lion gets a bit full of himself?”. It’s no different then watching David Blain on TV and thinking “How does he saw that lady clean in half and yet not a speck of blood dirties the floor!!!?” Identify your greatest hole and then locate the horse and rider that can best answer your questions and go watch them over and over again. I get constant calls for people wanting to take dressage lessons from Leslie and sometimes I have to turn people away as there just isn’t enough hours in the day, yet as he rode 5 dressage tests in the top two this past weekend not a sole was there to watch. If you are willing to spend $100 on a lesson why not spend 5 minutes of your time on a free one?

Anyways, I told you I’d get off on a tangent! Bean’s next trip out is Pine Top Advanced in two weeks and I’m praying for good weather as we’ve had so much rain and cold weather we’ve just gotten over a horrid stomach flu. Hopefully I’ll have more exciting news to tell you about next time and in the mean time… enjoy watching these guys as every time they ride, whatever horse they ride, they are a masterclass.

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