Podcast Feature: Laine Ashker on Zeppelin, the Freestyle, and Chasing the Open in Two Disciplines
The five-star eventer and Grand Prix dressage rider on her Led Zeppelin freestyle, the horse who lets her play to the crowd, and a tight path into the Dressage Final.
Laine Ashker is chasing the US Equestrian Open in two disciplines at once, and she is the only rider doing it. In eventing she just claimed her first four-star win, at Maryland International, aboard Lovedance, but she has ridden at the CCI five-star level too. In dressage, she competed at her first CDI5* at last year's Finals. She's trying to make it two for two with Zeppelin, a Grand Prix horse she produced herself. Ask her if she's a dressage rider or an eventer and she says both.
How she was seen used to bother her. The eventer who also does dressage. "If I'm gonna do dressage, I want to be a dressage rider doing dressage," she says. "And I want to be an eventing rider doing eventing." She has earned the right to draw that line. She has brought her own horses up to Grand Prix, and she has stood in a CDI arena across from Isabell Werth.
"Once you ride against Isabell Werth, then you can say that you're a dressage rider," she says. "I got my butt kicked, but I still rode against her."
Her entry into the dressage ring was an accident. Eighteen years ago a student posted an ad on Craigslist offering Laine's lessons. One person answered: an owner named Ann Wilson, who had just bought a horse and wanted him produced in dressage. Laine thought the sport was rather boring and preferred to run and jump. But she took the horse from first level up the ranks anyway, lost badly the first time she tried the FEI levels, got rung out at her first CDI in Wellington when he put his tongue over the bit, but decided to keep going. She credits Wilson with her entire dressage career.
"I have to give my whole career, across the board, to Ann Wilson."
The two sports feed each other, and that is the part she finds most useful. Dressage gave her a more balanced canter, the kind she needs riding around the show jumping ring on day three or into a cross-country coffin at speed. Eventing gave her something a lot of dressage riders lack. "When someone tells me to ride forward, I can understand that," she says. One of her eventing coaches, Philip Dutton, has actually helped her quite a bit on the flat. "Good training is good training across the board," she says. The result, in her eyes, is a better horsewoman in both rings.
Laine grew up in a recording studio, her mother a singer, her father writing the music, and classic rock is in her blood. As luck would have it, her Grand Prix horse came already carrying the name Zeppelin. So naturally, they ride to Led Zeppelin. Terry Gallo built the freestyle and Allie Brock coaches the work, and together they have set the degree of difficulty around what Zeppelin does best, the pirouettes and the piaffe, with swingier music written to lift a trot she calls average. This year she has raised the difficulty again. She strings together movements many riders keep separate, a pirouette into extended walk into a piaffe pirouette into a collected walk. Her personal best in the Grand Prix Freestyle is 73.015%, and the new floor plan is built to push it higher.
Zeppelin's got a cool head. He does not melt down under lights or noise, making him built for a freestyle atmosphere. That lets Laine do the thing the whole Open is built around, which is play to the crowd instead of managing the horse. "With Zeppy, I'm like, come on, clap with me," she says. It is also, she thinks, the way in for new fans. "If you don't know about dressage, it can be boring," she says.
"But the freestyles, you're allowed to bring your personality out, and it shows."
Her window to the dressage final is narrow. Laine sits 30th in the standings with 18 points from two of her four counting scores. The top eighteen make the Final at Desert International Horse Park in November, nineteen if the cutline ends in a tie. Two qualifiers remain, Dressage at Devon in late September and TerraNova in October. As an East Coast-based rider, she has fairly easy access to both. With two clean results this fall, she stands a good chance at making the field.
She covers the rest in the episode, the Maryland win, the Craigslist beginning, the affirmations that steadied her season, and a lot more on Zeppelin. Listen to Lovedance, Dual Threat & Making It a Double: A Conversation with Laine Ashker on the US Equestrian Open Podcast.
