Untacked

c h r o n o f h o r s e . c o m ja n ua r y/ f e b r ua r y 2 015 51 en she all but disappeared from the top levels of the sport. in the time since, richards had her second child, got divorced, and moved back to her hometown of newnan, ga., so that her mother could help her raise her daughter, now 11-year-old genevieve, and son, 9-year-old Adam. she also completely changed her business model, focusing on sales and teaching instead of competing at the upper levels. And now she's happier than ever. "it takes a long time to figure out what you want to do, and what you're good at, and what economically makes sense," richards says. "i lived in middleburg [Va., at the height of her competitive career], and i didn't love that all it was was horses, running into fel- low competitors all the time. it was great fun, but it was a bit of a fishbowl feel. "now i have my kids and their school activities and my friends and my social life, and i have a super business too," she adds. "i can be competitive with the best in the country and still live in georgia. i didn't plan it to be this way, but i'm in a great place now." today richards has a score of local students and runs one of the preeminent horse sales businesses in the united states, retraining off-the-track orough- breds from across the country and importing mounts from ireland with the help of Carol gee of fernhill sport horses. "i buy ponies for people and bring them over and get them going; i find nice young horses; i find hunt horses," she says. "i find everything. i love it! i love working with people and trying to help them find the right match. "it's so much more fun than when i was trying to get one or two or three horses to the top level," she continues. "now every day is a journey, and you put all the pieces of the puzzle together." But make no mistake—competition is still one of the main puzzle pieces in richards' life. is fall, more than a decade after her last appearance at the dutta Corp. fair hill CCi in maryland, she returned to win the 111-horse national two-star championship aboard Asa Cooper's urlanmore Beauty. "hopefully i'll be even more competitive. fair hill gave me a lot of confidence in my ability to gauge whether i'm ready [for a particular competition]," she says. "But after two olympic games, going clear and almost inside the time and jumping two clear show jumping rounds, i don't need to go and just participate again. e only way i'd want to do a three- or four- star is if i have a real shot at winning." And if she never chooses to return to the top level of eventing, richards will be just fine with that. "right now it all works," she says. "i think the main thing that's made me so successful is that i try to be around people who don't let ego get in the way. when everybody works together, and people don't worry about who gets the credit, we seem to get a long way. if you surround yourself with positive, good people, life is pretty fun." tonya Johnston, ma, is a mental skills coach and the author of Inside Your Ride: Mental Skills for Being Happy and Successful with Your Horse. She also conducts mental training clinics across the country and works with high school and university equestrian teams, including the Stanford Equestrian Team. A rider herself, Johnston is based in the San Francisco Bay area and recently won the 2013 Fox- field and PCHA Adult Medal Finals. JUlie richards represented the United States in eventing at the 2000 Sydney and 2004 Athens Olympic Games and won team bronze at the latter. Today she runs a thriving horse importing and sales business in partnership with Carol Gee of Fernhill Sport Horses in Ireland, and she also trains horses and riders in her hometown of Newnan, Ga. "Contentment is a really charged word," says Tonya Johnston, MA. "I think a lot of people would equate it with being complacent and not being driven and not getting the best out of themselves. It's a double-edged sword, for sure."

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