Ashley Holzer Loves The Horse-Rider Partnership At The Heart Of Dressage Story by Julie Unger • Photos by Susan J. Stickle
For almost 40 years, Ashley Holzer has been one of the top names in dressage. She has been a dressage rider since the tender age of 13, and Glory Be Royal, affectionately known as Gloria, was the horse that started it all. “The first horse that my parents bought me as a kid was actually very talented in dressage,” Holzer recalled. “I was eventing a little bit, but she actually would always win at dressage… She was not really a fancy horse at all. She was just was very good at dressage.” Through Gloria, Holzer made a name for herself in dressage. Add in many other horses along the way, four trips to the Olympics, four trips to the World Equestrian Games, two trips to the Pan American Games and many other dressage competitions, and you get to the current 2015 season with Holzer competing at the Adequan Global Dressage Festival aboard Dressed in Black, which Holzer co-owns with Dr. Diane Fellows. Holzer has been competing in Wellington for decades. It’s an annual trip the Canadian equestrian star looks for-
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ward to. She travels here from her current home in New York. “I’ve been coming to Florida since the 1980s, every year,” she said with a quick laugh. “I always come to compete down here. It’s just been even better because of the [new] facility that we have down here, and the competitions are just getting bigger. I started coming here when it was really grassroots — we used to have our stable over on Jog Road and Forest Hill.” Her experiences have changed over the years, but she still feels that competing in Wellington is an extremely important rite of passage. “Part of where I sit right now is bringing my students along and watching how well they do,” Holzer said. “My current horse is a little young to be at the Pan American Games [this summer in Toronto], but I think he’s really
perfectly poised for the Olympics next year. That’s where my mind-set is — to get him the experience necessary.” And for Holzer, there’s no better place for a horse to get that experience than at the Adequan Global Dressage Festival. “It’s great that we have this facility where we can create this atmosphere for these horses, get them used to it and really get them on their game, and get them the experience they need to become world-class athletes,” she said. Holzer is currently easing Dressed in Black from the national ring to the international ring. “You can take horses and put them in the national ring and get them experience, and when they’re feeling really strong and experienced, you can bring them up to the international ring in the front where the crowd is and there’s more atmosphere,” she said. “It makes it a little bit trickier, but this is the way to get them ready for what they need to do when they go to the Olympics or the World Equestrian Games.”