THE GATES TO BRILLIANCE Dressage Olympian Robert Dover’s Surprisingly Candid Memoir Is This Season’s Must-Read Book BY DEBORAH WELKY
Longtime Wellington resident and internationally renowned dressage rider Robert Dover can now add published author to his long list of accomplishments. Dover’s memoir, The Gates to Brilliance: How a Gay, Jewish, MiddleClass Kid Who Loved Horses Found Success, was released by Trafalgar Square Books last month. Gates to Brilliance is a book for anyone who has struggled to overcome personal challenges and the judgment of strangers to become the best they can be. “We moved very often when I was a child,” Dover remembered.“From Chicago to Toronto to the Bahamas to Fort Lauderdale to Atlanta. My father worked for my grandfather’s automobile headlamp company and my mother was an actress. In the Bahamas, they both sold real estate. They divorced when I was 17, then, seven years later, got back together and spent the rest of their lives together. So, I didn’t make friends or have the kinds of roots that children who stay in one location end up having — no lifelong pals and no strong memories of my times in those schools. I didn’t speak much for one full year in high school.” The one constant in Dover’s early life was the Pony Club — whether in the United States, Canada or the Bahamas.
“I’m hopeful that someday people will see each other as equals — respect and honor each other for all their diversity.” — Robert Dover wellington the magazine | december 2021 29