Showjumper Millar happy to be father figure

As a 65-year-old on the international sports scene, Canada’s Ian Millar is all too familiar with being mistaken for an athlete’s father rather than a showjumper on the verge of participating in a record 10th Olympic Games. Millar still laughs heartily when he recounts the time he and a team mate met some people by a hotel pool in Brazil where they were staying for the 2007 Pan-American Games. “They asked what we were doing there and we said: ‘We’re here for the Pan-American Games’ and they said: ‘Oh, your children are competing?’” Millar told Reuters in a telephone interview from his home in Perth, Ontario. “I laughed like crazy. We never did correct them. We just said: ‘Yeah, yeah’ and left it at that.” [caption id=“attachment_388988” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] As a 65-year-old on the international sports scene, Canada’s Ian Millar is all too familiar with being mistaken for an athlete’s father rather than a showjumper. Reuters[/caption] While Millar chose not to reveal his identity as one of the world’s most successful riders, perhaps the poolside strangers eventually caught on as the humble Canadian went on to win a silver medal in team jumping at the 2007 Pan-Am Games. That medal only scratches the surface of a career in which Millar has captured a silver medal in Beijing at the 2008 Olympics for team jumping. Among his nine Pan-Am Games medals are three golds, including two for individual jumping. He was made a member of the Order of Canada - an honour that recognises “a lifetime of distinguished service in, or to, a particular community, group or field of activity” - in 1986 and was inducted into the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame in 1996. The secret to Millar’s success goes well beyond a desire to compete at the highest level. Rather, he has a genuine love for horses that started at age 10 when he took any job available just to be around them. “Grooming them, cleaning out the stalls, helping the blacksmiths, you name it,” said Millar. “Anything involving the horse intrigued me and interested me and that has not changed. So I wake up in the mornings and can’t wait for the challenges of the day with the horses.” One of those challenges is training his horses. No matter how many jumps are practised leading up to the Olympics, there is no guarantee that a normally calm horse will deliver a gold medal-winning performance. When Millar won an individual gold medal at the 1999 Pan-Am Games, he said it was on a fractious horse that, for the first and only time, snapped into the zone at just the right moment. Despite his showjumping longevity, Millar is still learning in a sport that has changed dramatically. “We’re using a different type of horse, the jumps are built quite differently, course designs are unrecognisable compared to 15 years ago and the amount of competition we are doing with the horse is way more than we used to,” said Millar. “So to stay with that evolution is an ongoing challenge as well. But you don’t just want to stay with it, you want to stay in front of it.” Known as “Captain Canada”, Millar would already own the record for Olympic participation had Canada not joined the U.S.-led boycott of the Moscow 1980 Games after the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan the previous year. He attributes his continuing good form to a combination of good genes, diet and exercise, with a daily workout regimen comprising stretching and strength training with a particular focus on core exercises to prevent the lower back injuries so common with showjumpers. Millar has no plans to retire after the July 27-Aug. 12 London Games, where he will be aiming to add the one item missing from his resume - Olympic gold. “The Canadian showjumping team has a very, very poor pension plan and so I don’t see that I can retire at all,” Millar joked. “But no, the serious answer is as long as I have the right equine partner, the right horse, I will likely keep doing it because it’s like having the best race car, it sure makes the race a lot more fun.” Winning in London would not curb his appetite for more, said Millar, who will ride Star Power, a 10-year-old Dutch gelding, at the Games. “If I win a gold in London I’d say: ‘This is good; now I should win two.” Reuters