The Sport of Eventing

From Ali:

As many of you may have encountered at some point in your Eventing careers, there is always someone who claims Eventing, or horseback riding in general, is not a sport. Growing up with an older brother who was coerced in to manning the food stand at Pony Club events over his birthday (mid September), it is easy to understand why he thinks Eventing is not a sport…. In his eyes, all you do is sell baked goods to a bunch of crazy people. Cue the fights in the car on the way home about the horse doing all the work.

Fast forward about 15 years, and I am transitioning in to a different part of my life: I graduated college. [I should make a quick note here, that I have a Bachelor’s of Science in Mathematics, so there will be some terribly stupid math jokes thrown in.] People often ask what I’m going to do now that I’m finished, and my automatic reply: “Event.”. Their polite response, “Pardon, but what?”. Insert generic albeit useless description of Eventing here.

Since I no longer have to write on topics provided to me by professors, and the fact that my brother got my blood boiling at graduation (some things never change), I set out to prove by mathematical induction that Eventing is indeed a sport.

Well, I started like any recent college grad would: on Wikipedia. Wikipedia defines a sport as an organized, competitive, entertaining, skillful activity requiring commitment, strategy, fairplay, and based in physical athleticism. Let me break it down for you:

• Organized (are we talking about the trailer on Friday or Monday?)
• Competitive (ever heard of Jennie Brannigan?)
• Entertaining (if you enjoy riding or watching a horse fly sideways away from a barrel he will later jump)
• Skillful Activity (I mean, the horse does all the work right?)

Requiring:

• Commitment (A student’s husband once asked the barn-full of ladies at an event if their husbands were treated as good as their horses. The reply? Not even half.)
• Strategy (only if you walk the course prior to leaving the box)
• Fairplay (how much fairer can it get if one weekend you win on a 12 and the next weekend the judge suggests riding backwards, upside down, blindfolded, with your arms tied down and giving your horse the omnibus to learn the test to improve your score….)

And based in physical athleticism. (Have you gotten a better workout trying to kick your horse over a ditch or using a Thighmaster?)

Now, this is obvious to all of us because we ride and Event. And clearly, if you’ve ever ridden a pony, Irish Draught, Appaloosa, mare, chestnut mare, Thoroughbred, equine, you know the horse doesn’t do all the work.

If that doesn’t have the neigh-sayers bored out of their mind convinced, I spout out how it’s an Olympic Sport and there are articles on ESPN (10!), which usually satisfies even the greatest doubter. Even Google can’t decide what the greatest sport in the world is, so today, if nothing else, take solace in the fact that you’re smarter than Google because you know Three Day Eventing is the greatest sport in the world.