Recently in Katie Lindsay Category

When it became evident late last year that the Maui Jim Horse Trials were destined to become a thing of the past, Mike Dalton, the CEO of Maui Jim, Inc., asked what we could do to keep the tradition of the event going given its new legally imposed constraints. He generously agreed to continue his company's support of a competition designed to include both experienced riders and riders new to the sport. Thus the Eventing Derby Series was created that would take place entirely on the extravagantly landscaped grounds of Lamplight Equestrian Center in July and in August. 

Never being one to overtrain for anything, I dove head first into putting the Derbies together even though I had never actually seen one. In late March, a friend in Tucson had invited me out to see the Derby that was scheduled to run at Grass Ridge. I jumped at the chance to escape from the Chicago winter for a weekend never dreaming that it would snow in Tucson and the Derby would be cancelled. Best laid plans and all that. 

My theory of organizing is to hire the very best possible professionals I can afford so I hired Jon Wells to do the courses with some building additions by an up and coming local builder, Joel Nielsen. Having worked with Rick Dunkerton and evententries.com for the past five Maui Jim's and three AEC's. I whined pitifully to him, and he agreed to come and score and work his scheduling and secretarial magic. (I expect he capitulated to shut me up. Wise choice!) Cyndi Kurth from Florida came on board to announce the first one, (giving a whole new meaning to the word FISH), along with Cindy de Porter who is a crackerjack and fun official, and who agreed to be head judge and do a half day's "Ride a Test" prior to the start of the actual competition. This great nucleus was bolstered by the hard working, enthusiastic and experienced core of volunteers who had made Maui and the Illinois AEC's run like clockwork. 

While designing the prize list and schedule, a wonderful new feeling of freedom descended upon me. Mind you, my organizing experience had always been within the confines of USEF and FEI rules as well as USEA "recommendations." All of a sudden, I realized that there were no rules in this venture so consequently, with a ton of consulting with Rick, we made up our own. I felt like a kid who'd been let out of a Catholic boarding school! 

Basically, we ran in three parts over two and a half days - a shortish jumping test, dressage, and a longer jumping test. The courses combined show jumps and some newly built cross country portables. The levels offered were Starter, Beginner Novice, Novice and Training. Preliminary will be offered in August. Horses could enter two consecutive levels, and two riders could compete the same horse. We geared it toward riders who may never otherwise have the chance to compete at a "big time" facility like Lamplight, and we kept the entry fees low. Following the National trend, entries were late coming in which is understandable, albeit a bit hairy in terms of planning. Dress code was minimal -  boots and helmets and proper Dressage tack being required. 

A marvelous collection of over a hundred horses competed. One young lady was riding a paint who started out life as a circus horse. The winner of the Master (40 and over) Amateur on an Off The Track Thoroughbred award (which was donated by Seema Sonnad, a generous supporter of our efforts), was a 23 year old who raced until he was 8 and had carried his former owners through a couple of NAYRC's. There was every breed imaginable - a Fresian cross, some POA's, a Shetland cross, a saddlebred, a few Arabians, a pair of Selle Francais and a few warmbloods in addition to Thoroughbreds, quarter horses and various and sundry color breeds.  We pinned through tenth place and offered a ton of goodies donated by generous vendors and our wonderful sponsor, Maui Jim. 

A couple of days to recover from a blow out dinner a friend gave on Sunday night, (in retrospect, doing Kalashnikov shooters after dinner is not exactly a great idea!), and we'll start gearing up for the August Derby on the 13th, 14th and 15th. We will be tweaking some of the rules, but intend to maintain the same relaxed and low key atmosphere in a big time environment that marked the maiden effort. I'm happy that thanks to Maui Jim, Inc., we were able to put some of the fun back in eventing! (I just got a call from Mike Dalton who was in Sardinia at the time (!). I had sent him a quick report/thank you e mail about the weekend, and he was very excited about its success. What a class act!) 

RULES' DEATH SPIRAL 

I am a devoted fan of figure skating at the "upper levels." Watching a successful quad or an incredible pairs performance is almost as exciting to me as watching WFP romp around the Rolex course. (I do, however, admit to drawing the fan line at Ice Dancing "PT and D"- Post Torvill and Dean!). I have admired clips of the Protopopovs doing their signature "Death Spiral" in their Gold Medal performance in the early 50's and still marvel at it even though the only time I saw them live three decades later, they looked terribly frail. If you've never seen a death spiral, it's very cool. The male skater stands and holds the hand of his female counterpart who spirals in a circle around him sinking lower and lower with each rotation.   

So what exactly is the point of my nattering on about this? Probably not much except that it recently struck me that the rules in our sport today, perhaps reflective of the rules that govern all of our lives, are in a kind of death spiral. Instead of working to make the rules that govern us less complicated and more easily understood, it seems that we are adding more and more in response to specific incidents that arise - and may or may not ever arise again. We have in effect become incident-specific "reactive" rather than globally "proactive." 

All this pondering was actually prompted by a conference call I took part in several weeks ago. One of the participants, a well respected official, was relating an incident that had occurred at an event the weekend before. The parent of a child was claiming that the dimensions of a jump on a Beginner Novice course exceeded specifications. In this case, the point in question was the depth of a shallow ditch. The concerned parent apparently became somewhat argumentative.  The official took the time to talk with her at length, and hopefully a positive resolution and some education resulted. Someone on the call then suggested that perhaps we need a specific rule governing the exact depth of  ditches at that level. At that point, I'm ashamed to admit that I lost it and inquired (not at all sweetly) why the Hell we had to make a rule for every (bleep)ing thing in our sport - or something to that effect. Following an embarrassed silence, a quick change of subject ensued.   

Unless one is a total anarchist, rules are necessary evils. If everyone behaved at all times and always did the honorable and right thing, there'd be far fewer - but that's not the way it is. Looking at our own eventing rules, something that I have done for many years, I think they break down into two categories - Necessary and P.I.T.A. Necessary rules are those that strive to ensure safety for horse and rider and maintain the same conditions as much as possible for everyone across the board. Emergency requirements and fence types and dimensions for each level of expertise fall into this category (although the latter seem to be creeping into the "guidelines" category which in my opinion is not necessarily an entirely good thing). P.I.T.A. rules are those that have absolutely no bearing on safety or performance. Why in God's name should the absence of gloves in dressage at the FEI level be punishable by elimination? Does a tail bandage or length of sleeves or wearing a stock when going without coats really make a difference in how a horse performs or in rider safety? 

I also am fighting the nagging and rather nasty thought that keeps skittering across my brain that these "added on" new rules are coming into being partly because the officials who are responsible for enforcing the rules lack the experience - or skill - or balls - or whatever to make any call without a specific published rule to back it up.  Instead of making calls that speak to thespirit and intent of a rule, they cry out for something in print that will precisely justify their ruling. Granted, it's a helluva lot safer and easier to point to a sentence in the rule book than to actually take the time to educate the person inquiring about the situation. This is lame. A large and particularly unpleasant reason for this tendency is that many officials have expressed a fear of being sued. How sad is that? And how sad is it that a beginner novice rider would even contemplate calling a lawyer over disputed time faults? But it's happened. I occasionally find myself asking if I really want to be associated with this sport any more! 

Upon rereading all this, I admit to sounding pretty negative about the current state of the sport of eventing. Possibly this is a result of having experienced a particularly crappy week - but that is no excuse. I love this sport, but I do also span a generation gap that had it's start in a kinder, gentler and less intense time. I think we do tend to take ourselves a little too seriously and forget the reason why most of us choose to stay involved. Eventing provides an environment that promotes a wonderful rapport between man and horse, and if I choose to carp about what I see are some flaws, it is only in hopes of giving a needed half halt - a jolt that will force us to step back a pace and examine where we are going and why. 

Back to my bat cave! 

From Katie:

(No, this is not a Nike commercial!) 

I've finally emerged from my spring officiating back to back, (Twin Rivers, Rolex Kentucky and Jersey Fresh), and I'm glad to have a reprieve from flailing my way through O'Hare Airport at all hours of the day and night. (Believe me, that's a creepy damn place at 5 AM after a red eye!) It's good to be home, too many loads of laundry notwithstanding, and also good to have a little distance in order to evaluate everything I've seen in the past month. 

First of all, a big shout out to Mike E-S, Derek DiGrazia and John Williams for their courses at these events. I was happy to see that the tracks at both Rolex and Jersey were more open, "gallopy" and straightforward than they were last year. Horses actually had the time to look at and understand a problem before tackling it - and I think the good results reflected this trend. Kudos! Hopefully the popularity of the "show jumping without walls" kinds of courses that seemed to have been the trend in the last decade has waned?  

Horses can't run any faster, jump any higher, or think any faster than they did at the turn of the century. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Greyhound still holds the world's trotting record for a mile and a half that he set in the 30's? And how many Triple Crown winners have we seen in the past 25 years? Yet we have asked these wonderful animals to jump higher, run faster, and react quicker than they are capable of by endorsing a course design philosophy featuring one cluster of very technical problems after another separated by straight galloping stretches Start, stop, start, stop ... Safety wise, this hasn't turned out very well at all. (One reason given for this kind of design is to create prime cross country viewing areas for potential sponsors. Yikes. Can you spell tail wagging the dog?) 

I had an interesting chat at Jersey with Eric Smiley, the President of the Ground Jury. My mother always used to say that everyone needs a little bit of Irish to survive in this world. Being a typical daughter, I ignored her. Silly old woman. However, while listening to Eric, I had a huge head slapping, "aha" moment. It seemed that many years after the fact, I finally got what Mom was talking about. Eric couldn't be more Irish if he were wearing a green top hat and weird pointy shoes, and in the course of one of our conversations in which I was ranting in a somewhat agitated and pissed off manner, he said something that stopped me cold and essentially summed up the feelings I've been struggling with about the current state of this sport we all love. Let me elaborate and expand.   

I was whining about something or other that had happened during the day, and he looked at me and said calmly "It would appear that we have lost the ability to get out there and just do it." This simple comment shone a spotlight for me on why we all seem to be having so many problems getting along and communicating with each other. He was speaking at that moment from a rider's perspective, using as an example the time he had entered Badminton during a rainy spring season. (Is there any other kind in Ireland?). He had only done one hunter trial as a warm up. "I didn't ask Hugh Thomas to change the course for me. I just kicked harder and would have pulled up if I'd had to." Bingo.  

I think the advice to just soldier on and do it is applicable to everyone involved in our sport, not just riders. We organizers tend to overthink and obsess about things. It's in our job description. "If we increase entry fees, will we lose entries?" "If we invest in stabling, will it attract more riders?" "If we ask judge X to officiate, will trainer Z boycott us?" There comes a time in every organizer's life when he or she needs to throw caution to the winds, stop intellectualizing, take the plunge, and just do what feels right. That of course doesn't negate sleepless nights - but most organizers have these anyway! 

Officials face decisions many times during the course of a competition, and here too the principle of "just doing it" should come into play. The least effective officials are the ditherers. These hapless souls wont make a decision without agonizing stretches of time spent dithering about it. What rule covers this? Will a decision cause an ugly confrontation? Will I get sued? Maybe if I don't answer, the problem will go away. I was a T.D. for a very long time, and during my tenure, came to the (over simplified) conclusion that people who ask questions generally don't really care whether the response is a thumbs up or a thumbs down - they just want an appropriate answer in an appropriate length of time. Of course this is a rank generalization, but essentially, I think the philosophy holds true. The two tenets that must be followed in such situations are what is the intent of the rule, and how can a playing field be made level for all? Come to think of it, these two questions should never be too far from anyone's mind when dealing with eventing problems! 

Sadly we live in a "cover your ass" generation in which society habitually shifts blame to everyone else. (Look at the BP/Halliburton tap dance about the oil spill in the Gulf if you want a glaring example.)   Maybe it's time for all of us, at least in our sport and no matter how we're involved, to start accepting responsibility for the outcome and just do it. Maybe then we can start communicating in a reasonable way and solving problems without endless dithering and Ego-testing.  

        END