PrintAfter a trip to The Event At Rebecca Farm, our columnist wonders whether some riders are working hard enough to be worthy of the nation’s best events and the dedicated individuals behind them.
What a week I just had.
During my trip from my home in Pennsylvania to The Event At Rebecca Farm in Kalispell, Mont., this past weekend, I had a lot of time to think about the state of our sport. I’ll be the first to give constructive criticism about eventing, but with all the analysis of what’s going wrong in our sport these days, it’s easy to lose sight of the many, many things that are going right. And Rebecca Farm is one of them.
This one event has everything a horse and rider could ever want or need, from a HSBC FEI World Cup-qualifying CIC*** to a novice level horse trial to Young Event Horse and Future Event Horse classes to a team competition. If you get a chance to go to Kalispell, do it. It’s the best event I’ve ever done, and I didn’t even win!
Throughout the eventing world, almost everyone agrees that the quality of the footing is the most important thing for our horses. Events across the country have taken huge steps forward to ensure better ground. Rebecca Farm is well known for its impeccable footing, but there are examples of this dedication everywhere.
The week before heading to Montana, I was at the Maryland Horse Trials At Loch Moy Farm I, and it was about 100 degrees. But the facility has improved so much with the use of an aerovator and their new dressage and jumping rings that it made competing in the sweltering weather worth it.
I don’t have to tell you how difficult these events in the middle of summer are for organizers, because conditions are far from perfect. Without their incredible extra efforts, this sport can’t go forward. A big thanks goes out to all the organizers from the riders and, more importantly, the horses.
There are obviously different tiers of competitions, and that’s important. We need horse trials like Maryland, Waredaca (Md.) and The Horse Park of New Jersey to get horses out and train them so they’re ready to contest the levels that people tend to turn out to watch in much greater numbers: the CICs and CCIs.
These “minor” horse trials are the grassroots of our sport, and without them we have no “show.” As long as these local and regional horse trials continue thinking about the horses and putting their interests first, as they are, we’ll have a product that we can sell at our more “major” events like, for instance, the Cosequin Stuart Horse Trials and CIC (N.Y.), the Red Hills Horse Trials and CIC (Fla.) and the granddaddy of them all: Rebecca Farm.
Talent, Money, Hunger, Drive
It’s so important to have these big, crowd-drawing events to showcase our horses and riders and engage the public. These competitions make huge efforts to bring in prize money and spectators.
So even though an event like the one at Rebecca Farm might offer lower levels in addition to its Fédération Equestre Internationale divisions, riders at every level there should remember to treat these caliber of events as a showplace, not as a place for first timers at the level. At these special venues, we need to show off our sport, not be training and practicing.
