It’s later than I would care to admit and I have an early morning, but the timestamps on articles never lie. Fortunately, spending two weeks every summer at the 4-H county fair with 7:30am show times and a completely white horse who ended up brown every morning taught me that sleep is for Pony Clubbers. Oh how we used to enjoy looking down upon the local city-slicker Pony Clubs with their newfangled bridles with bits and their elitist custom of wearing shirts. There’s nothing more gratifying than populism.
In all seriousness, I enjoy making fun of my former 4-H self, but my time as a member of the Rainbow Riders 4-H Club taught me countless lessons of teamwork, humility, toughness, and how to castrate a hermit crab. Pop-quiz time: what do each of the four H’s in “4-H” stand for?
Now for some eventing notes…
–Hwang Young Shik (that’s a person name) of Korea won the gold in the individual dressage at the Asian Games. The Chinese dressage team was summarily executed. Kidding aside, winning gold medals is an incredibly high priority for China, both as the host country and as the regional super power. China has already won 105 gold medals in these Asian Games with the next closest country at 30. China has apparently even resorted to using hot cheerleaders to distract the other teams. We should have thought of that for the WEGs. I’m looking at you London 2012…well, maybe Normandy 2014…ok, fine, who has 2016?
–In other random speculation from the Asian Games, word on the street is that the Japan team has presented video to competition officials of the Korean eventing team schooling and walking their horses through the sunken road on the backside of the cross-country course. I have yet to hear whether there will be any official sanctions taken against the Korean team. Imagine a scenario like that playing out at Young Riders between Area V and Area II.
–The Dutch WEG riders were honored earlier this week with a tour of the Dutch royal palace. The Dutch teams brought home an unprecedented 4 gold medals–all three in the dressage and the team driving gold.
–Speaking of dressage, Coren’s link yesterday to Robert Dover’s comments about eventing have led to heated discussions here on EN, over at the Chronicle Forums, and on Robert’s original article itself. Robert’s argument against eventing seems to come down to this point from his post:
“The problem for me is that I am having greater and greater difficulty as I get older, finding a way to legitimize Eventing while horses which have no choice in the matter end up getting killed for the sake of sport.”
I respect Robert a lot as a horseman, but I think if he spent even just a few moments thinking about it, he would realize the absurdity of claiming that horses have no choice. Indeed, if horses have no say in anything and our event horses are just slaves in a fatal sport, wouldn’t that mean that pure dressage is just a less dangerous form of enslavement? Anyone who has ridden knows that the horse very much has a choice, and anyone who has evented knows that our horses love jumping around the cross-country more than anything in the World. Undoubtedly there are far too many deaths in eventing, but, as the great Reed Ayers posted as a comment on Robert’s article, a lot of brilliant people are working really hard to make eventing safer. Go back to writing about 20 meter circles Robert.
–The mildly popular singer Leona Lewis has “fallen off horses more times than she can remember“–but she still refuses to wear a helmet.
–FEI President Princess Haya has been awarded the United States Sports Academy’s most prestigious international honor for her “contribution to equestrian sports and the Olympic Movement.” The US Sports Academy simultaneously released news that it will be building a new $20 million headquarters. As an aside, when the FEI ‘disappears’ me on some dark rainy night, I will my braiding kit and body clippers to Visionaire.
We have a busy day on Eventing Nation with hopefully some good news from the first day of dressage at the Asian Games and much more. See you soon…
