I've been thinking about luck lately.

Not in a self-pity way. More in a... "why does this sport work like this" way.
 
Here's what I mean.
 
Six months ago, if I started eating clean, lifting three days a week, and running, like actually running, not just thinking about running, I would be measurably healthier by now. Guaranteed. The input produces the output. The math is honest. Effort in, results out. Not perfectly, not linearly, but directionally? Always.
 
I find the same with my business. You make the calls, you write the emails, you show up consistently for six months, you will have more customers than when you started. The work has an address. It goes somewhere.
 
But frustratingly, dressage doesn't work like that.

 I've watched people in this sport work for decades. Serious, dedicated, talented people. People who ride at 6am in February. People who skip vacations, drive four-horse trailers across the country, spend money they don't really have on the right trainer, the right saddle, the right everything.
And then the horse dies.

Or goes lame.

Or the farrier can just never get the feet quite right.

Or the suspensory blows on the best horse they've ever sat on, a month before their first FEI.

A couple years ago I decided to keep 3 foals. Within six months, two of them were dead. Freak accidents. Both of them. The kind of thing you can't plan for, can't manage, can't prevent. Just gone.

My prior horse? Developed heart issues at age 12. 

The one after that? Suspensory. Retired.

The one after that? Feet. Retired.

You start to feel like the sport is running a very specific kind of joke on you. And the punchline keeps landing the same way.

Meanwhile, somewhere in Wellington right now, there's a nineteen year old having the time of her life.

Her dad bought her two Grand Prix horses.

She didn't break them in. She didn't sit through the four-year-old confidence building, or the five-year-old show tension or the six-year-old "I've changed my mind about flying changes." She didn't bury anyone. She just showed up to an already-made thing and started collecting scores.

And good for her, honestly. I mean that. It's not her fault.

But it does make you ask the question nobody in the equestrian world wants to say out loud:

How much of this sport is skill, and how much of it is just not having bad luck?

I don't have a clean answer.

What I have is this: I've stopped pretending the sport is meritocratic. It isn't. It rewards persistence, yes. Skill, yes. But it also requires a large level of luck, with horses staying sound and staying alive, that no other serious athletic pursuit demands.

When a marathon runner trains for two years and gets injured the week before the race, that's devastating. But they still have the two years of fitness. The body they built. The discipline they developed. The work lives in them whether they cross the finish line or not.

When a dressage rider loses a horse, the work doesn't live in them the same way. Yes, you carry what they taught you. The feel they gave you. The mistakes they showed you. But the partnership is gone. The vehicle is gone. And you can't just lace up a new pair of shoes and go again. You have to find another living creature, build trust from scratch, and hope the luck holds this time.
 
And you're expected to just... start again.

I think about the people who stayed anyway.

Who buried horses and bought young ones and started over, quietly, without making it anyone else's problem. Who kept their name on the entry forms even when the results didn't reflect the sacrifice behind them.
 
That's not just athletic commitment. That's something closer to faith.
 
Faith that the work matters even when the math doesn't add up. Faith that the next horse might be the one that stays sound. Faith that the sport owes you nothing and you're going to show up for it anyway.
 
I don't know if that's beautiful or insane.
 
Probably both.
 
But hey, welcome to dressage.