In eventing, throughout 2001, we witnessed full tides for several ventures and rising tides for others. They’re of a scale I’ve never seen in my 40 years of involvement with this sport. As usual, William Shakespeare wrote it most eloquently in Julius Caesar:

 

“There is a tide in the affairs of men Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat, And we must take the current when it serves, Or lose our ventures.”

 

The most significant full tide is the size, strength, diversity and vibrancy of the U.S. Eventing Association itself. Membership is at an all-time high of more than 13,500. When I joined in 1962, there were about 250 members, and for years, even decades it seems, membership hung at just a few thousand. What has changed?

 

I was recently reading a book about Vermont and was intrigued to learn of a geological process known as “orographic uplift,” through which glaciers perpetuate themselves. Something, perhaps a slight change in the earth’s angle from the sun, causes a long, gradual cooling process. It starts to snow. As the snow builds up, the snowmass gets higher. As the snowmass gets higher, the temperature gets lower. As the temperature gets lower, it snows more, and the cycle is endlessly repeated until the glaciers are several miles high.

 

This is a perfect analogy for some of the trends I see in eventing, including the prosperity of the USEA. As there are more members, and more events, more people learn about the sport. The major horse magazines cover eventing more closely. As the sport seems more significant, greater numbers of people get interested and involved. Training centers spring up, clinics are organized in places where eventing never existed, and more organizers start new events.

 

A small percentage of these new event riders begin to swell the ranks of the upper levels, which in turn attracts greater national and international publicity, and this causes still more people to notice eventing and to want to become a part of it.

 

For the first 25 years of the USEA’s existence, every president of the association came from the East Coast. Two Texans, Walter Straus and Mike Huber, began to loosen the east’s stranglehold on the leadership of the sport, beginning in 1988, but now who can doubt that the USEA is a truly national organization? The immediate past president, Loris Henry, and the just elected new president, Charles Lloyd, are both from California.

 

Another rising-tide or deepening-snow example is the Phillip Dutton phenomenon. Riders used to win the USEA Rider of the Year award with 200 or 300 grading points. Phillip just won with a staggering 1,200 points, and several other riders had 500 to 600 points.

 

How does this happen? Again, prosperity engenders prosperity. As a rider succeeds, and gets publicity and fame, more owners ask him or her to ride their good horses. These riders have more financial backing and more good horses on which to compete. As they do even better, their confidence level and assurance grows, they’re totally “in the groove” by riding and competing so frequently, and they attract more sponsorship.

 

The Rolex Kentucky CCI**** is yet another beneficiary of this phenomenon. It starts with the magnificent Kentucky Horse Park, with its miles of pristine white fencing, emerald green grass, and towering shade trees. The majestic statue of Man o’ War, the museums, restaurants, gift shops, equine displays, and national equestrian offices all create an infrastructure unmatched anywhere in North America.

 

People want to go there just to see the place, and when we add the chance to watch the world’s greatest event riders, mounted on the world’s finest horses, galloping over one of the most beautiful cross-country courses anywhere, it creates the ultimate eventing Mecca this side of the Atlantic, perhaps in the world.

 

Aspiring North American competitors look to the four-star event as their entree into the rarefied air of true international eventing, a kind of ultimate initiation ceremony.

 

Spectators go home and tell their friends. Pony Clubs and 4-H groups and families plan their vacations around “Rolex Weekend.” The national and international equine press adds to the publicity, and once again success breeds success.

 

It would be lovely to think that endless prosperity might be the destiny of American eventing, but there are counter tides, themselves of almost tsunami proportions, that threaten the underpinnings of sports like eventing, endurance and foxhunting, all of which require lots and lots of open land. I’ve discussed this situation many times before, so I won’t dwell on them again, but they include huge population growth, runaway, unplanned development, and the increasing suburbanization of the United States’ countryside.

 

Right now eventing strikes me as being in a particularly prosperous mode, the three prior examples being good indices of the overall strength of the sport. I don’t know what happens when two waves collide. I suppose one overwhelms the other, and I fear the land issue could someday be that tidal wave.

 

Until that time, there’s room for optimism. It seems sanity is likely to prevail in the long-running struggle over the governance of the sport, so that we can have a unified structure instead of warring factions.

 

There are currently chaotic and expensive duplication of fees and forms among the various organizations. American sport-horse breeding is way behind some of our competitors, and we’re just beginning to really address the issue of certification of instructors.

 

But we can start to fix all of these issues if the major fighting is really over. While everyone’s energies were focused on attack and defense, not much substantive work got done. I hope now we can get on with the job.