I have a very vivid memory of sitting on Billy for the first time. It was January of 2003, a bitterly cold night. We’d flown to Germany that day and we saw Billy and two others at a sale barn just a few kilometers from the hotel, just to cross the first few horses off the list on a whirlwind trip. I was 18, a freshman in college, and I’d never sat on a horse like Billy before.

He felt amazing. He felt like Heaven. And I remember thinking, cool—NAJYRC this year, and we will be ready for the World Equestrian Games in Aachen in 2006, if not even the Athens Olympics next year.

Ah, youth.

Today is my 30th birthday. And for the last few weeks, whenever I’m asked about how I feel about it, I’ve played it funny and said something like, “Well, I thought I’d have accomplished something by now.” And it’s been a joke. But only a little bit.

Because, while I was completely naive in thinking that Billy and I would make the Olympic team in 2004, because I had absolutely NO idea what is required of getting a horse to Grand Prix and riding a Grand Prix test, much less be anywhere close to the place in my career where I had the skills to do either, much less have any sense of the quality of horse required to achieve such a thing, I’ve also been so lucky as to have fantastic horses and access to wonderful educational opportunities.

But it just wasn’t in the cards. Cleo got hurt. Ella went to the Team trials with someone else. And Midge, the best of the bunch, was just last week sent out to the field for six months because I’m out of options in helping him heal. 

So while I’m abundantly aware of all of the bad luck I’ve had, all of the ways that it just hasn’t been the right time, it’s just also so easy to frame my 30 years against a context of the Charlotte Dujardins and the Isabell Werths, to see that, because I’m 30 years old and have never had a good go at Grand Prix at a CDI, because I’ve never been a contender for a senior team much less been actually named to one, that I’m unimpressive, a has-been; that it’s over.

And it’s true. I will never be Charlotte Dujardin. The chance to be that good that early is gone for me. I’ll also never be Isabell Werth, being in my mid-40s on my fourth Olympic Games. That’s gone for me too.

But that’s not the only way to be good. That’s not the only way to leave my mark on the world.

I’ve made my passion into a business that has endured one of the biggest financial crises the United States has ever faced and come out the other side successful. I own my own horses, all but Danny bought and paid for either with my own money or with money borrowed and then repaid promptly (which Danny will be, just haven’t gotten quite there yet). I have a network of sponsors who believe in me, with whom I’ve cultivated not just charitable contributions but a real, smart working business relationship that benefits us both. I’ve helped my clients understand their horses better, and built a family of those clients and friends who are fun and high-energy and, whether they win or lose, bring such fierce joy into my life sometimes I feel I might burst when I watch them ride.

A friend told me once about meeting a toll collector, and wishing that he could be as satisfied with the small, simple life as this fellow was. “But that’s just not how I’m wired,” he said.

And I know what he means. I’m the daughter of two people who always strove for excellence, in particular my incredible mother, who ascended the corporate ladder in a time where women were trapped by glass ceilings. And so it’s easy, when you’re a type-A, overachiever personality, to see the absolute upper echelons as the only success worth having.

But it’s just not true. If it was, we should all just quit and go home. There are many ways to be world-class, and even more to be nationally excellent, and even more to just be a good citizen or good teacher or good friend. And there is joy and wonderment in being any of these.

Today, as I celebrate my first 30 years for the third time in four days, with my third group of wonderful and warm and brilliant family, friends and clients, I’m one step closer to accepting this.

It doesn’t mean I’m settling, not by a long shot. I’m still out for blood. I may not get to do my fourth Olympics by 45, but maybe I’ll be doing my 10th in my 70s. I want to do it better, fairer and more consistently than anyone else, and I won’t stop until I can’t do it anymore. 

But I’m starting—just a little, just a bit—to sleep a smidge better at night knowing that it isn’t all over just because I didn’t do it by 22. 

Here’s to the next 30, and whatever they bring.

LaurenSprieser.com
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