Our columnist compares the state of cross-country riding at the time of his first column, 25 years ago, to the sport today.

I wrote my first Between Rounds column, reprinted below, in the spring of 1989, after the Essex Three-Day Event.

Rereading this 25 years later, the phrase that springs to mind is that hackneyed but appropriate cliché, “You’ve come a long way, baby.” Modern eventing would never tolerate the scenes I witnessed in Gladstone, N.J., that long-ago May weekend. There has been a paradigm shift in which the sport no longer condones the old “mantra” that event riders used to embrace: “over, under or through.”

That attitude has been replaced by a much greater emphasis on horse safety and welfare, backed up by stringent penalties for practices that might even hint at horse abuse. Certainly, there are still riders who lack basic skills, and certainly, even with frangible pins and careful course design, it’s still possible for horses to have rotational falls, but gone are the days when it’s even slightly acceptable to shrug and say, “Well, that’s eventing.”

Are Americans Riding For A Cross-Country Fall? 

(Originally published July 14, 1989) Early on cross-country day at the Essex (N.J.) Three-Day Event on May 18-21, the preliminary division was under way as I walked my intermediate course for the final time. It was my pleasure to observe, one after the other, three of America’s best cross-country riders on various segments of the course.

Grant Schneidman came storming through the mud to make a “hunter round” fence of the big Essex table. Then Karen Lende [O’Connor] held together a big, aggressive English Thoroughbred who was trying to run off down a steep hill and made a right-hand turn to easily clear a sidehill in-and-out. The next rider, in what was my visual highlight of the day, was Torrance Watkins. She made an easy sweeping turn toward a large and uninviting corner option, met it perfectly, sailed over it, and galloped lightly away.

Increasingly, I’m afraid, the ease with which these excellent riders handle cross-country riding is the exception in American eventing. Later that day at Essex numerous horses fell, and one horse died of a broken neck. I saw exhausted horses being beaten to force them to keep galloping, and others were simply so tired they crashed at fences late in the course. I saw riders being run away with, riders failing to balance their horses in front of fences and then leaping up their horses’ necks over the fences. I saw small girls making futile attempts to control horses obviously too big and strong for them, while others pushed their horses to go far faster than appropriate for the terrible footing and hot weather.

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The very next day, 200 miles away at an event in Vermont, another horse died, also of a broken neck. He was running away with his rider. Another girl broke her arm. She, too, was not in control.

Why at every American event do far too many of the cross-country rides resemble Kamikaze attacks? What do Grant, Karen and Torrance know and do that most of these others do not know and cannot do?

Cross-country jumping differs from show ring riding in at least five significant respects. The first and most obvious is greater speed. Then there is the element of unlevel terrain. Third, the horse often has an aggressive attitude that’s a by-product of speed. Fourth, there is fatigue. Finally, there are the solid, unyielding fences.

Creating a worst-case scenario, we find a tired, strung-out horse racing downhill at a solid vertical fence. So often in this type of situation there is a wreck, or at least a near miss.

This is not to say that the excellent riders never fall. Three of our four Olympic team riders fell at Seoul [1988 Olympic Games] last September. However, they are much, much less likely to let their horses come racing downhill, on their forehands, two-thirds out of control. What the excellent riders possess that the average riders do not is a better sense of balance, a better sense of pace, the ability to slow down or speed up the horse at will, better judgment about when and where to go faster and slower, better and stronger seats, greater physical fitness, a better sense of timing, and much more experience.

Cross-country jumping is more closely akin to steeplechase racing than it is to show ring riding, yet many event riders learn to jump in a ring and are taught by hunt seat instructors unfamiliar with jumping at speed. Most event riders are insufficiently familiar with galloping, and this is probably the root of the problem. It’s very difficult for the average American eventer to find instruction in how to gallop or to find large tracts of land over which to practice.

Many landowners, fearful of litigation, have closed their land to anything resembling a risk sport. Much formerly open land is being developed, so that show ring riding becomes obligatory for far too many, and even foxhunting is increasingly closed out. This leaves the events themselves as the places at which to practice galloping and jumping at speed, obviously an undesirable and dangerous situation.

If there are solutions, the U.S. Combined Training Association is the most obvious organization to find them. The USCTA needs to create many more cross-country training opportunities. The rank-and-file members have to be shown all the techniques of galloping and cross-country riding, including how fast to go, how to slow down without losing impulsion, how to avoid being run away with. They need to know what kind of bits to use, how to adjust their stirrup lengths, what kind of reins, saddles and other equipment are appropriate.

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The various international riders give clinics around the country, but these are expensive, are often indoors, and there aren’t enough.

Among the ranks of good intermediate and young riders there is great untapped expertise. I would hope that the USCTA might induce its 10 area chairmen to comb the areas for riders willing to give back to the sport through one-day clinics on a voluntary or expenses-only basis. It will never work completely because many riders don’t know that they don’t know (or don’t want to know that they don’t know) and won’t attend. However, it’s time to begin this process.

Another excellent teaching aid would be a USCTA-authorized production of a really professional “how-to” video, using international riders in a carefully choreographed step-by-step analysis of galloping and cross-country jumping. This tape would be distributed to Pony Clubs, riding clubs and local combined training associations.

Many riders don’t have the chance to spend days or weeks at event training centers. Somehow we must find the means to provide orthodox and comprehensive educational opportunities to the novice and training riders who comprise about 85 percent of the entries at U.S. events.

The stereotype that cross-country riding should be some sort of “Charge of the Light Brigade” is coming too close to reality. Unless that trend can be reversed, increasing numbers of event riders and horses will be injured, and the sport itself will be blamed.

Even Mark Todd, Ginny Leng, Lucinda Green and Bruce Davidson fall from time to time. That’s inherent in the sport. But they’re not riding for a fall; they’re not begging for trouble. I hadn’t seen this article since I wrote it, “way back when,” and I find it somewhat shocking to think that what I saw was almost routine in its day. It’s good that this is in the rearview mirror, not an attitude that still has traction in our modern sport.

Denny Emerson rode on the 1974 World Championship gold-medal eventing team. He served as the U.S. Eventing Association president twice and won the USEA Wofford Cup for his lifetime dedication to eventing. At his Tamarack Hill Farm in South Strafford, Vt., and Southern Pines, N.C., he trains horses and riders, and he owns shares in stallions standing at other farms. An original Between Rounds contributor, Emerson began writing his column in 1989.