By: Due South // Nancy Jaffer for Horse Sport
After 10-time Olympic show jumper Ian Millar stopped competing, the pressure was on. There was speculation that he would become the chef d’équipe for the team that he led as Captain Canada for so many years. Alternatively, some wondered, would he simply bow out for a life beyond the spotlight, stepping back to a quiet existence at Millar Brooke Farm in Perth, Ontario?
Photo Credit: Starting Gate Communications
There wasn’t an immediate public answer to the question of what his future held. “I just wanted a little time to myself to figure out what I wanted to do, because I had been on the road and competing non-stop essentially for over fifty years for Canada,” Millar noted. “Like a racehorse coming off the track needs a cooling-off period, I wasn’t there to rush into anything,” he recounted from ringside at the Winter Equestrian Festival in Wellington, FL.
He found he wasn’t about putting his feet up and staying on the sidelines. “I am 76 years old,” he stated, repeating a well-known statistic. “Normally, people start talking about retirement at age 60 or 65.”
But not Millar.
…continue to read the FULL Horse Sport interview with Chef D’equipe Ian Millar at this month’s Nations Cup in Wellington, Florida!