The road to the Olympics has always included many twists and turns for athletes striving for the top of the sport, and this week’s Look Back “Team Selection And Training Has Always Sparked Discussion And Controversy” (p. 58) provides a glimpse of a few memorable articles published in the Chronicle over the past 60 years.
   
Through the decades, the Chronicle’s readers have followed how and why the United States moved from the Army’s glory days when the team “gathered up horses” from the German Army and S.S. Troops to today’s professional athletes (many still riding German-bred horses!) who provide the country with medal-winning performances.
   
Like our predecessors, we include pre-Olympic coverage in the Chronicle to keep you abreast of who’s in the hunt for a team berth. Our series “Road To The Olympics” (p. 8) chronicles six riders who are vying for a place in history and explores their day-to-day triumphs and struggles as they traverse this trail.
   
And while team selection has evolved—from purely subjective to solely objective to the current combination—much remains the same. Like today, the team contenders of the 1940s and ’50s traveled to Europe to train and compete and were carefully scrutinized and tested. One of the greatest changes we’ve seen in team selection has been with the horses, however. During the Army days, horse selection was simple. Retired Brig. General, Jonathan Burton, explained in the magazine: “The ranking officer took the best mounts for himself. I was a lowly captain at the time and was assigned the erratic Rattler.”
   
Burton missed the cut for ’48 but rode on the civilian three-day team in the 1956 Olympics, on loan from the
army. Others during those years, such as the all-time “dream team” of show jumpers Frank Chapot, George
Morris, William Steinkraus and Hugh Wiley (pictured on p. 58), often footed costs from their own pocket, setting aside careers to participate and ride for their country.
   
Egalitarianism on the part of legendary coaches Jack Le Goff and Bert de Nemethy, who sought out and developed riders, and selfless owners, who donated horses with no strings attached, led to the glory days of a near gold-medal sweep in show jumping and three-day eventing at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.
   
Dressage, a specialty of the European royal courts from the Middle Ages, developed differently than show jumping and eventing. The road from the 1948 team silver medal by the Army to our team bronze in Montreal in 1976 was a tough climb from 1952 until 1964, a period that didn’t produce enough riders to net a team, as was noted in a report on the 1960 Dressage Trials.
   
With an end to strictly enforced amateur rules in the late 1970s—which had prevented such greats as Rodney Jenkins and Idle Dice from Olympic contention—team selection was open to a whole new pool of riders.
   
Today’s team contenders are self-starters who have honed not only riding skills but also public relations and managerial skills to net individual and brand sponsorship, and have access to the latest technological advances. So when these traits are combined with the traditional drive for the “Olympic Dream,” today’s team selectors should be faced with a bounty from which to choose.

Tricia Booker, Editor