Transcript
Speaker: Welcome back to the Optimal Equestrian Podcast.
Speaker: Today I'm going to be talking about Jack LaGoff.
Speaker: And for this episode, I read his book, The Horses Came First, Second, and Last.
Speaker: And this is a great book if you're interested in not only his story and his path to being an Olympian and a great coach, but also if you're interested in the history of eventing.
Speaker: He also gives a lot of his thoughts on how eventing has changed, whether that's for the good, the bad, his opinions on it.
Speaker: And he ends the book with giving out a lot of his training methods and conditioning programs, how to prep horses for events and specific training for each phase.
Speaker: So if you're interested in that, then definitely pick that up.
Speaker: I'm not going to go fully into all of his training and conditioning methods because it's just not going to be very interesting and it's very systematic and I'm not going to be able to do it justice.
Speaker: So if that's what you're interested in, definitely pick up the book.
Speaker: But in this episode, we are going to cover his...
Speaker: story and path to the Olympics, his entire upbringing, how he got there.
Speaker: And then at the end, I'm going to share some of the lessons that he shares with us about coaching and finding talent and how to be a better coach and his philosophy behind coaching, which I thought was very interesting.
Speaker: So stay tuned for that.
Speaker: But we are going to start off with, well, first, who is Jack Legoff?
Speaker: He w as a
Speaker: French writer and coach.
Speaker: He was born in Normandy in 1931 and ended up going to the Olympics for France, did a short little stint of coaching in France, and then did the majority of his coaching here in the United States.
Speaker: And then he ended up retiring and doing a bunch of judging and
Speaker: giving clinics and did a little bit of coaching in Canada, but we'll get into all that later.
Speaker: But he was born in 1931 in Normandy, and his father was in the military and was stationed in Normandy at the time.
Speaker: His father was in the French Cavalry, and he ended up working his way up the ladder to being an officer.
Speaker: His father was big into steeplechase racing and
Speaker: And he just loved riding and training.
Speaker: He had hoped to attend the Cadre Noir someday, but he never got to fulfill that dream.
Speaker: And Jack describes his father in his book by saying, My father was one of those people who could train a Grand Prix show jumping horse, produce top class racehorses, and classically train a dressage horse to Piaf and Passage.
Speaker: So Jack had started writing a little bit when he was five or six, but it was really casually at this point because they were living through World War II.
Speaker: They had moved a lot and went through some hard times due to the war, and the war meant that there was not much food or money around.
Speaker: And so most of World War II, Jack was living in Africa where his father was stationed at multiple different places there.
Speaker: But eventually his father became appointed to be the director of the French Equestrian Center in Berlin.
Speaker: And that's when Jack really started riding.
Speaker: So at this point he was 15 and his father would teach him about racing and jumping, but didn't feel comfortable teaching him the dressage.
Speaker: So he had her, Harry Geisler, give him lessons.
Speaker: But they couldn't actually hire him as an instructor because he was German and for obvious political reasons with World War II, they couldn't do that.
Speaker: So his father instead hired Harry as a stable manager and had a condition that as part of that, he had to teach his son Jack dressage lessons.
Speaker: So Jack was initially taught more of the German type because Harry was German.
Speaker: And he says that that gave him a really solid base regarding his position, seat, and use of aids.
Speaker: But he later ended up going to the Cadre Noir and he said it was quite a disaster trying to ride the
Speaker: anglo-arabians and the german style and he talks a little bit about the difference between the french and the german style riding he says the breed of horses back then dictated the type of school and the riding became synonymous with the school the germans preferred cold bloods hard to move kick rides and so the german school became equated with extremely strong riding
Speaker: The French rode Anglo-Arabians, which were light and required more finesse and lightness of feel.
Speaker: So you can see how polar opposites those are.
Speaker: So when he was taught that German way, trying to go ride those sensitive, light Anglo-Arabians, and his words was quite disastrous.
Speaker: So Jack and his father were still at this point very active in racing and riding steeplechase horses when they were in Berlin.
Speaker: And fun fact, I didn't know this, but the steeplechases named that because the English farmers would set the race distance to be from one steeple to the next.
Speaker: So I just thought that was a little interesting.
Speaker: But in March of 1948, his father Louis had organized a steeplechase race.
Speaker: And during this race, Louis took a shortcut through the woods and he was trying to dodge trees.
Speaker: And Louis had leaned left and to like go around a tree and the horse decided to be a right, which ended up throwing Louis off into a tree head first.
Speaker: And Louis died a few hours later.
Speaker: So now Jack, his mom, and his brother were alone in the world.
Speaker: I mean, you know, back then women didn't work all the time.
Speaker: So there was really quite a struggle for them at this point.
Speaker: Also, they were living in Berlin during the Berlin blockade.
Speaker: And this is when the Russians were trying to take over Berlin and the Soviets had effectively just stopped all land, water, and rail access into Berlin, which made getting food, clothing, medical supplies, all of that impossible to get.
Speaker: So that's making their life without the provider of their family, their father, a lot more difficult.
Speaker: And so they ended up getting a flight back to France.
Speaker: But they only had 20 kilos each.
Speaker: When they got back to France, there was no furniture or belongings that they had left there because the war destroyed everything.
Speaker: And so now Jack had to basically grow up and try to be the family head all while trying to cope with the agony of losing his father.
Speaker: So now they are back in France.
Speaker: His mom was able to buy a house due to Colonel Frank Howley, who had organized a show jumping fundraiser competition to help the Lagaffe family after the death of his father.
Speaker: And so that really helped and went a long way to helping them buy a house.
Speaker: His mom became a school teacher and was just trying to provide for the family.
Speaker: And at this time, Jack was finishing his high school education.
Speaker: But in order to enter university, they had to pass a baccalaureate exam.
Speaker: and Jack had figured that he would have better luck at a steeplechase race instead of passing his exam, so he decided to skip the exam and went racing instead.
Speaker: He says he doesn't recommend that.
Speaker: He ended up having to take night school to finish his schooling, but he didn't win the race that day, so I guess he was right.
Speaker: He did have more success in that.
Speaker: So now he's
Speaker: off trying to find his first job in the equine industry and ends up working for Willie Head at the Madison Lafitte, I'm probably pronouncing that wrong.
Speaker: which was a famous thoroughbred training center outside of Paris.
Speaker: He ended up finding lodging 10 miles away from Madison Lafitte with a family, and he had to ride his bicycle to work in the wind, rain, snow, whatever weather conditions it was that day.
Speaker: And if he wasn't there by 6 a.m., the gates locked, and he was out of luck.
Speaker: And it was his first time having a job where he was cleaning stables, doing any of the manual labor in a barn because his father was a director of the equestrian program in the army.
Speaker: He never did that.
Speaker: He just went in and his horses would already be groomed and saddled for him so he could just get on and ride.
Speaker: So before long, he was helping the farm as an exercise rider and
Speaker: And at one point when he was back visiting home in Brittany, he picked up some rides galloping horses at a local trainer's farm.
Speaker: And while he was there, he was offered a job, got his license to race and decided to not return to Maison Lafitte.
Speaker: And so now he's riding, galloping these horses in the steeplechase world.
Speaker: He's 19.
Speaker: He was six foot two and starting to weigh too much to race.
Speaker: And so he had to find another career that just wasn't going to do it anymore.
Speaker: So he decided to go into the army as that was the only way that he could get into the cadre noir.
Speaker: And a doctor said that he was too skinny to be in the army.
Speaker: So he had to put weight on, come back, and then he ended up getting accepted into the army.
Speaker: He ended up achieving rank of Marichal de Logis.
Speaker: Probably butchering that as well.
Speaker: But anyways, he passed the exam, ended up getting into the course to become a member of the Caternit Noir.
Speaker: So this course was nine months long and extremely hard.
Speaker: They had to ride eight horses a day for a total of eight hours or more a day.
Speaker: And for the first three months, six of those eight hours were ridden without stirrups.
Speaker: Then at night they had to do book work where they spent time.
Speaker: He said they would sit in buckets of water with a chemical in it to toughen the skin on their seat.
Speaker: He said it sounds barbaric now, but the program was designed to weed out only the best and toughest writers.
Speaker: I almost think of it like the Navy Seals of Equestrians, which we don't see much anymore.
Speaker: He ended up graduating head of his class and qualified him for a privilege of becoming an underwriting master with the Cadre Noir.
Speaker: And soon after that, he was in the black uniform, an official member of the Cadre Noir.
Speaker: He said at this point, his ego soared and his superiors and elders enjoyed chopping it down, bringing him back to reality.
Speaker: So while he was at the Cadre Noir, he was competing in eventing.
Speaker: And they were asked to perform a demonstration ride at the 56 Olympics, which was held in Australia.
Speaker: But due to Australia's strict quarantine regulations, the equestrian portion was in Stockholm.
Speaker: So while he was there, he spent some time walking around and analyzing the cross-country course.
Speaker: And he said it just left him inspired and determined to make the French Olympic team in the 1960 Olympics.
Speaker: Later in 56, he ended up winning the French Eventing Championship, and he was the leading writer in eventing on a number of occasions throughout those years leading up to the Rome Olympics in 1960.
Speaker: And he says, thanks to Colonel Margo, he was picked to represent France in that 1960 Olympics in Rome because he was that leading writer throughout 1959, which he said at the time, picking someone that wasn't in the military was just not done because the Olympic selection team was done by the military and Jack was a non-commissioned officer.
Speaker: So that was just unheard of at that point.
Speaker: However, Colonel Margo didn't care and insisted that he be on the team since he, in his opinion, was the best rider in France at that time.
Speaker: So in that Olympics, he says he remembers the Endurance Day was the longest in the post-World War II era.
Speaker: He said all the horses were tired and tested to their limits in that Olympic Games.
Speaker: Ugh, that was a bit of a tongue twister.
Speaker: So during this Olympics, he did notice, though, that the Australian horses just stood out to him because they were the only ones not completely spent after each phase.
Speaker: And he said part of this was due to their ingenuity and discovering at the end of the roads and tracks, there were no compulsory flags.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: They were the only ones that noticed that and they were able to cut out some extra kilometers that way.
Speaker: But in general, he said it was just obvious that their training was just better and it left Jack thinking that he needed to either train his horses differently or breed them differently.
Speaker: That they just needed to be able to match the Australian's and horses endurance because their horses looked fresh when everyone else's were exhausted.
Speaker: He said that the Australians also showed in this Olympics that you could pull yourself up the leaderboard even if you were down after dressage.
Speaker: They just had to have brilliant jumpers that were very fast.
Speaker: And so this Olympics kind of proved to them that they could do that.
Speaker: And the Australians at this Olympics were pivotal in Jack discovering his own training method to come.
Speaker: And during this...
Speaker: recollection of his of the Olympics, I had written down a note that at this point in the book, he's already talked about the tough courses twice, the length of galloping, terrible footing, how like in the 1960 Olympics, only 35 out of the 73 riders, which is less than 50% completed the courses.
Speaker: And it just made me think about how everyone talks about how dangerous eventing is and how it's becoming worse and
Speaker: But it seems to me like it's always been dangerous, even back then.
Speaker: Now we have all these improvements like footing.
Speaker: We took out some phases.
Speaker: We have the collapsible jumps that make them safer.
Speaker: But that allows them to also ask for more technical jumping.
Speaker: And I just think that it's really interesting to think of the changes and contemplate
Speaker: are things actually getting better or worse?
Speaker: Like in from Jack's recollection, it sounds like we still have issues, but they have gotten better.
Speaker: And another note I made at this point is he, in this section of the book, it's called The Learning Years.
Speaker: And I just thought that it was interesting that
Speaker: he put his first Olympics in the learning years.
Speaker: Like most people would think that at that point you would be a pro and you're not really learning anymore.
Speaker: But I just think that that's interesting perspective to think about that he went to this Olympics.
Speaker: He still felt like he, I mean, at this point he still hasn't even developed his training method.
Speaker: So yeah,
Speaker: It very much was learning phases for him still.
Speaker: And I just think that's a good reminder to everyone that even though you make it to the Olympics or you are getting paid to ride, you think you're a pro, that there's always things that you're learning and you should always be learning and trying to improve on.
Speaker: So those are just some little side notes I made at this point in the book.
Speaker: so after this olympics he was called to war the algerians were seeking independence from france and they wanted to fight in the mountains where tanks couldn't go so they needed to go by horse and anyone with horse experience had to go fight so he spent two years at war returned to france in 1962 but instead of going back to the cadre noir he was stationed at fontainebleau training center
Speaker: And while he was there, they heard a lecture on interval training by a track and field coach.
Speaker: And this reminded Jack of the Australians in the Olympics.
Speaker: And it really sparked his interest in conditioning again.
Speaker: And so he did this experiment where he put a third of his horses on an interval training program to compare it with his former program.
Speaker: And he said it was very obvious very quickly that the horses got fit really quick and he
Speaker: He did find a downside that they became really unmanageable during the dressage since those horses now didn't know how to cope with this new level of fitness.
Speaker: So he kept experimenting with this interval training in conjunction with some principles that he used when he was conditioning the racehorses.
Speaker: He eventually refined his system to get horses fit, sound, and sane to compete at higher levels, which he goes into in the end of the book.
Speaker: But I just thought that was interesting that he took this lecture from the human track and field world and interval training and applied it to horses.
Speaker: And I think that that's a very overlooked aspect that we don't look at how, like if you think about how you train and get into work,
Speaker: and what makes you perform best.
Speaker: We often just don't apply those same principles to horses, I don't think.
Speaker: And I think that there's a lot of value to be added if you start thinking it.
Speaker: Like if you start a workout program and you're sore for two or three days afterwards,
Speaker: it's logical to think that maybe your horse is too, and maybe they just need some more time off or go for some long hacks instead of continuing to drill and train and get on them and expect more out of their muscles when they're sore.
Speaker: And so I just think that that's an interesting concept.
Speaker: And I think if we start looking for more ways to
Speaker: of how we can apply things that we know about training and recovery and all those things, how we can apply them to horses that we'll be able to sympathize with them a lot more, maybe get some more gains on them, get a little bit more of an edge.
Speaker: So now Jack had been in the military for 15 years and he was eligible for a lifetime pension.
Speaker: So he began thinking about setting off on his own to start a business teaching and training all while riding competitively.
Speaker: At that point, he got a phone call from the French Federation that changed all those plans and they offered him a chance to be the coach of the French three-day event team.
Speaker: This role was usually appointed by the Army, so he thought that he wouldn't be eligible for it now that he was a civilian.
Speaker: But at this point, even the Army was starting to change.
Speaker: And so he decided to stop competing at 36, even though he still felt like he had a few good years left in him.
Speaker: However, this job wasn't all that he had wanted and hoped for.
Speaker: He said that he started getting frustrated with the complicated way that the team was managed, and it became cumbersome for him.
Speaker: He would express his frustrations.
Speaker: He even wrote up a plan for a more efficient process.
Speaker: However, they let three years pass without changing anything, taking his suggestions into consideration.
Speaker: So he decided to resign and went into private business.
Speaker: At that point, Jack got offered a job to coach for the U.S. eventing team, and he was promised that if he didn't like it after a year, or vice versa, if they didn't like him as a coach, that they would ship him back to France and go on separate ways.
Speaker: But at this point, he didn't really speak English, and so they had to use interpreters to negotiate the deal.
Speaker: Once Jack accepted the position, he now had two months to brush up on his English.
Speaker: So now he arrives in Gladstone, New Jersey in 1970, and he was pleased to discover a system similar to what he had suggested to the French Federation.
Speaker: And so he just felt really sure that he was going to love this structure and what they were going to achieve together.
Speaker: But he also had to build the program up from nothing.
Speaker: So ever since the 1968 Olympics in Mexico, there had been no eventing activities at Gladstone since then.
Speaker: So there were no tack, no grooms, no horses.
Speaker: Jack said he had to loan his first horse.
Speaker: He would clean up the barn by himself, rehab horses, and he had to set out to find riders.
Speaker: He also said in the U.S. there were very few competitions.
Speaker: There were only two intermediate events spread over 3,000 miles, and one of them only had three starters in it.
Speaker: So he asked Meg Plum to put together a gathering of riders that were interested in the three-day team, and that's where he ended up finding Bruce Davidson, Jim and David Powers, and Marshall and Lyndon Gray.
Speaker: One interesting note he said about Bruce, he said before he came to him, he didn't even know what a diagonal was.
Speaker: And through Bruce's work ethic and talent, that Bruce would change before his eyes as he was writing.
Speaker: So he would tell him to change something and he just changed it.
Speaker: He said he just changed.
Speaker: would become a better writer in front of his eyes, which I thought was interesting though and what a high compliment.
Speaker: I mean, how many of us have been writing for years and don't feel like we ever get better?
Speaker: So quite a testament to Bruce.
Speaker: And I also think at this point in the book, it's interesting to see
Speaker: how small the eventing world was at this point and how few of riders there were, how few of shows.
Speaker: And that just makes you think of how far we've come and probably a lot due to Jack and the team he would put together and really pushing to grow the sport.
Speaker: So he's been very influential in that point.
Speaker: And I think
Speaker: You can see that just from him talking about how little competition and riders there were at this point to what the sport is now.
Speaker: So he went on to coach the U.S. eventing team during what is now called their golden age.
Speaker: And I'm not going to go too much further in depth because I think that the interesting part of his story was everything coming up to this.
Speaker: But he...
Speaker: Ended up coaching the U.S. team until 1984, which during that time, he won the multiple gold, silver, bronze, Olympic medals, world championships, Pan American Games.
Speaker: And then once he retired, he continued to consult, judge, give clinics, help develop riders.
Speaker: And he even did a brief little coaching stint for the Canadian Olympic team.
Speaker: So not only was he influential, especially in the American eventing world and helping build and change the sport, but he was also just a great advocate for eventing.
Speaker: He wants it to be safe, but challenging for the horses, wants it to stay true to the history.
Speaker: And he isn't afraid to speak his mind, make suggestions for improvement, or he doesn't care about being disliked or ruffling feathers, which is an important quality to have if you're trying to make all these changes.
Speaker: So big lessons from Jack.
Speaker: Some big ones that he talks about finding and making good writers.
Speaker: He says, making good writers in the U.S. is difficult.
Speaker: There aren't places to go fully immerse yourself in the art of writing like the Cadre Noir.
Speaker: Most colleges and writing schools don't give nearly enough time dedicated to writing.
Speaker: And I just thought that this was an interesting point that I've never really thought about, about how in other countries, I mean, people, their entire, like...
Speaker: quote unquote, university of like writing is being fully immersed in the barn, writing for full days and reading and learning about the like book work part at night.
Speaker: Whereas here in the US, it's kind of flipped.
Speaker: It's like you're spending all your time getting your degree, you're in a classroom learning about things that are not horse related.
Speaker: And then like my university, we rode once,
Speaker: like once a day.
Speaker: So you're getting one hour a day to ride and it's almost just like an extracurricular activity or something that you do after school because you want to do it.
Speaker: And I think that that really is going to make a huge difference in your quality of riding, being able to improve, get on more horses.
Speaker: I mean, that's something that
Speaker: It's talked about by a lot of questions.
Speaker: I think mainly like Denny Emerson talked about this a lot, that if you can get on as many horses as you can, just being fully immersed in riding and that time and the saddle is so valuable, especially when you're having these Olympic goals and you're wanting to really progress in your riding.
Speaker: There's just no substitute for that.
Speaker: Jack also talks about trying to find these Olympic teams and
Speaker: that his aim was to prepare as many riders as possible so that they would have a wider and deeper pool of talent to pull from.
Speaker: And this is what his entire four-year plan between Olympics was about.
Speaker: So to get down to those four Olympic riders, he would have worked with hundreds of riders and horses to find those combinations that would be able to compete and deal with the pressure.
Speaker: He said he liked to apply pressure to see if they could survive.
Speaker: So if they couldn't survive him and the pressure he was putting on them, then how would they be able to handle being in front of a panel of international judges and thousands of spectators?
Speaker: So he really wanted to apply that pressure as much and as often as he could.
Speaker: In this quote from the book, he says,
Speaker: and their horses properly turned out.
Speaker: They had to stay in good physical condition, and I weighed the riders regularly.
Speaker: Strict self-discipline was expected, and to ensure the young riders did not get swelled heads, I used to tell them, there is only one movie star around here, and it happens to be me.
Speaker: I was joking, but they were smart and got my point.
Speaker: I just think that that's a nice little quote to give you a little insight to how tough he was, but also with that humor still and just trying to keep it light and happy, but while having these high expectations.
Speaker: Which leads well into what he talks about being a good coach means.
Speaker: So he says a coach should be able to work with very different personalities.
Speaker: You have to know what is motivating another person, how you can motivate them, how much you can push, how much you need to encourage.
Speaker: Just being fluid in your coaching style to whatever that rider needs.
Speaker: He also says, as a coach, you need to know why you're doing something.
Speaker: You need to establish and stick to a policy in order to achieve your goals.
Speaker: And to convince others, you have to be convinced yourself.
Speaker: So you really need to iron all this out before you go into the arena, before you come up with your training plan.
Speaker: Know why you're doing it and believe fully in your method and how it's going to achieve the goals that you're set out for.
Speaker: He also said coaches must be fair, honest, and always think positively.
Speaker: They must be both long-range and short-range planners.
Speaker: So what do you need to get done today and how is that going to lead into whatever your long-term goal is for your rider, for the team, for your business, whatever it is.
Speaker: He also says it's the coach's job to make the rider do what they don't want to do.
Speaker: So it's the coach's job to instill discipline into their athletes.
Speaker: Now onto the accountability for the athletes.
Speaker: He says one of the most vital factors to being successful is discipline and above all, self-discipline.
Speaker: So yes, you need to instill it in your riders, but as a rider, you need to try and distill that into yourself and hold yourself accountable and make yourself disciplined.
Speaker: And so he says it might be raining, but a missed day will result in a substandard performance.
Speaker: And once you start skipping a day because of the weather, you're going to start being like, oh, well, I don't feel good or I'm sore.
Speaker: You're going to start making up excuses and your performance is going to suffer on every day that you miss.
Speaker: And he also says that horses thrive in success.
Speaker: in a consistent daily regime of training and so do the riders.
Speaker: So no matter what, go out there, at least go on a hack, do something because otherwise someone else is getting a day up on you.
Speaker: So for riders, self-discipline means being on time.
Speaker: organized, you need to meet your deadlines, have your tack clean, get your papers for the show in order, you have to have the right answers to your test, know the rules, all those little things, all those little details like in your dressage test, where exactly are the points on that 20 meter circle that you need to hit.
Speaker: Those minute details are going to be the biggest game changer in your success.
Speaker: And I want to leave on this final note.
Speaker: He says,
Speaker: So hopefully that's a little motivating to you to not skip those rides, to focus on the little details in your test, know the rules, have your tack clean, anything and everything that you can to improve your performance, improve your turnout, improve your horse's daily life and their physical activity, your own physicality, anything that you can to get a leg up.
Speaker: Let's take a lesson from Jack and be disciplined.
Speaker: So that's all I have today.
Speaker: If you are interested in the book, definitely a must read.
Speaker: I mean, I'm not an inventor anymore and I found it very fascinating to just read about the history.
Speaker: I mean, he gives methods on dressage training, but also his story is just remarkable.
Speaker: So pick it up.
Speaker: It's called The Horses Came First, Second, and Last.
Speaker: And I will see you all next time.
