As we all know, the FEI decided to allow LDR (Long Deep Round) and ban Rollkur under the definition that Rollkur is “flexion of the horse’s neck achieved through aggressive force.” Fran Jurga, who operates The Jurga Report, which is my favorite source for horse health news, has produced an excellent aggregation of reactions to the FEI’s decision. This gets its own post because Fran was kind enough to link to our post ‘Rollkur: Why Should I Care?‘
One of the things I have enjoyed most about developing Eventing Nation is watching how different members of the equestrian media have responded to our presence. Some folks, such as EventingUSA, Samantha Clark of the HRN, the Chronicle Forums and now Fran Jurga have been extremely generous and have dramatically helped our growth, but other people have chosen to ignore us completely. Understand that I don’t have any ego in this respect; some people are just not comfortable with a site that covers eventing news in real time, or that does everything possible to get the fans involved, or that mixes humor with news, etc. Of course, these are the same people who think newspapers will still be around in 20 years.
Thankfully, most eventers don’t seem to share those concerns, and our rapid growth has blown away my expectations. With 1000 readers constituting a slow day, and a growth rate of doubling our daily visitors once a month since our inception, I feel a lot of pressure to deliver great content each day. Try feeling like you let 1000 readers down on a slow news day; it’s not fun. Getting links from excellent journalists, such as Fran, makes me feel like we did a good job and gives me a sense of excitement because I know that more people will get to enjoy the content that we work so hard to produce.
Eventing Nation is fundamentally a community, and all of our readers are part of the process, whether by telling your friends, sending us feedback, or just enjoying the experience. My point is that when people help to spread Eventing Nation by linking to us, I feel a great sense of gratitude and I hope you do too. So, thanks for the link Fran, and thank you everyone for being part of Eventing Nation. Go eventing.
