Olympian Laura Kraut Has Competed All Around The World, But Wellington Is Still Home
By Deborah Welky
Show jumping champion Laura Kraut has spent a lifetime around horses, and it has led her to victory on the highest stages of the sport.
Kraut grew up around horses, taking her first leadline class at the age of three, graduating to ponies, and then to junior hunters. At age 19, she turned her attention to jumpers and never looked back. “I had a really good horse, so that helped,” Kraut said.
Now in her 50s, Kraut has been a professional, working in the industry since the 1980s.
“Back then, I was basically doing everything. I broke young horses, rode young horses, rode hunters whenever I was given the opportunity, and would do anything I could with jumpers,” Kraut recalled. “The sport was quite a bit different than it is now. Now it’s so big and so busy. You’re a specialist at hunting, jumping, equitation or teaching. It’s not even possible now to do it all well. I got to try everything, and I feel I was very lucky to have had the opportunity to do all of it. I worked with thousands of different horses, and I learned something from each of them.”
Kraut credits her initial love of riding to her mother Carol, also a horse lover.
“I was around horses before I can even remember,” she said. “My mother rode saddle seat and taught and raised horses. She was all-around in love with horses and wanted to be near them.”
It was her mother, probably cheering her on the most vigorously, who watched as Kraut competed at the recent Olympics in Tokyo as part of the U.S. Show Jumping Team, taking the team silver after an intense jump-off battle against Sweden.
“I was a little bit worried that it was going to give her a heart attack,” Kraut laughed.
As Kraut remembers, her Olympic experience in Tokyo — delayed one year due to the pandemic — was a bit different than she would have liked.
“The people that we met in Tokyo were very friendly and nice, very well-organized, but, due to COVID-19, our activities were limited,” she said. “We arrived, were driven to a very nice hotel, got up the next morning and met for breakfast, were driven to the venue, got out, rode, got back in the van, and went back to the hotel for the extent of our two weeks in Tokyo. But it was fine. We were lucky because our hotel had a gym, restaurant and room service. However, we would’ve loved to tour the city and, especially, to have seen the other sporting events going on all around us.”
The horses may have had the better time.
“It was quite warm there, and the venue was beautiful. There were nicely air-conditioned stables, perfect for horses,” Kraut said. “We’d get there in the morning about 8:30 to 9 a.m. and spend around two hours riding the horses on a beautiful outside course with a mile-long gallop up and down hills. So, the horses weren’t stuck going around and around in the ring, they were out and about. My horse loved to gallop on a hack-out or a trail ride. Oftentimes, we’d work them two times a day, but we were aware of the heat and what effect it might have. The grooms took them for long walks in the grass in the afternoons, so the horses had a really beautiful experience. As for us, we would’ve loved to have been able to see our friends, but we were all in different hotels and on different schedules. Yet, it was nice. We had a lot of team bonding and a great group of people.”
At the Tokyo Olympics, Kraut was riding Baloutinue, a Hanoverian gelding owned by St. Bride’s Farm.
“He’s just one of the best horses I’ve ever had the privilege to ride,” Kraut said. “When you’re talking about a horse, an equine athlete, or even a human athlete, Olympic competitors rank in the .01 percentage worldwide. Baloutinue has reached that point.”
So few horses have that athletic ability, Kraut said. “It’s intelligence, determination, health and stamina all wrapped up in one package. I’d like to say that we each contributed 50-50 to the win, but I think, without that horse, I would not have an Olympic medal. He contributed a great amount. I guide him and steer him and make sure he’s doing the right things but, in the end, he’s the one who has to jump the jumps,” she explained.
Yet it was Kraut who got the honor of standing with her teammates Jessica Springsteen and McLain Ward to accept the silver medal.
Now 40 years into her career, Kraut’s competition résumé is impressive. In addition to her win in Tokyo, she was a member of the silver medal team at the World Equestrian Games in Aachen in 2006 and gold winning team at Tryon in 2018. Aside from her recent team silver in Tokyo, she was part of the gold winning team at the Beijing Olympics in 2008. She has also taken part in numerous World Cup Finals and several Nations Cup teams. She is highly ranked on the money list in career earnings, with more than 100 Grand Prix wins.
Today, Kraut divides her time between Europe and Wellington, where she owns a home in the Aero Club.
“The first time I came to Wellington was in 1978,” Kraut recalled. “I was 14 or 15 years old, riding a green pony. That was sort of the beginning of Wellington. South Shore ended at Pierson Road, and I’m pretty sure Pierson was a dirt road. But it was great. I saw Rodney Jenkins and Katie Monahan [now Katie Monahan-Prudent] ride out at the old polo stadium field. I, like everyone, thought, ‘This is fantastic! There’s beautiful weather in the winter; the best horses and best riders come. Why wouldn’t you want to be here?’ I absolutely love it.”
The biggest difference between Wellington life and her life in Europe is also, seemingly, one of the smallest. “It’s the convenience,” Kraut said. “Here, everything is open all the time. There, the bank or dry cleaners could close for a week, and you don’t know why. We’ve lived there so long that we’ve adjusted, but here, you’re used to being able to get anything you want. Europe is lovely and beautiful, but the convenience is not the same.”
This season in Wellington, Kraut will continue to work with Baloutinue.
“I’ll compete with him a bit, but not excessively. I want to continue to get to know him,” Kraut said. “I’ve also brought a lot of young, up-and-coming horses, so I want to develop them. Hopefully, I’ll be able to jump around Wellington, whether at Global or the Ridge, and try to get them exposed to different things — all while enjoying the weather!”
That quintessential Florida experience of going to the beach is not a major factor in Kraut’s plans.
“I love to go the beach, but I work pretty hard all week,” she said. “Most of my time is taken up with the horses. Monday is usually my day off, so I run around doing all the things I need to do. I’ll go down to the beach for dinners, look at the beach, but if I was a real serious beach person, I’d make time for it. The truth is, I’m happy to hang around in my backyard in Wellington. It’s still a small community, and being here presents a good opportunity to be able to be with our friends and go to dinner and entertain. One of the nicest things about Wellington is that there are plenty of nice restaurants only five or 10 minutes away. It’s a good place to be social.”
Learn more about show jumping star Laura Kraut at www.laurakraut.com.
