PrintAfter putting the Pan Am Games on his résumé, this rider is on a roll.
Luis Denizard isn’t afraid to dream big or risk everything to pursue his goals.
Dressage was never an easy choice for this Puerto Rican rider, born in the Bronx, N.Y., but he steadily worked his way up the levels until he represented his nation in international competition, and he’s not finished yet.
As a child, Denizard only dreamed of riding horses because he lived in a city. But when he was 12, his family moved to Jamaica Plain, Mass., and their new home was located across the street from Arby’s Stables, a popular barn in the area.
“I was always fascinated with horses. It was a bizarre coincidence that within Boston I moved to an area where there was a horse stable across the street, so the opportunity came around,” he said. “I was enticed to pick up a broom, and they let me ride a horse, and that was the beginning of it.”
He began by riding for pleasure and going for an occasional trail ride. When a trainer moved into the barn, Denizard started riding in the hunt seat program. He continued with hunt seat until he enrolled at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
“I went to the University of Massachusetts to be a veterinarian. I realized how difficult that was to accomplish, and I realized there was an equine studies specialty, so I switched over to that,” said Denizard.
At UMass, he discovered dressage and eventing and fell in love with both disciplines.
“As with most young people I wanted to jump higher and go faster,” he admitted. “We did dressage in the flat portion of the lessons. You always thought of it as, ‘Let’s hurry up and get this over so we can jump.’ But then I was given a special project horse—a horse that no one else seemed to get along with—by Sandy Osborn. She said he needed someone to take him on, ride him, understand him and get him going.
“I started riding the horse, and we hit it off quite well,” Denizard continued. “Sandy would check in on us and give us a lesson to make sure we were on the right track. That was the first horse I was able to get through on the bit. Sandy asked, ‘How does that feel?’ I was at a complete loss for words. That started the process of me switching over to dressage.”
The excellent instruction from teachers like Osborn, Ruth Sarkunas and Gerd Reuter only spurred Denizard to learn more.
“I realized that in order to get a good job straight out of college, I had to get some good names behind me, so I went on to apprentice in Germany,” said Denizard. He spent six months in Germany working for Reuter.
“I got to see so many riders ride that it really helped me in developing my eye,” he said. “It also gave me time in the saddle, where, up until that point, not too many places gave me time to be in the saddle learning.”
Making A Living
After returning from his internship, Denizard earned his bachelor’s degree in 1990 and went on to work at Huntington Farm in Vermont for a brief period of time before moving to Michigan, where he worked at Black Forest Hall in Harbor Springs.
There he began teaching international dressage rider Courtney King-Dye, who was only 12 at the time.
