It's been very painful to read the mocking posts here, along with the blatant lies claiming that dressage is horse abuse and that it is "elitist." Many middle class people are involved in dressage (including progressive democrats), and have been since the early days. Many of our Olympic dressage team members, along with combined training and jumping riders, grew up working at barns for a chance to ride, spending hours mucking out stalls and cleaning tack in exchange for lessons. One of our top riders, Debbie McDonald, started out working to ride. She earned the money to buy her first pony and earned the money to pay board for that pony and for her lessons.
The reason for the clothes in competition is because originally, Olympic competition was pretty much owned by the military, and military uniforms were used. When cavalries replaced horses with tanks and humvees, it fell to the civilian population to keep the core of horse training, dressage, alive all the way through to the upper levels in international competition. In looking for something formal to wear for competition that emphasized the elegance of a fully trained horse and rider, they settled on the top hat and tails. The white gloves serve a purpose, as they emphasize any extraneous movement of the hands for judges to see and score down.
A lot of people seem to suffer "pony envy." I know that many of my peers did. However, I never saw any of them mucking out or working to ride (except my best friend across the street who worked and rode with me). When push came to shove, they weren't willing to make the sacrifices. Only to mooch rides because they luuuuv horsies. Even now, some of my neighbors have been nasty about it, but then mock me because I don't have cable or satellite tv, or high speed internet. Guess what -- all those things would pay for the hay for a horse in these parts. They could have a pony if they really wanted to; they just aren't willing to make the sacrifices or do the work. But they still expect to mooch rides.
I first heard of dressage in 1964 when Walt Disney made the movie The Miracle of the White Stallions, the story of how General Patton saved the Spanish Riding School horses from the Nazis in WW2.
I was a middle class kid and yes, we had a family hand-me-down "pony," a free 20-something retired polo pony that we kept in our back yard. I was a self-taught rider at first. Too small to reach our pony's back with the saddle, I learned to ride bareback with a halter and lead shank. Sometimes not even that. I would climb onto her back from a boulder or fence and gallop around with no "controls" at all.
At 12, I stumbled across a dressage book on sale in a regular department store book section. I begged my parents to spring $8 for the dressage classic, Horsemanship by Waldemar Seunig.
At 14, I cleaned tack at a nearby show barn, and in exchange was "given" 6 young thoroughbreds straight off the racetrack to re-school into show hunters. My friends there each also had a tb to re-school. I would help them with theirs, as well as ride my own after school, so I sat on up to 10 horses/day, from 4pm until 8 or so. I'd fix my own dinner late in the evening and then do homework until 11pm or so.
At 16, I was lucky enough to get my first formal instruction with a top combined training rider. I spent 2 years riding with Lockie Richards, the 2nd year at the American Dressage Institute. Back then the 1%ers were not greedy and truly believed in the art of dressage. The founder of ADI allowed students to ride her string of top dressage horses. I ultimately rode all of them, from the 6 year old in early training to her 15 year old actively performing and competing Grand Prix horse (Goldlack, who appears on the cover of Lockie's book, Dressage: Begin the Right Way) and her 20 year old semi-retired Grand Prix horse.
It was at this time that Cl. Hans Handler, Director of the Spanish Riding School visited and, along with 3 of Lockie's other top students, we had a lesson with Cl. Handler observing. Lockie was invited to train at the Spanish Riding School and spent a couple years there, before returning to the US and then New Zealand, where he founded the Kiwis and brought them to international prominence. 3-time Olympic gold medalist Mark Todd got his foundation from Lockie.
I gave up my Olympic dream due to financial and personal issues. It is one thing for your parents to remain neutral; it is another for them to actively and deliberately sabotage any chance you have of success. I saw early on that most riders were heavily subsidized for many years before success. I had no such support, in fact the opposite, so I went to work in an office and my riding time became limited. That didn't stop me from rescuing an arabian from neglect and starvation, re-habbing him, and training him from scratch through Prix St. Georges and Intermediare movements and figures.
= new reply since forum marked as read
