Congratulations to Shaun White for destroying the competition last night and taking home Gold for the USA. Watching Shaun win reminded me that the complete domination he has shown for so many years in snowboarding is nearly impossible in eventing. When Shaun shows up at a competition, everyone else knows they are going to lose, even to Shaun’s b-game.
But in eventing, the horse component adds a much higher element of risk. When I say risk, I mean statistical deviation of results due to chance (think luck). The point is that horses get abcesses, they get hot nails, they strain tendons, sometimes they don’t feel like jumping, sometimes they jump one inch lower than they need to, sometimes they get startled by the crowd, top owners decide they can’t afford a horse any more, etc. None of these things happen completely randomly, but they are much more out of a rider’s control than say training 8 hours a day to deliver a perfect half-pipe round. For Shaun White, he has incredible talent and when he mixes that talent with hard work he is a sure bet to win. To rephrase my point, one of the most frustrating things about riding for me is that while there is a strong correlation between hard work and achievement, this correlation is lower than most other sports.
The good news is that due to Shaun’s win and several other strong performances last night, the USA now leads the medal count by 4 over Germany. As British soccer football fans chant when they play the German national team: if you won the Great War, stand up.
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If you are one of our three readers who never looks at comments, please check out yesterday’s tag-line post, which has gotten a great response. It seems like (5) is getting the most love, although I have to agree with Lisa that (7) made me laugh really hard.
Also, it seems that our spike in FB friend requests is due, at least in part, to Dana D. who told me that she sent out a bunch of “friend suggestions” to try to spread the word about EN. Also, Lauren was kind enough to tag us in her status which also probably helped. I get friend requests on my phone, and when I woke up this morning the entire front page of my messages was filled with requests. Thanks guys for helping more people to learn about EN!
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Oh yeah, and there are a couple of events this weekend:
Rocking Horse Winter III HT
: Homepage, Weather, Ride Times, Live Scores Notes: Finally some good weather expected at events this year. Also, for the live scores from Event Entries, at least on my computer, I have to hit ‘refresh’ to view the live scores after the competition starts.
gO eVeNtInG
