Dr Mark Hart, a former fire fighter and long time supporter of US eventing shared his excitement about the sport’s future with Eventing Nation recently, as well as some background about how he originally got hooked on eventing and what keeps him in the game, and why he thinks syndication is so important in this day and age.
We have Mark’s daughter Megan to thank for introducing him to eventing on the West Coast, when she took up the sport aged nine. From school horses, to leased horses and finally making the big leap and buying their own, Mark remembers fondly those long drives to horse trials at weekends, “There’s only one event in the state of Oregon, so the closest event other than that is four or five hours away. When you have a a young kid you have to drive them; sometimes we’d have to leave on a Thursday, essentially in the middle of night, and wouldn’t get home until early early Monday morning, just for a horse trial and they’d ride for all of what fourteen minutes total in a weekend, but as a dad, especially with a daughter, it was kind of neat to enjoy it together.”
When I ask Mark later what stands out over the years that he’s been involved with the sport, this is one of them,”On a personal level watching my daughter going around NAYRC clear on her OTTB which was her first team competition. There’s that special connection, especially between women and their horses, I don’t think any human can fill that void.” The other most memorable moment came during the 2006 World Equestrian Games at Aachen. By that time, Mark laughs as he recounts that he had, almost by accident, become a part owner of Amy Tryon’s horse Poggio as Amy and he shared the firefighter bond, and Amy was helping Megan, and he wanted to return the favour. Two Olympic Games and two WEGs later he acknowledges how lucky he got, “as Mark Phillips said this is the luckiest luck I’d ever known, the most backward way to get into buying a horse, it was just amazing the way it worked out!” Poggio won an individual bronze at those Championships, but it wasn’t the prize-giving, or standing on the podium that Mark cherishes, “Just before the Awards Ceremony I got to spend some time grazing him, just him and I, and being there and being part of it. For Poggio it was amazing, he was such a special horse but certainly no one ever expected him to be an individual medal horse, especially at the WEG which is the toughest of all the competitions, and I was just so proud of him, the little horse that could, it was so neat, and of course for Amy too and all that she’d done with him. Poggio wasn’t the horse that won a lot of horse trials, he wasn’t a flashy guy but he sure knew when it was time to put on the game face at the big events.”
Laine Ashker grazing Anthony Patch at Rolex
Mark has spent many years since the early days driving his daughter to events improving the sport he loves, which takes up a considerable amount of his precious time, and I wonder why he does it,
“This sport is a passion for all of us: eventing is probably the most egalitarian sport that there is – where else do you have a twelve year old kid and an Olympian in the same venue? Where do you have men competing with women in the same venue? Where do you have that Olympic horse and that OTTB in Beginner Novice there competing on the same weekend? To me, and a lot of other people in this sport, it’s incredible. It’s not only about the people but about the horses, and that is the common thread that makes us all a community. Watching that horse and what they do on cross country…to me they neatest thing is to see them in the start box, they know what’s coming up and they want to go! Then sometimes sitting on the finish line is almost as much fun as watching them over the jumps – when you see them cross the line and the riders are ecstatic and the horses have the same gestures, you’ve all seen that look in the eye of some of those horses, they’re just like, ‘Let me go again because I can just rip up this course!’ What we ask of these horses are amazing and they’re incredible equine athletes and that’s what keeps us all in the sport, whether it’s watching somebody go around their first Beginner Novice or being at the Olympics and watching your horse competing for the US team, that thrill is there and there is something about it that combines those two levels which is super-exciting. The people that are involved in the sport are all in it for that reason too. God knows we have this huge variety of people, but what brings us all together and keeps us going forward is that passion for the horses. It is a unique sport. For me personally, the people that I’ve met along the way that I never would have met otherwise will be lifelong friends , we’re all from different areas of the world and from different walks of life and although it’s a very tight-knit community it’s open to everybody to be as involved as they want to be to get the top. I was never an athlete, I could never have done any of this but I feel part of the team helping them get there, that this is what I can do to get them there, and that’s a pretty special feeling.”
“It all started with a dinner conversation in Aachen in 2006 with the team. David (O’Connor), myself and Jim Wolf started talking about the future and we talked about coming in to eventing as an outsider, not someone who’d been steeped in it for 30 years, and really in the United States it’s quite a weak model to get people to the top. We started talking about the owners and what they can do, and about how important it was to have everybody involved on the same page and go forward, and so after those initial discussions we then had multiple meetings at Rolex with some of the riders, and more meetings with all the other owners, to come up with a way that was transparent and everybody trusted everybody that we were trying to do the same thing, to get our team to the top but it really wasn’t officially formed by David in his role as USEF President until 2008. It’s kind of exciting that we went from that to two of the five horses in syndication that we helped put together at the Olympics in London this summer, it was pretty amazing to go from zero to that in just four, short years. ExperienceEventing.com is the online presence. When we looked at what we needed to do, the two charges were expanding the eventing ownership base and to enhance the ownership experience in the United States. We discovered a lot of things along the way and we wanted to be able to share that with a broad range of people, whether it’s a young kid just trying to organise herself with her friends and family, or somebody who’s on the team – we wanted to make those resources available to everybody to explain it, and the best way to do it these days is social media; this is just the first generation of what we want to do. We hopefully will have some blogs there down the road, forums where people can exchange information, we’re making syndications available all the way from team riders to rising stars so the pathways are evolving every year, but it serves everyone from a twelve year old girl with dreams of one day making it to the Olympics to your Sinead or Boyd who need horses to stay on the team, it’s available to everybody, and that’s the way to get the information out there. With the task force we’re not done. Do we have all the answers? No! We’re learning more with every single new syndication, every new meeting, all the feedback we get from people, it’s a work in progress. We’re all volunteers, we’re trying hard, we don’t know all the answers but it’s great to see people stepping up to the plate and being supporters. I’m really excited.”
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“The enthusiasm and the excitement at the meeting from everybody, from the team riders to volunteers to organizers to the grass roots of our sport was so exciting, and neat to see because I think some years ago the USEA was a little bit divided into ‘us and them’ and Kevin Baumgardner did a great job of leading us through that, and Brian (Sabo) has continued, emphasizing that we’re all in this together, this is OUR sport and that it’s for everybody. The Task Force is created to bring owners in, it’s a two way communication street, not just for owners to talk to USEF but also vice versa to enable a flow of information. I think we’ve done a good job in the last couple of years. David thought it was so important that the owners be represented that he and the EOTF chair are the only two non-voting advisory members to the USEF Eventing High Performance Committee. This way all the owners know they’re being represented, and again, that just adds that transparency and that communications back and forth. We’ll schedule team dinners for owners at competitions, even if their horse isn’t running at that particular event. We’ll have course walks on the Friday evening with the owners and the Coach, all these things to provide that enhanced ownership experience. What’s just as important now is we’re changing the culture that it has to be just one owner and one rider; it’s ok now to own parts of syndicates for several different riders because you’re cheering on the team, and whether it’s your horse, or your syndicate rider or somebody else’s, I think it’s that camaraderie and that team spirt, you’re rooting just as hard for them, whether your horse ultimately made it onto the list I think we all know in the end a lot of that comes down to luck, and the fact that your’e still out there cheering and rooting them on means a lot to me, to see that kind of teamwork to make it all happen. Let’s take Sinead Halpin’s Tate and Cue for example: it’s just as exciting to watch your horse go around Burghley as it is to watch your six year old go around a prelim, and if you talk to almost all the owners that have had horses go around both they do get an incredible thrill out of watching the young horses move up the ranks, and being at the horse trials, it’s such a different atmosphere, and it’s the whole process – it’s the journey and not the destination. Yes, of course it’s great to get to the Olympics but to be honest with you over the last fifteen years most of my memories are not from the Olympics or from the World Games, they’re funny little stories that happened at horse trials or things that happened at other events, those are all of the things that come together. Being part of both is exciting, and that’s where we want to go with the sport too; Tate at some point will get older and then Cue is coming up, and this is what we need to do to make our riders maximize their potential. We all know about that one four star horse but it’s better for the rider and the team if there’s a back-up horse, should they come up lame two weeks before the selection trial for example. William Fox-Pitt has four back up horses, Andrew Nicholson has countless, Boyd qualified for London with three horses – that’s what we need to do with our riders, we’ve got to get them strings of horses underneath them to make their programs successful. Every syndication is going to be different. What we want to do and what we’re learning is that we have to make them different, we have to adjust for each individual horse and rider and what their program needs and I think we have to be flexible. There will always be single owners and single riders, and that’s wonderful but in this day and age with the cost of competitions and getting these horses that’s not always possible. The neat things with the syndications is that we’ve done it with a ten thousand dollar OTTB to a million dollar plus horse, that’s the neat part of the process is you can be flexible and you can help a lot of different people.”
Boyd Martin completing his dressage test at Barbury Castle
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Mark tells me about someone buying a share in Allison Springer’s syndication of Arthur without ever having met her, just to be a part of the journey, and the same with Boyd Martin, and I can hear the excitement in his voice. He loves the idea of Sinead combining her experienced international horse with a live chance at WEG 2014 and Rio in 2016 with a talented, young horse and imagines five ladies at a barn in the middle of nowhere getting together to buy a share and be a part of that with her for ‘next to nothing,’ and I’m reminded of my friend’s mother, a keen tennis player and a member of a small group of like-minded friends who meet each week for dinner and travel to all the major tournaments together, and one by one ticked off the Grand Slams each year – but now up the ante and imagine if you actually had equity in one of the major players!
Mark admits that he’s not much of a rider himself, that he’s “safe to walk, trot and canter!” and when asked to name his heroes in eventing or any sport he stumbles,
“I don’t think there’s anyone person because I admire the people who set their goals and do everything they can to achieve them, and again it’s what they do to get there, how they get there, not necessarily what they achieve at the end. Those are the people I admire on a day in day out basis, especially in our sport – only five people get to the Olympics every four years and it’s so hard, the ups and downs, the rider injuries, the horse injuries, terrible barn fires, trailer accidents…I just admire all eventers in general for the things they go through and they stick with it. It goes back to the passion they have for the sport, it’s unlike any other.”
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Former USEA President Kevin Baumgardner
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Since Mark got into Eventing it has changed considerably, and although he remembers the old days fondly he tells me thinks the new direction is a good one,
“I’m happy in that I think we’re looking out for our horses better. I miss part of the long format but I understand why we had to change it. Part of it is nostalgia, but I see these horses lasting longer in competitions and I think the horses are being able to compete more, and we were able to keep it as an Olympic sport which I think is very, very important. Yes, there are things I miss about the old days but I also think it’s wonderful that we have things like the Training Three Day which is absolutely amazing because it helps the riders and the horses but it doesn’t do it at the risk of putting too much burden on the horses. I’m pragmatic, there’s nothing perfect in the world, but I truly feel that we have the best interest of the horse now out there, and that’s tantamount to anything else – we have to be looking out for our horse. I’m really excited about the direction the High Performance Programme is going in because it goes all the way back. It’s about producing a good team that’s going to be on the podium at international championships but it’s also about that twelve year old kid who dreams about going to the Olympics one day, I think now there’s a more successful pathway to realizing those dreams than there was two years ago, and that’s exciting to me.”
Since Mark has got into Eventing it has changed considerably for the better, and in no small part that is due to the many, many hours Mark spends devoted to the cause, and US Eventing has a lot to be thankful to him for, although he sees it differently, of course,
“We’re getting something back from this. When you have that passion which a lot of people in this sport do: look at the people that volunteer in the Owners’ Task Force, look at the people that are out there volunteering year after year at horse trials, the jump judges that are out there. The neatest thing that happened and the phrase that I take away from Convention this year was when Lana (Wright) got inducted. Talking about receiving her medal she said something to the effect that everyone involved in the sport – the judges, the volunteers, the organizers, the car park attendants, every single person needs to close their eyes and feel it’s weight around their neck and on their chest because it belongs to them too. That was an incredible statement that sums it all up, why we’re all involved in this. We do get something back, we feel part of that in our own little way, and to see these horses rise to the top is just amazing, and the goosebumps too when you see a horse that you’ve been part of representing the United States, that sends goosebumps up your spine. I don’t care what you’ve seen on tv or what you’ve heard but when you’re there you pinch yourself and wonder if it can really be true and not just a dream. All of us on the Task Force have been there and done that and we want to make it available to other people because it’s such a special feeling.”
