(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.
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