Friday we announced our Second Annual Blogger Contest finalists; now we’re bringing you their entries in two installments.
Herein we’ve got Jenni Autry, Emily Daignault, Kristen Janicki and Jen Mayfield, all unedited for fairness’ sake. Stay tuned for Lauren Nethery, Yvette Seger, Judith Stanton and Ellyn Willis.
Click “Read More” at the bottom of this post to view each contestant’s bio and entry, then leave your feedback in the comments section. Your input is important to us.
Go Bloggers.
___________________
Jenni Autry:
Bio: Jenni Autry is a 26-year-old eventer from Mechanicsburg, Pa., who serves as a magazine editor by day and a boxed wine connoisseur by night. She answered E — “bring me my meals, I live here” — to Denny Emerson’s recent Facebook poll about the severity of one’s Eventing Nation addiction. She writes regularly for Pennsylvania Equestrian.
************
Emily Diagnault:
Hi my name is Emily and I would like to be an EN blogger. Why? Because after 10 concussions, numerous broken bones, of course stitches, I feel that sitting behind a computer and pontificating on the active Eventing lives of others will lead me to riches beyond my wildest dreams! (Or it would be a sizeable difference in my bank account balance without frequent doctor and ER visits!) You see long before EN there was another website with the ground breaking idea to follow the upper levels of Eventing and put up live streaming audio and video event reports and give internet savvy folks the most up to the moment news as it happened. And I was the Eventing Correspondent! Sadly however it was 2001 and the average internet connection was 56k over a phone line. You know that old dial up sound of “Whirr, blip blip, bong.” AOL says “You’ve got mail!” and life was good. Except that it wasn’t. Only about 10,000 people across the US could hear and see our reports. This was great in its own way was great because the little “oops” moments of life didn’t make it very far. Like at Rolex, when I asked Ian Stark on camera did he think being British gave him an advantage on Mike E-S’s course as there are so many of them in the UK…and in mid-sentence he stopped me and said “I’m Scottish dear.” Ooo yea, journalism rule # 1, know your subject.
************
–
Kristen Janicki:
Name: Kristen Janicki, BS, MS, PAS
Background:
• I have my Bachelor’s degree in Animal Sciences from the University of Illinois, and my Master’s degree in Equine Nutrition from the University of Kentucky.
• The PAS stands for Professional Animal Scientist; not to be confused with POS.
• I am currently the Performance Horse Nutritionist for Mars horsecare us, inc. Mars horsecare produces the Buckeye Nutrition brand of equine products. My specialization is with all English disciplines, but especially Eventing. I secured our sponsorship of Allison Springer and her barn full of horses due to my smooth sales techniques/stalking abilities. This year, Allison and Arthur were the winners of the 2012 Pinnacle Cup and Best Conditioned Horse at Rolex and US Eventing Team alternate for the 2012 Olympic Games.
• Two years ago, I “purchased” a 3 year old Thoroughbred named Smokin’ Bobby Joe with the intent of training him to event. It has been a journey retraining this horse that included several highs and lows.
Age: 36
************
–
Jen Mayfield:
Age: 27
Background: Grown-up former Pony Clubber and event brat-turned pastor’s wife (no joke!) in Southern Maryland and catch riding everything that comes her way. Rode up through Intermediate, qualified for Maclay Finals in the dark ages, and just moved east from St. Louis, where she worked at an advertising agency and rode/taught at an A barn.
************
The blogger contestants’ full submissions–
Jenni Autry:
Entry: I first interviewed Boyd Martin in March 2009, not long after he changed nationalities to ride for the U.S.
That was about six months prior to Eventing Nation’s launch — what did we do with our spare time back then? — and, consequently, my knowledge of Boyd was essentially limited to the fact that he took a rather spectacular fall off Ying Yang Yo at the Head of the Lake the previous spring at Rolex.
Hints of Boyd’s now famous fortitude and grit pepper that short question-and-answer piece I wrote. He spoke of his goals for his top horses at the time, Neville Bardos, Benwald and Remington XXV. Otis Barbotiere was just a distant dream then.
My second interview with Boyd came on a very different day, one week after the devastating fire ripped through his barn at True Prospect Farm — a story we now all know by heart but wish we didn’t.
I would be lying if I said I couldn’t hear the raw emotion in his voice that day. The nightmare was still real, something Boyd spoke about openly and honestly. But that fortitude and grit rose to the surface again; after all, it takes balls to a punch a fire chief in the face.
But there was so much more to the story than Boyd’s heroic actions. Bonnie Stedt — who lost her beloved Cagney Herself in the fire — touched on that when I interviewed her for the piece: “The fact that he ran back into the burning barn to save Neville is a testament to true horsemanship.”
Ever humble, Boyd downplayed his dash into that barn, choosing to speak instead of Neville’s road to recovery: “Something inside me tells me he still has more to give and we will see him competing on an international level again.”
How prophetic his words proved to be. My third interview with Boyd came three months later, after he and Neville rocketed around Burghley to an impressive seventh-place finish. The horse that had been knocking on death’s door mere weeks before had essentially flipped the odds the bird.
But even with his Olympic chances looking more promising than ever, Boyd still maintained his humble attitude — something about him I was beginning to understand more and more.
“One thing I’ve learned over the last decade in this sport is to concentrate on the day-to-day aspect and everything else will work itself out,” he said.
My fourth and most recent interview with Boyd is perhaps the most memorable, if only because he was in Germany for Luhmuhlen at the time and I wasn’t entirely sure how to reach him.
Tasked with writing an Olympic preview piece, I knew it would be tricky to speak with Boyd via phone, as he was traveling straight from Bromont in Canada to Germany. I naively envisioned catching him between flights.
After a failed attempt to leave him a voicemail message the day after the Olympic short list announcement — his inbox was full, unsurprisingly — I shot him an email, hoping the eventing gods would help me get the interview.
He responded about a half-hour later: “Can you call me using Viber?” Cue my panic attack as I frantically wonder what. the. hell. is. Viber? A quick Google search showed Viber is an iPhone app that lets you make free calls overseas. Mercifully, I have an iPhone; the eventing gods were watching over me after all.
My interviews with Boyd spanned four very different events over three years — changing nationalities, losing six horses in a tragic barn fire, making a comeback at Burghley and being named to the Olympic short list.
But as I read back over the stories that resulted from those interviews, I’m struck by how much Boyd remained the same: always humble, ever resilient, a true horseman.
“At the end of the day, horse and rider have to believe in each other and trust each other,” he said in our most recent interview. “It might be a great feeling to have the applause, but it’s the same old Boyd …”
I couldn’t agree more. Go Boyd.
************
Emily Daignault:
But along with the embarrassing moments came some truly memorable things that being around the top events in the early 2000’s allowed me to see. From Rolex and Foxhall to Fair Hill and Morven the years continued on with stellar performances from horses & riders who are icons of our sport now. I stood beside the rail in Kentucky for Biko’s retirement ceremony and cried. I sat with the fence judge at Foxhall and watched the first and last time a Rolls Royce was used as a XC jump…and what happens when a horse and rider drift off their line over it! I laughed to the point of tears listening to the top 3 riders each day at the Rolex daily press conferences. (Let me tell you, sailors were blushing around Karen and Mark Todd) and so much more. I enjoyed living and sharing the nomadic event lover’s life and I miss those days of wandering around enormous courses longing to feel the rush of adrenaline and your heart in your throat as you go from dreaming your dream to living it out loud.
Now I am admittedly more old school. I have never worn an air vest, and I shudder to think of the kind of impact that would yield one useful. I have worked in all disciplines in all capacities and I will tell you that a winning working hunter round at Devon is as tough as Rolex any year and more so in the rain. If you think a novice cross country round is ‘fast” it’s only because you haven’t breezed a triple-crown horse at Belmont. (Or possibly because you were matching that speed and if so…yikes!) I have ridden in a real steeplechase race, well admittedly only 2 fences of it and then came concussion number 7, but still it was a WILD ¼ of a mile. All of these vast experiences and many more I’ve had have helped me to appreciate our sport and all the horses and people who make up this quilt of our Eventing Nation. And I know things have changed, but the foundation is still there. The strides I saw Bruce and Eagle Lion gallop by are the same that Buck takes now. The scope that Poltroon had in abundance is alive and in action with Shiraz. And the ghosts of event horses past are striding alongside with the best horses of today. Through it all I feel blessed to have stood alongside the galloping lanes and watched as the great conquered the courses and the wise learned and came back stronger the next time.
So that’s me.
************
Kristen Janicki:
Fifty Shades of Insanity…in the Middle!
Recently, I was taking a long trip with a friend of mine to judge a horse show. We happened upon the topic of eventing, and he made the comment “You eventers are nuts! Are you purposefully trying to injury yourselves?” The exact incident that we were discussing prior to this outlandish statement was Will Coleman’s horse, Cool Connection, being impaled by a flag on cross country at Jersey Fresh. My friend said, and I quote, “What are those flags made of? Wood?!?” Why, yes, in fact they are made of wood (until August 1st of this year per new USEA guidelines). Duh. And thus started an entire debate on whose discipline is crazier.
Every equine discipline has some level of risk involved. Some are plainly obvious even to the untrained eye, such as vaulting. First there is the horse itself, commonly a very tall, very heavy draft type, cantering on a lunge line. As if that was not in itself enough of a risk, let’s kick it up a notch and do gymnastics on said horse…while it is cantering on the lunge line. Oh no, wait, that’s not enough! Let’s add several people doing gymnastics on said horse while it is cantering. Add spandex and glitter to the mixture, and for some of us, that’s a big enough risk alone to pass on vaulting.
Some disciplines are disguised as “fun” to make one think that there is no risk involved, such as speed events. This includes barrel racing and the lesser known event of flag racing. My aforementioned friend just so happens to be a barrel racer. What’s so risky about barrel racing, you ask? Well, first off, you are on a horse that will go from 0 to 200 mph like being shot out of a gun. Then, there are the barrels, which are made of metal and can easily take out a shin. Finally, you are on said horse going Mach 20 and headed towards the finish line, which is about 20 feet before a closed gate and praying to every God there is that this horse has brakes. In case you aren’t familiar with flag racing, let me explain the concept. There are 3 barrels in the same formation as barrel racing. On the 2 barrels nearest to the start/finish line, there are buckets of sand and a wooden stick. The object is to pick up the flag from the first bucket, run all the way around the far barrel, and stick the flag in the opposite bucket in the fastest time. Do you see where I’m going with this? Running full out on a horse with questionable stopping ability and a wooden stick in your hand around metal barrels. Where do I sign up!?!
To me, eventing combines all different levels of risk, but to no greater amount than any sporting event on horseback. As you go up the levels of any discipline, the risk increases, and those who choose to take that challenge usually become the greatest athletes of their trade. What if Steffen Peters chose to go no further than First Level? Or if David O’Connor topped off at Preliminary? No, I probably will never run a four star in my life, but those risk-takers are what make me love this sport. Even though I am eventing at a completely different level, it was those inspirational athletes and their horses that made me say sign me up! So, next time someone says to me “Eventing?? Are you nuts?!” I will not become defensive, but lift my head high, smile and say “Yep. Fifty Shades!”
************
Jen Mayfield:
How to survive a 10 hour + haul without turning into a zombie:
Anybody who happens to live in the Midwest/ Northwest/ Southwest (i.e, more than 10 steps from the Atlantic) knows you have to miss a lot of school/work I mean, travel a lot, to event competitively at the upper levels. By the time I was 19, my rig (a 97’ suburban and a 2 horse straight-load) had been through 40 states just to get to shows and various indentured servant working student positions that took me from Florida to Vermont. Vis a vis Kansas. Come to think of it, that may be why I didn’t know half of my senior class in high school.
Most eventers have a lot of travel time. And for those of us who don’t spend the duration of our travel keeping a business running, there’s a lot of free time. What do you listen to, when you hit hour 10, and you’ve eaten so much junk food that you’re at risk for self-enbalming? My top 3:
1. Click and Clack. Please tell me you know who these two jokers are! Hosts of NPR’s “Car Talk” since eventing was a military sport, they know more about cars than Meg Kep knows about Tate, and they’re also hilarious to boot. Click and Clack also come in handy, because more than once, you’ve probably had a problem that they’ve already solved with a wrench and WD-40, which are already in your stud kit. Does it get better than that? Nope.
2. Garth Brooks “Double-Live” CD. When desperate measures call for…well…desperate measures, Coldplay isn’t going to cut it, no matter how snooty sophisticated your musical palate is. If a crowd of 500,000 drunk, raving lunatics, screaming along to “Friends in Low Places” isn’t going to keep you awake, sorry friend, you need to pull over. Also, these are essential songs to learn full lyrics to, and no better place than “alone in a truck driving down the road in god-knows-where” to practice.
Last but not least…
3. Any college radio station, if you’re lucky enough to be in a receiving area. Every college radio host believes they are “the most eclectic” music aficionado who has ever breathed oxygen. The music may suck, and the band names may be too opaque to remember, but you will stay on your toes, because no one else is stupid brave enough to throw opera, metal, house, and funk into the same 2-4 am timeslot. Also, if you ever get into a drinking contest that involves band names or CD titles, this little trick could help you earn you a title (or two) at competitor’s parties.
As event season continues throughout the summer, my advice to you now is to get on your computer, find Garth, introduce yourselves to Click and Clack, and “get connected” to the local music scenes you’ll be waving at as you pass by. Go Eventing!
