The final four Blogger Contest participants have sent us their final piece, and now we need your help deciding the winner. We will be posting their final articles today here on Bloggers Row, and we invite you to give us your feedback in the comments.
Keep an eye out for a voting post this week, and be sure to vote for your favorite as we will take the results of the poll into consideration when deciding on the winner. As a reminder, all posts will be published without editing in the interest of fairness.
Their final prompt:
EN’s resident freedom fighter Chinch is on a mission to better the sport of eventing. You’ve seen his campaign to return freedom of tweets to British Eventing members, and now he wants to write a letter of demands to the FEI. Help Chinch write his letter with at least three demands.
Here is our first finalist, Wendy Angel, and her version of Chinch’s demand letter to the FEI:
Original photo by Jenni Autry.
Dear FEI,
I’ve been reviewing the flow of events and rules at the FEI level, and I’m sorry to say that some things must change. Until then, I am holding Boyd Martin hostage, and your level of interest in eventing from women worldwide will dip dramatically. I am sure we don’t want that to happen.
Following are a list of my demands that need to happen to avoid this tragedy. Please take note.
1.) What the eff is up with your rider classifications and qualifications? This stuff reads like calculus, and chinches like me are not exactly known for high levels of literacy and math skills. Can’t we dumb this down a bit? I propose the following rider classifications:
Balls Lite™ (formerly known as “D”): You may have crapped your pants during your last event.
Training Balls™: You may have once crapped your pants at an event, but not within the past year.
Balls of Steel™: You are awesome and hardly ever get jump or time penalties. If you do, it’s because the light from your aura of awesome got in your eyes momentarily.
Flaming Balls of Steel™ (Formerly “A”): You ride through XC like you own that beotch with a smile on your face and the wind in your hair. You might even glitter. Rainbows follow you around course. Chuck Norris takes lessons from you. You don’t find good distances – the distances find YOU. Your horse can do tempi changes WHILE doing a canter pirouette. Yeah, I’m not even kidding. George Morris is jealous of you. You don’t even have to navigate water complexes; they part for you. You are the most interesting rider in the world.
2.) You know how courses have jump options? I think we need to allow an option to totally skip a combination. Like a “best 24/25 jumps” sort of thing. See a coffin that makes you want to vomit and hug your mama? No problem! Option that puppy right out. Or maybe we need a “mulligan” option. You decide.
3.) And I know that you guys have rules regarding horse welfare. I’ve been talking to my horse compadres, and they still feel like they are being generally mistreated in the most shameful ways. They would like to see mandatory end-of-event massages, a bucket of beer in every stall, and a pet goat issued to every horse for company. The ponies get lonely at night, yo.
4.) And speaking of welfare, I think we need to look out for our riders better too. I think every rider should be issued a beer upon completion of the XC. And upon NONcompletion of a XC course, riders will be issued a flask of single-barrel whiskey. Actually, let’s go ahead and institute this across even non-FEI levels, all the way down to terrified adults doing Tadpole divisions. They probably need it the most.
So until these demands are met…. The pretty man stays with me. Don’t even bother to send Phillip Dutton after him. I can take him.
Regards,
Chinch
