Our columnist looks back at how the industry has changed and wonders when horses and competitors lost their place at the center of it all.

As a longtime trainer, I have been involved with the hunters for more than 50 years, and I have watched it change drastically over the last five decades. I recently did a comparison on the growth of the hunters from back in the day to the hunters of today: the good and the bad.

Especially during the ’60s and ’70s, there were some very wonderful horses, and they were primarily Thoroughbreds. The Virginia area was the most popular as far as developing and producing the best show hunters at that time. There was a strong group of professionals, including Kenny and Sally Wheeler, Gene Cunningham, Jimmy Lee, Noel Twyman and the Reynolds family. They were very good at picking out wonderful types. They all had a great sense for the conformation of a hunter, and the quality was very, very high. I was lucky enough to grow up in Virginia, and as a kid, I would watch these people and these incredible animals.

The showing was so different then, and you didn’t show nearly as much. At that point, there was one jewel that stood out, and everybody wanted to get there. That was the National Horse Show at Madison Square Garden. To have a hunter at Madison Square Garden in New York City and to win there was the ultimate prize. It was quite difficult to qualify because there weren’t as many horse shows. There were a set number of blue ribbons that you had to win to get into that division, and just to be accepted was such a great honor.

Hunters: King Of The Ring

For show horses, the hunters were the most important divisions of an event. It wasn’t the jumpers. It was the hunters. The hunter classics became the ultimate to win. Today, there are still some wonderful hunters, but they are a different type. The warmblood is really coming into play. They don’t take as much time and effort to produce as the Thoroughbred, and they are easier and a quicker turnover. That has become more important as more people want to compete in the hunter division. It used to just be the ponies, juniors, amateurs and professional hunter divisions; you didn’t see all of these other divisions for people to fit into.

The hunters also began to lose a special piece of the magic when they introduced the back-to-back hunter rounds. I thought that was a way of watering it down a bit. They tried to pass it off as, “Well it’s so much easier on the grooms,” and this and that. I don’t buy that story, because I now see grooms standing at the ring for hours and hours waiting for both classes to be over so they can jog. When each class was run individually you had a real standout presentation. Today, when you run classes back-to-back, the few spectators that you do have forget which class they’re watching, much less comparing round to round.

As a judge, I find that it puts a lot of bookwork on us, and to me, you lose some of the luster of which class a horse won.

Hurry Up And Wait

The other problem today is that they’re in such a hurry to get the event over with that you don’t even hear the announcer because you’ve got the water trucks and the drags in the ring. In yesteryear, the horses would jog, and there would be a major presentation, usually with a major trophy for each event. Today, you’re lucky if you get your ribbon. They’re getting more horses in the rings, and they have more people because they’ve got divisions that go down all the way to rails laying on the ground.

It’s still an elite sport. It isn’t like they’ve made it possible for everybody at every price range to be able to compete; it’s still expensive to compete. But we know who the winners in this whole thing are, and it’s show management. That’s probably going to get me in trouble, but they need to make money because now they’re giving away huge amounts of money for the jumpers. Somebody has to pay those bills. They’re doing it because it’s a way to draw in more horses, but a lot of times when things inflate too much they explode.

I’ve also seen people begging for relief. A lot of the committees are working on some of these ideas now, but I don’t think it’ll ever go back to the way it used to be. The hunters have lost their ground to the show jumpers. There are still some wonderful events like the derby events, and we still have the indoor shows. But we don’t have the international flavor at the indoor shows that we used to, and it’s a little bit of a step back for those shows.

Money, Money, Money

At the end of the day, George Morris is the one who preaches it the most: People have lost the perspective of having show horses and having horses. It has become something that only benefits the horse show management and the trainers. The trainers make a lot of money doing this because they can buy these horses that only have to jump 2’6″, so they encourage it, but they’re not really creating something for the future. They’re not creating horseman who are going to carry on. They’re creating clients for the moment, and the clients are having some fun, but those clients aren’t going to be the ones who are going to go on and be the greats.

From what I see, most of them complain a lot. You know, there are too many people, we’re not having enough fun, is this really all worth it? I don’t see any people who are going in there thinking, “Wow, I really got my money’s worth.” It’s all about how much can I pay, how quickly can they get me in and out of the ring, they’ve got my money now, and I’m done for the day.

I hope that someday soon we can find our way back to our roots. The past is the past, but let’s find a way to be inclusive and still keep the hunters special. The top horses are magnificent athletes, and they deserve that special recognition every time they go into the ring. The horse shows shouldn’t be for training, they should be for shining, and I hope that show management, trainers and riders can remember that. I am looking forward to the Show Hunter Hall of Fame dinner during Devon where there will be so many who remember the way things were!

Ronnie Beard of Wyndmont Inc. is a respected trainer and coach with a gift for discovering talented young horses and developing them into international superstars. He is a sought after R-rated judge and has judged all the major equitation finals. Currently, Beard serves on the USEF High Performance Show Jumping Committee, and he is the chairman of the Platinum Performance/USEF Talent Search Task Force. He contributes countless volunteer hours to equestrian sport with his work on the USEF Show Jumping Developing Young Rider Task Force, and he was one of the original co-chairmen of the USHJA Emerging Athletes Program. Learn more about Beard at www.Wyndmont.com. He began writing Between Rounds columns in 2016.