Leslie Lange – Cowgirl Extraordinaire & MVP Horse Trainer

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34 – May/June, 2017

BY: SUSAN WINSLOW

AQHA Most Valuable Professional of the Year in 2015, Leslie Lange had a childhood that most in the horse world would envy. While citified and suburban Americans spend millions of dollars each year at guest ranches to have the true Western experience, this champion horsewoman actually lived it. Growing up as one of seven children on a cattle ranch in Woody Creek, Colorado on the western slope near Aspen, Leslie was in the saddle at the age of two. Her father trained and sold horses, so they were an integral part of her life from day one. She recalls, “My Dad gave riding lessons to a group of women every week, and I remember sitting there, watching those lessons, and just absorbing so much through that experience.”

As she grew up, she joined 4-H, helped move cattle, went to shows and rodeos, and paid her dues in the saddle during years of roun-ups and hard work on the ranch. She says, “My siblings and I were into all aspects of riding and competing. We did open shows, my sisters did the Hunters, and some of us did Gymkhana, so we were around horses all the time.” She laughs when she recalls her early days in Pony Club, “I didn’t have the most traditional Pony Club horse. The local club met a couple of miles down the county road from us, so I’d ride my Dad’s roping horse to the meetings. He definitely wasn’t your average Pony Club mount, but he’s what I had and he could outjump all the other horses. We really had a lot of fun.”

After high school, Leslie went off to Colorado State University and earned a degree in Ag Business with a minor in Economics. She says, “I picked Colorado State because I was in my last year of youth competition and I wanted to finish it out. I had a horse at school my first semester, but then decided to focus more on my studies. I found I really missed having a horse at school, so I brought my horse back and figured I’d never be too far away from horses again.”

Leslie had plans to go into some kind of work in the field of Ag Business, and she was offered the opportunity to get her Masters Degree in Economics, but the horses drew her back. She says, “I’d been working for Paul Scott, who was a trainer here in Colorado, showing his horses in the Open Hunt Seat, and I just realized that working with horses was really what I wanted to do. It was a natural decision because they’ve always been such a big part of my life.”

Click here to read the complete article
34 – May/June, 2017