This Past Week (long)

It's been a demanding week here. The page hits reached almost a thousand. I had to moderate (delete) the heck out of the posts to maintain the tone that has been established here. Some of the posters were my students gone over to the dark side of the Force. They were not invited, but asked to contribute or leave, some ISP's were banned but  they kept coming. I wonder if our efforts had any positive effects beyond keeping the tone here adult. As many of you know, here's the deal.

In 1984 in the Los Angeles Olympics the USA Eventing Team finished 1st, in Barcelona 1992 4th, Sidney 2000 3rd, Athens 2000 3rd, 2008 Beijing 7th, 2012 London 7th, 2016 Rio de Janerio 12th. These are the facts, not a complaint, although there are complaints connect to it. For one, the trend here is not good. Worse, I see nothing being done about it. This is the context of the disagreement of between me and the young eventing hopefuls. They think everything is fine. I do not.

Many new eventing barns are run by instructors who did not come from traditional training or experience backgrounds typical of eventing, which would be hunting or eventing itself, but rather from Hunter/Jumpers. The above Olympic eventing results correlates with, and to a degree is proceeded by a trend of Hunter/Jumper (Morris method) trained riders making a lateral shift to eventing. This all happened in a context of the US Combined Training Association being supplanted by the US Eventing Association politics.

The old USCTA was traditional. It held open tryouts at the Whitney estate farms in Gladstone Peapack NJ for the US Combined Training Team (now Eventing). This was back in the day when the Jackie Kennedy hunted with the Gladstone Peapack Hunt when she worked as an editor for Doubleday publishing in NYC. These were times when US monied families looked after American equestrian sport and before it became a business. The transition from this is what I mean when I say the equestrian community was replaced by the current commercial horse industry.

Serious riders used to help each other regardless of social standing or wealth for the good of the community. The community was full of characters with one thing in common love for and skill in horsemanship. Bev Walters, the "Bev" in Bev-Al Saddlery in Gladstone, was a three pack a day polo player who died on a polo field of a heart attack back then (kids, don't smoke). People from Jackie to me bought stuff at his shop. I still have my Lock polo helmet from his store. Prince Charles wore a Lock.

I have good memories of the past of a better time when what you could do with a horse mattered more than your money, your connections, your anything, and when talk was considered very cheap. There were a few prissy self focused riders in the crowd like we find so many of today. One of these rode up to my old friend Sam Campbell, 1968 Australian Equestrian Team, at the hunt there and pointed out to him that his laced field boots were not proper attire for a Sunday hunt. Sam told me later about this and how he struggled not to tell the bitty that his ankles constantly swelled from so many falls over the years. In his Aussie accent said, "Won't they grant an old man some comfort?" He laughed.

Side bar here for Jimmy to tell his daughter and maybe for some young riders here. On TV during the Olympics one year in an interview of an older former Olympian, a rower I think, they asked "What advice do you have for a new Olympian?" He said, "Don't go out drinking with the Australians." I can attest, this is very important advice.

This past week here was a bad experience for me. It confirmed so much. The kids didn't answer the Morris questions because they don't know. They want to feel good about their riding but don't want to measure it in objective ways. When we were young we were always looking for objective measurements. There was a place we called "suicide slide" it was a shortcut and crazy difficult to ride. Some could do it, some could not. We knew who could and who couldn't. I don't think the kids are like that anymore. Most of their instructors aren't' either.

Mostly it's sad because where do we go from 12th in Olympic eventing? These entitled kids won't get us out of the cellar. I see a time when we stop sending teams. We will be like Greece or Saudi Arabia where one individual rider competes on their own and finishes way back. For nearly a century, since they restarted the Olympics, we were always 1st tier, and then it changed. I keep waiting for the traditionalists with funds to come forward like the Whitney's did, hire Jimmy Wafford as coach and have open tryouts with no politics in several locations across the country. No Young Riders development, just a talent search. And when a gifted rider is discovered, find them a gifted horse in the same way.


Ford won the Le Mans 24 hour race in 1966 with an out of the blue new car. Ford  built the car because Enzo Ferrari backed out of a deal to sell his company to Ford, so they went and beat him. For old times sake Ford spent two years building an anniversary race car for Le Mans from scratch and went back there and won again in 2016. We could do that in Olympic Eventing if we had the will and ignored all the politics, which is what we saw demonstrated here this past week. I am convinced we have the talent and the horses. We lack the coaching to develop the discipline and intensity to win.



1966 Ford GT Le Mans winner


2016 Ford GT Le Mans winner (50th anniversary)

1984 US Olympic Eventing Team Gold Medal winners

Michael Plumb and Blue Stone
Karen Stives and Ben Arthur
Torrance Fleischmann and Finvarra
Bruce Davidson and JJ Babu


2034 US Olympic Eventing Team ? - maybe you (50th anniversary... actually it would be 2032 because the Olympics are on a 4 year cycle)