By Charlene Strickland From the USSR to the US of A
A Soviet dressage champion journeys west to freedom, makes a new start and finds her dream stallion.
She won the 1986 Young Riders Championship of the
Soviet Union (USSR) at 16, and the next year the Young Riders Grand Prix Championships for Belarus, Latvia and Russia. Her awards included Equestrian Master in Dressage of the Soviet Union and national bronze, silver, and gold medals. She also won the under-25 Grand Prix and was shortlisted for the USSR Olympic team. Just before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Elena’s family
Elena and Adesco C.
happiness and professional success. Once a highly accom- plished young rider in the Soviet republic of Belarus, launching her new life in America meant confronting emotional and physical obstacles. As she returns to the Grand Prix arena, she reflects on her
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odyssey—and on the very special horse on which she has focused her competitive dreams. Elena had to restart her career in order to find her way back to the Grand Prix, two decades after her successful first career. When it comes to training dressage horses, Elena says in her
eastern European accent, “I love the stallions—there’s something about the boys.” With her stallion Adesco C, the “boy” she’s had for seven years, they’ve formed a winning partnership. This pair may be unknown and a bit unlikely—he’s a jumper-bred Holsteiner and she’s an owner-rider trained in Russia.
From Riches to Rags to Riches In 1990, young Elena Sokolovskaia arrived in Canada with only
her classical dressage education and her dog. At twenty, she was a champion rider who had to start over in the horse world. In Minsk, the capital of Belarus, Elena first rode at age six. “I
started riding dressage at 12 and rode my first Grand Prix at 16,” she recounts. “We had state-owned horses and I had a very good schoolmaster.”
24 January/February 2013
or dressage trainer Elena Golubitsky the last twenty years have brought her challenges she never imagined. They have also brought her personal
decided to leave Belarus and immigrate to Canada in 1990 where her grandfather had moved in 1979. “We wanted to be with my father’s family. We were looking for a better place to live, a better life…freedom,” she explains. At the airport, she checked in with her large dog. “The manager of the airport said, ‘Leave with the luggage and don’t take the dog.’ I was very fortunate that another lady was really nice who said, ‘Leave the luggage; take the dog.’ So I came to Canada with whatever I was wearing.” Canada wasn’t exactly what she expected. From being what she called a “princess” in Belarus, Elena hit bottom in Calgary. Without speaking English, she realized she couldn’t start riding again at any level. “I wanted to be independent. I thought, ‘I can’t make the money in horses.’ They did not allow us to bring any money with us. I cried a little bit and then I went on to shovel manure. You know that song, what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. This is my motto. So I just worked hard,” she explains. Determined to be around horses, she found work at a
nearby stable cleaning stalls, and began learning English by watching television and looking up words in an English-Russian dictionary. Her first boyfriend also helped. “He learned some Russian,” she says, “and I learned English.” Elena also had to start over with her education. Although
she’d almost completed dental school in the USSR with a 4.0 GPA, she was required to return to high school in Calgary before she could resume college. In the ten years she was in Canada,
she was gradually able to get back into riding and
Cleveland All photos are by Charlene Strickland taken at Lamplight Equestrian Center in August 2012.
Calgary
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