my take on some of the whats been going on in Eventing

I suspect that someday the cross country jumps will be holograms.

I had an old style cross country course, the kind where you had to be aware of trees and footing. Now they all look like golf courses so the spectators can see more, especially they can the sponsored jumps. Who doesn't like to see a bunch of shinny new Land Rovers parked in a field? I had a young professional bring a couple students to school on my course a number of years ago. While out on the course the trainer said to me, "You need to cut down some trees. We like to go fast". I answered, "We go fast".

Whatt is left of eventing is diversity. Not many horses or riders can do well in dressage, cross country and stadium jumping. For example, Riley, a great horse by any standard, was wonderful in dressage and cross country, but the confines of an arena combined with tightly placed jumps requiring precision just didn't suit him. He could do precision if there were no jumps, but there was something in his being that made him rush in stadium, and that combined with his huge body was a bull in a china shop. I could have ground down his rushing in the arena but I loved him so much as a hunt horse I didn't want to mess with his essence for fear of dulling him.

So if you are inclined to try eventing, first try it with a well trained horse for the sport, then find a prospect and bring him/her along. Easier said than done. It's challenging. You will find that you get one right and the other two are not at the same level, so you work on the other phases. You get them right and the one you liked at first then might seem to be weak, so you work on that. It reminds me of getting a meal on the table and having the protein, the starch and the vegetables all come out at the same moment and with the same level of quality.

I miss that course. I haven't ridden a single course like it. I loved that jump after doing it the first couple of times, especially on blaze. I think she liked it too, she would gladly do it all day; but she was like that with most jumps . I think eventing has really dumbed down over the years. I have seen a lot of videos of what eventing used to be like and today's equivalent is really not the same. I still enjoy eventing and plan to get back into it this summer, hopefully.

It late. I'm tired. I read as far as "To claim that recent fatalities are because "riding too fast produces bad jumping" is to reveal an abysmal ignorance about what horses can do when trained in self-carriage and ridden in balance."

Jim Wofford is the gold standard of thought on the subject of eventing. His father taught at Fort Riley. I've had the pleasure of exchanging ideas over the years but I don't really know him.

I will finish the article tomorrow, but for now I suspect where he is going is that we must ride better. He says that there is an "an abysmal ignorance about what horses can do". That is my feeling. Very few riders today have any real idea of what a horse is capable of. And therefore, the answer to safety is not in the jumps, or in the rules or in anything but in the rider understanding what a horse is capable of. The riders today don't seem to want to find out.

Wofford, "In our sport, we have been jumping the same size fences at the same speed for three-quarters of a century, yet suddenly we are suffering rotational falls." He goes on to say that changes in course design have been blamed for this change and then says, in response to contemporary riders being perplexed by "new" technical questions jumps, "the riders were perplexed and the jump caused some problems. However, the military old-timers just smiled. They had seen technical questions such as this before."

Wofford goes on, "Due to the change to a short format we now have a generation of horses and riders who have never had the chance to miss at speed and learn from it." and I will go back to what I said in my earlier post, "Very few riders today have any real idea of what a horse is capable of." Part of this is fox hunting and eventing used to be very closely tied sports and now because of irrational specialization eventers are not fox hunters. If they were, they would have much more experience being "surprised" at speed and know how to manage unforeseen circumstances at an awkward takeoff.

Furthermore, Wofford explains how the increased focus on dressage (when there were 5 phases dressage was 1/5th now 1/3rd) we see too much training emphasis on collection (which I will add has brought us the dominance of Warmbloods that are not as good jumpers as TBs). He says, "Other dressage experts, including Reiner Klimke, have mentioned to me that when we truly and correctly collect our horses, we also subdue their initiative." A loss of the horse's drive or initiative creates risk in a serious jump, which is why I didn't grind Riley down into a more collected stadium jumper because I didn't want to die hunting. Wofford goes on to discuss this new limited initiative in stadium as well.

In summary Wofford says, "We now have an event that was designed by humans for humans rather than by humans for horses. Because of this, we have forced riders to cross the line between discipline and domination." I agree. Eventing has gone from men's hockey to women's figure skating, and that is not a criticism of today's women who have come up through sports under Title 9 that caused high schools and colleges to offer equal opportunity in sports to both boys and girls. We now have wound women who are "jocks" capable of playing the old game of check-em-into-the-boards eventing. But do they want to? I believe we arrived here because the old timers, the military trained riders like my teacher and my generation who learned directly from them got old and stopped competing. That void was filled by women riders who were not jocks, did not fox hunt but instead came from the Morris school. I don't mean to offend but old and changing gender roles in equestrian sport have had an impact. But now we are more or less back to a place where we were in the 60's and 70's with all riders regardless of gender. So, do we want to go back to tradition or do we want to stick with an anomaly that has lasted about 35 years? Rotational falls are a killer but you can stop them before they start if you can jump at speed and you know how to make a safe approach.

in a NYT article on the dangers of eventing Mick Costello, an event rider who builds cross-country courses wrote, “You have people who didn’t grow up fox hunting or going on wild rides the way we did, they (riders) haven’t been used to tumbling falls. They get a thrill out of going fast, and a lot of them aren’t ready.”

Eventing can go back to its roots and be more like hockey, or it can continue down the road to figure skating. To go back to tradition, the sport must become smaller because the riders will come in smaller numbers and be tougher. Polo, for example is the second most deadly sport per capita of all after Formula One car racing and its numbers have not changed since the 1930s. It's a small sport because is scares riders. Does Eventing want to be like polo or like Hunter Jumpers? For me that is the question.

I will have my 70th birthday in not too long. When I drop something on the floor, I have to make a plan how to pick it up. I hurt. I cannot tell you how many broken bones I have, or how many horses I have owned, or how many times I took out the trash. My life has been my life and I have done it one day at a time. Physically painful as it can be, I don't think I'd have changed much about it except maybe paid a little more for better horses at times.