Category: Uncategorized

Ok, let’s talk about this whole modern pentathlon thing shall we?

This Olympics was not my first introduction to it. I remember watching parts of it during the London coverage and cringing then, but admittedly I’ve never sat down and really watched any of it from start to finish. After all the headlines starting popping up about how a “stubborn” and “uncooperative” horse cost a German rider a gold medal, curiosity got the best of me. I wanted to be fair though before I rushed to judgment so I sat down, loaded up the replay, and watched the entire riding portion of the and women’s and men’s pentathlon before I came to any particular conclusions. And oh man, I cannot stress this enough… what the actual f.

There’s a lot wrong here. First and foremost, the format is insane. None of these riders bring their own horse, they’re all volunteered for use by private owners or riding schools. They have selectors that test ride and choose which horses they will use and then they all go into a pool. The riders draw a horse, have 20 minutes to ride it, are only allowed 5 warmup jumps, and then have to go in the ring and jump a 1.20m course. Which… I wouldn’t have much problem with the whole unknown horse random draw bits if the jumps weren’t so big – .90m to 1m… ok fine. But 1.20m is a big ask for even a lot of decently skilled riders (not to mention horses), and these people, well, they are NOT decently skilled. Most could barely stay in the tack, much less find a distance or actually RIDE the horse. They’ve got to be proficient at 5 sports and I think it’s safe to say that riding isn’t a strength for most of them. Fair enough, riding is my only sport and I’m barely very good at it either. Granted, I’m also not at the Olympics.

Anyway.

The German woman in question was the last rider to go. Most of these horses went around at least twice, which could either be a benefit or a detriment to the later riders, depending on how it went. On one hand, they’ve seen the course once already. On the other hand, some of these riders were so bad that they didn’t make it around the course the first time. And by the end, some of these horses were just plain over the bullshit – the German woman’s mount, Saint Boy, being one of them. The German came into the ring already bawling (my guess is warmup didn’t go well) and the horse was extremely nappy about leaving the gate. I’m not sure how much more clearly a horse could have screamed “I AM NOT OKAY WITH THIS”. His first rider didn’t ride him very well and had crashed him, enough to where he’d flipped her the bird by the end and just stopped jumping entirely. Now he was coming in again with another rider he clearly had no confidence in and was flipping this girl the bird in advance. Honestly, I can’t blame him. Who knows what happened in warmup but I’m guessing nothing good.

But she kicked and smacked him (and the coach whacked him on the butt over the fence in between her oh so helpful screaming advice to the rider to “hit him harder!”) and eventually the rider did convince the poor horse to get moving. She proceeded to miss a couple distances, but he kindly went anyway, before she completely crashed him through a vertical. At that point the horse said “You know what, I think I was right in the beginning” and from that point on he refused to move any direction but backwards as the girl had a screaming crying meltdown while the clock ran out.

I feel for everyone in that situation, to tell you the truth. First and foremost the horse, for sure. He was put in an extremely unfair situation and when he said very clearly THIS IS TOO MUCH FOR ME the humans just kept pushing and pushing and pushing. I thought he was pretty kind about it, all things considered – there are many worse things he could have done besides back up or stand still. And while I don’t think the girl rode well or handled the situation well at all, I do have empathy for the fact that one of the worst moments of her life played out on a worldwide live stream at the Olympics. I can only imagine how I’d feel about that if it were me. But honestly I think the biggest loser in all of this is horse sports in general. All of us.

The general public doesn’t really have this divide between disciplines. To them riding horses is riding horses, and now there are a hell of a lot of comments on social media about how using horses for sport is cruel. Looking back on the Olympics, I actually sat there for a few minutes and thought about whether or not they’re right. I mean, to be fair, there was a dressage horse excused for blood in the mouth, an eventer with a catastrophic ligament injury, a showjumper with blood gushing from it’s nose, and now a German girl and her coach hitting a clearly distressed horse. It’s not a good look from a horse welfare perspective, I have to say. I think I saw more showjumping horses hit the ground this Olympics than I ever have in my life and some of the riding on cross country was just plain dangerous. Even as an insider in equestrian sport, I had to sit there and think carefully about all of this.

Nothing pushed me over the edge quite the way that the modern pentathlon did though. It’s how it was handled (or, really, not handled at all) that set my blood boiling. Watching horse after horse be crashed through fences with ZERO regard for their welfare (they don’t even check them to make sure they’re ok before continuing. Even if the horse hits the ground.) was really freakin hard to watch. They don’t run under FEI rules so I honestly have no idea what kind of care these horses get. I would never in a million damn years allow one of my horses to be used for this. A lot of what I saw classifies as straight up abuse of horse, IMO.

UIPM posted a very lame “look, the horse is just fine” update on their social media featuring pictures that look like they were taken in the winter. Is it even Saint Boy? Who knows. It’s not helping their case, either way.

Neither is the Irish pentathlete that sent one of the Olympic vets (who criticized the treatment of the horses in MP) a message calling him a clown.

What a clusterfuck.

In reality I’d love to see some changes to the riding portion of modern pentathlon. Clearly they are asking too much – it’s not fair to ask a horse to pack an unskilled rider around a 1.20m course, and it’s not fair to ask an athlete who also has 4 other sports to focus on to pilot an unknown horse around a course of that height either. It’s a miracle no one was seriously hurt in Tokyo, really. Whether they lower the jump height considerably or turn it into more of a dressage/equitation type of event, I don’t really care, but it definitely can’t stay as-is.

They also need to take a good hard look at whatever rules they may or may not have regarding horse welfare. I’m sorry but if a horse hits the ground that should be an automatic elimination, and the horse should be examined immediately. People shouldn’t be allowed to fall off and get right back on without examination. Horses exhibiting mental or physical stress should not be allowed or asked to continue. Stewards and vets and medics should be all over this, because as it was it looked completely barbaric. Over and over again we saw horses used as objects, riders taking out their emotions on their mounts, and absolutely no one advocating for the welfare of the horses.

I think what’s bothered me most though are the actual horse people who saw this go down and think that the horse is to blame. Luckily they are in the small minority, but still. How can ANYONE who knows horses think that what happened here was remotely the horse’s fault. Horses aren’t machines, and it’s not their job to make up for a rider’s complete and utter incompetence. If you think differently, you shouldn’t be on or near a horse. Period.

I think this also should be a bit of a wake-up call to all horse sports in general though, outside of the modern pentathlon event. We have to be our own worst critics about anything remotely looking like a welfare issue, because it’s guaranteed that the rest of the world will be too, and they don’t have even a basic understanding of what’s going on the way we do. We have to take a hard look at every incident in Tokyo that happened and why, and figure out how to continue to improve things. There was a lot of really good stuff happening horse welfare wise in Tokyo, but plenty of not-so-good stuff either.

Whew, I think I’m glad the Olympics are over. That was a lot. I have some thoughts on the whole modern pentathlon debacle (of course I do) but we’ll save that for another day because it encompasses some larger thoughts and concerns that I also have about the equestrian events as a whole. On the bright side though, how fantastic was Sweden in the showjumping final? I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a team that deserved a gold medal so much, and I was delighted that they pulled it off. Especially with a little unassuming looking horse like All In. No one would ever pick that one out of a field but man when he jumps it’s just something else entirely. I really don’t like the new format for showjumping though, I gotta say, from a horse perspective. Still, it did produce a great nail-biting finish to round out the equestrian events, so I guess mission accomplished on that front.

Aside from watching the Olympics, I’ve still been managing to keep Henry on a very regular riding schedule. The mild summer and his general lightened workload have made his usual summer vacation pretty unnecessary, he feels fit and fresh and isn’t standing there suffering all day in extreme heat. We’ll take low-mid 90’s over three months straight of 110 weather any freakin time, that’s for sure. Naturally though a couple weeks ago he decided to do a weird thing where his front legs stocked up like tree trunks as did a spot on the right side of his face. This isn’t the first time that’s happened, it used to be a once a year thing every May/June but it’s been a couple years since the last time. We never have been able to figure out if it’s something environmental or something he’s eating, or what. No idea. None of the other horses ever seem to have an issue, he never acts any different, never has a fever, never goes off his feed or anything (as if he would)… just gets swelly and itchy. And you can wrap/poultice/sweat/bute to your hearts content but nothing makes a difference. He has so many allergies and sensitivities that I’m betting it’s something related to that. Delicate flower.

In the past we’ve given him a little dex if it got too bad (like the time the swelling was in his sheath) but I try to avoid dex if at all possible, so I opted to just wait it out as long as it didn’t get worse. And indeed after a few days it did start to get better, and now his legs are totally normal again, he’s just got a little bump left on his nose. Mostly because I think he won’t stop rubbing it no matter how much anti-itch stuff I put on it. It’s not really causing an issue though aside from annoying the both of us, and it means that I have to use a real bridle with the noseband removed rather than his usual sidepull, which he thinks is rude. Otherwise though, it’s fine, and it’s gone down a little bit, so hopefully we’re past all the random elephantitis.

While Henry and I were at home doing some jompies, his brother spent the weekend in Tennessee showing at River Glen. Obviously I couldn’t go but I got a lot of updates and videos and I pre-ordered the All Photos package from the show photographer so I can still give you guys a full update on how the show went. I’m determined to actually wait for the pro photos this time though before I do the recap, so… stay tuned. We’ll circle back to that at some point this week (hopefully…). They already have the proofs up so maybe they’ll be quick to send the download link? One can hope.

I admittedly spent most of the weekend hitting refresh on Startbox and obsessively checking my phone for updates, and somewhere in all my stalking (River Glen did post their courses online, which was great) I saw this in the Novice course at Millbrook and thought it was interesting.

That’s a new one for me, never seen a bank question presented that way before. Looks like it rode just fine though. Millbrook in general looks beautiful, too bad it’s 1800 miles away. Why is all the best stuff so far from Texas (looking at you, Rebecca Farm, almost 2000 miles away).

Speaking of courses, I also saw this on Instagram:

Y’all. Omg. I could get a jump with Henry and Presto’s XC faces on it. Or their derp faces. On a scale of 1 to 10, how much “too much” would that be? I need it.

I get asked for Percy updates all the time, so clearly I’m not living up to expectations with the Percy content. Truthfully there wasn’t a lot to say when he was sequestered in his own small paddock. With him being born dysmature it takes quite a while for their joints and stuff to catch up, so they can’t be allowed to run around and be rowdy as much as the other foals. He’s also a good bit younger than the others, so he’d be smaller than them even without the dysmaturity factor, thus it took some time before he got cleared to go into a larger turnout or play with other foals. However… I’m pleased to say that the wait is over.

Percy’s progress has continued to be slow but steady, which is really a good thing. He’s continued to get stronger, his legs aren’t as lax, he’s more proportionate, and he’s filled out a bit.

He kind of does that thing where he fills out really nicely, then grows upward a ton and looks reedy again, then chunks back out, then shoots up, etc etc. Typical baby growth spurts, but his seems to cycle through a bit quicker than the others as his body tries to catch up.

But, he’s really mastered his legs now, and they’re strong enough to support him even when he leaps and gallops around like a normal foal.

So, given all that, it was time for him to join the rest of the herd.

Percy is a pretty bold guy naturally, and marched right over towards everyone.

Granted, he’s been sequestered by himself for so long, and it’s hard to join an established herd of boisterous outgoing babies and territorial mares, so once they got closer he got a little intimidated and decided to stick behind his mother a bit. Percy’s smart.

To literally no one’s surprise, Obi and Teddy were the first members of the welcoming committee to come say hello.

Teddy lost interest pretty quickly when she realized he wasn’t that entertaining.

Obi has decided he likes him though, (Obi likes everyone) and is really good at drawing the other babies out to join his mischief. Percy is no different and really hasn’t taken much convincing.

Obi took him under his wing and it didn’t take long before Percy was pretty much a fully integrated member of the crew.

Percy has done well out there with everyone so far, and has settled in pretty quickly. It’s easy to forget that he’s really not even 3 months old yet, he’s come quite a long way from that tiny wobbly little baby we first met. Hopefully he continues to flourish out there in his big pasture with his new friends.

Happy Friday, everyone!

I’m sure y’all have seen a lot of the chatter going on lately about USEF taking a hard look at revamping their amateur rules. There’s been a lot of discussions, a task force was created, and a few days ago they had a webinar about some of the ideas they’ve had/changes they’re looking at. A basic write-up of their ideas is here if you missed it. Admittedly, I didn’t watch the webinar, I just read the cliffs notes version. Mostly because I’m honestly just really tired of having the conversation at all.

I think eventing is the sport in which amateur vs pro classifications matter the least. Our divisions are rarely separated by amateur vs open, rather ours tend to either all just be open divisions or they’re divided into “Horse”, “Rider”, or “Open”. I think I’ve been in an actual Amateur division a grand total of once in my entire eventing career, and that was at AEC’s in 2015 where they split divisions every possible different way.

The way our classifications work in eventing is that “Horse” is for less experienced horses: A horse division is open to any competitors, but the horse cannot have completed an event above the next highest level. So for instance, no one could go enter Henry in a Novice Horse division, since he’s competed at Preliminary. A Novice Horse division could have pros on green horses, amateurs on lifelong low-level horses, etc.

Next is the “Rider” classification: A rider division is open to competitors who have not completed an event above the next highest level in the last five years. So basically since I’ve only competed through Prelim, I could enter Prelim Rider but I couldn’t enter Novice Rider. The rider divisions are also not limited to amateur or pro, only by the rider’s experience.

Last is the “Open” classification, which, as may be obvious, is open to any horse or rider of any experience, amateur or pro. Some people just always enter the Open divisions by default because it’s easiest (like Megan with Presto, she just always enters all of hers in Open, and that’s fine, you don’t HAVE to enter Horse or Rider even if you’re qualified for it) and it tends to shake out fine in the end anyway.

It’s slightly more complicated than that when you take into account FEI stuff (it’s all outlined here) but for the most part, that’s it. Pretty simple. However, one thing USEA currently DOES do is award “amateur placings” for points or championship qualification purposes. For instance, if someone who was classified as an amateur came in 3rd place overall but was the top placed amateur, they would get 1st place points toward their USEA amateur leaderboard ranking and would get a 1st place qualification towards championships. You don’t get any extra ribbons, heck you probably won’t even find out your amateur placing until the points get entered into USEA, but that’s the only place where amateurs can benefit a little bit. Honestly, I’d be totally fine with doing away with that and not even having an amateur classification at all. To me this whole amateur thing just seems way more freakin complicated than it’s worth. There’s got to be a better way, even if it’s something totally different than any sport has now, or with more classifications than I listed above.

So my question is – why would something akin to (even if not the same as) eventing’s approach not work for other disciplines too? I’ve come from the h/j world, and while it would be VERY different from how things are now, I can see it working. Honestly it’s a lot simpler than the way things are now with 9000 different things that amateurs can or cannot do under the rules and all the attempts to circumvent it or make allowances. The Horse/Rider/Open classifications also tend to sort themselves more fairly, IMO, because if I’m entered in a Rider division at least I’m not up against anyone who’s ridden at a much higher level.

Mostly though, I’m so tired of having the amateur conversation that I’m ready to just do away with it entirely. They don’t really use it in other countries either, so… why are we so twisted up in it? Is there really not a better, easier, simpler, way than writing a million rules about what people can or cannot do to keep an asinine status? Why are we clinging so tightly to this “amateur” classification in the first place?

Now that the dressage and eventing are done and dusted and half of the showjumping is done, now seems like as good a time as any for an Olympic style blog hop, while everything is still fresh in our minds.

So, tell me:

What’s been your favorite moment?

What horse you’d most like to ride?

What horse you’d most like to own?

What horse hadn’t you seen before that put itself on your radar?

What was your favorite cross country round?

What was your favorite dressage test?

What horse would you give the “good do-er” award?

What horse and rider looks to have the most fun partnership?

What’s been your favorite moment? Julia winning individual gold. That was just a super freaking exciting finish and a big #girlpower moment, how could I not pick it.

What horse you’d most like to ride? It is still, and probably always will be until the day he retires, Tullabeg Flameco. I just love the zest with which he does he job, how hard he tries, and how genuine he is. Sam often says that anyone could ride him and I volunteer as tribute to test that theory.

What horse you’d most like to play “owner” for? Omg, Vassily de Lassos hands down. What a fun horse that must be to own, and Andrew seems like one of the genuinely nicest riders on the planet.

What horse hadn’t you seen before that put itself on your radar? I’ve seen The Quizmaster before somewhere, I know, but I’ve never really SEEN The Quizmaster before. That horse really jumped out at me, loved the type, loved the jump and the overall style of the horse. It’s a shame they got a TE for jumping the combination wrong at the water, because the horse was really rocking and rolling around that course. Also interesting to me because it’s by Albaran xx, you know I love a good TB sire.

What was your favorite cross country round? How could I not say Vassily? He’s just incredible. I have to give a shout to Ballaghmor Class too though, Ollie really came out guns blazing and gave us all a riding lesson right out of the gate.

What was your favorite dressage test? Ok, none of the eventers had a really great dressage test except maybe Michi, so I’m gonna hop over to the real dressage folks for this one. I had two – the first was Sabine’s in the team final where she really stepped up and threw down a fantastic test to bump the US up to Silver. That was amazing to watch. And then of course how could I not pick “Rave Horse” – Steffan’s freestyle was really fun (two words I rarely say about dressage), and seeing it take off all over social media has been hilarious. I’ve seen more dressage TikTok’s from muggles in the past week than I ever imagined possible. Who knew dressage could go viral?

"OMG THEY'RE PLAYING MY SONG." – the horse at the club pic.twitter.com/xRNJ5N6acE

— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) July 31, 2021

What horse would you give the “good do-er” award? I’m torn between two eventers: Gurza and Tayberry. Gurza, bless her, made it work from some pretty questionable distances all weekend long. She never said no and never stopped trying, which of course makes sense because she’s a very high blood chestnut mare. So much heart in that one. And Tayberry, sweet tiny little wonderful 20 year old Tayberry, chugged right on through to the finish with his Chinese rider. He was slow but steady and they had a great completion. Both of those horses were just so kind and tried so hard for their people.

What horse and rider looks to have the most fun partnership? I loved DSP Fighting Line and Lea Seigl. She’s only 23 years old, the youngest rider in the eventing competition, and has come up through the international level along with that horse, who was a really fun little firecracker. You could tell they knew each other very well and even when he had a lot of yeehaw antics she just sat chilly and gave him a pat and went on with it. He tried his heart out for her and she rode him beautifully to finish 15th overall.

Tell me who your favorites were!