My now usual winter tour of conventions (of the U.S. Equestrian Federation and of our affiliate organizations) has helped me appreciate some of the issues that we’re not dealing with and some of the opportunities that are going to be available to us in the United States in the years ahead.

Being president of the federation has some very cool things about it. With my competitive background, it seems that wherever I go, somebody wants me to ride. No matter whether I’m at the Arabian Youth Nationals or a Saddlebred show, I think everyone wants to see if I’ll make a fool of myself.

Since I’ve spent my career facing the possibility of falling off in front of thousands and sometimes millions of people (and doing it sometimes), making a fool of myself once again isn’t a new or foreboding sensation! What these fantastic opportunities reaffirm is that it doesn’t matter what clothing you wear or what type of saddle you ride in. A good horse is a good horse, and a good horseman is a good horseman.

I picked a very public sport to contest, but that doesn’t make me any better a horseman than someone who lives in a discipline that has no real international arena.

And that’s where we seem to break down in marketing ourselves. We seem to have a hard time respecting each other’s horsemanship. So how can we then get our passion across to people who don’t live in the world of the horse? This is one of the issues that I believe we have to attack head-on.

The seven FEI-recognized sports (show jumping, dressage, eventing, driving, endurance, vaulting and reining) are very expensive endeavors for any organization to fund, and funding will always be an issue that the USEF has to deal with. It’s simply our obligation as a national governing body.

But there’s more to it than obligation. We all know that it’s in the interest of all horse sports to be successful in the international arena. So the question arises: What does it take to win on the international stage?

All of us who are in the competition world realize that to excel you have to put yourself in the hottest part of the frying pan. Competition is about the pursuit of excellence, and in order to push your game to the utmost, you must compete against the very best in your sport.

That’s true of every breed or discipline, whether you go to the regional championships to make the Arabian Nationals or are trying to qualify for the American Royal, you have to go against the best if you’re going to become the best.

We all do this. And the best in the FEI disciplines are in Europe. We can–and we do–beat them, but we must compete in Europe to keep our skills sharp. And that costs real money.

For the last 50 years, we’ve relied mainly on wealthy individuals to support our international efforts, and now it’s time to do more, to find additional funding sources. What we need to promote is the belief that the pursuit of excellence is something to be proud of.

That’s the common basis of all fan-related sports. Just look at the Pittsburgh Steelers or the Seattle Seahawks, who just played the Super Bowl.
So I ask you, do you believe?

Do you believe that the pursuit of goals in the sporting arena makes us all discover new things about ourselves that may not surface anywhere but in the pursuit of lofty goals? Do you believe that the Olympic movement gives us all something to look forward to, whether you’re a child with dreams of glory on the podium or an adult amateur who for that moment lives vicariously through the athletic performance of our very best? Do you believe that international successes give us an ability to put into the public awareness the very thing that a horse brings to us, that we can get nowhere else?

If we do believe in these things, then we need to launch a new plan to ensure the future of our programs.

I don’t believe that we should tax people in order to fulfill this obligation. I do maintain, though, that willingness to fund athletes has to be earned, not mandated.

You know, our top riders aren’t stars outside of their small world, often outside of their own discipline. This isn’t their fault. It’s ours as a federation and as a sport since we have no real plan for promoting our stars to the horse world or beyond.

We need to do a better job of attaching our international success to the rest of the horse world. I know the power of meeting face to face with horsemen who aren’t in your specific discipline. That power of a personality does more to promote any sport than any other program.

We need to use the talents of our athletes and send them out as ambassadors of all horse sports. We must begin to appreciate that any success in a single horse sport is a success in all horse sports.

We at the USEF have started a new national, cross-discipline plan to reach out to the horse world as a whole and invite them to be a part of our total successes in the sport (see Jan. 27, p. 8). We plan to send these ambassadors to many parts of the country to promote all horse sports.

One of the catalysts in this movement will be the 2010 World Equestrian Games in Kentucky. It’s a rallying call to all equestrians. It will be a celebration of all horses. And the legacy left behind should be that we have a national championship center in Kentucky and that all horse sports can be celebrated on a large stage, both during the games and afterward. We will have no bigger opportunity than the WEG for decades to come.

Let’s all join in this celebration, starting right now. Let’s take horse sports out into the mainstream of society, and let’s use Winston Churchill’s assertion that ‘There is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man.’ ”