Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

Diane Trefethen said:

> If the case is that "old school" doesn't like the
> techniques Tom considered useful in fielding a successful
> Endurance team because they conflict with established
> protocol in the older disciplines.
Since most (if not all) of the people on the USEF High Performance Endurance 
Committee are endurance riders and/or vets (Becky Hart, Valerie Kanavy, Tony 
Benedetti, Mike Tomlinson, Dane Frazer to name the first ones to come to mind), 
it is unlikely that the committed is steeped in a "way we do things in other 
disciplines" mentality.

I don't know the reasons for the recommendation for dismissal, but I doubt any 
of them had anything to do with "that's not the way we do things in dressage."  
To my knowledge the only one of the above named people that has ever had 
anything to do with competitive dressage or any of the other USEF disciplines.

And I don't know the reasons for the recommendation for the dismissal, but the 
outcome of the recommendation is that it will give everybody an excuse if the 
US team doesn't do very well in Aachen.  And the cool thing about it, is that 
this will be the outcome whether the recommendation is taken or not.

If the recommendation isn't taken, then everybody gets to say, "See, we should 
have replaced him."  And if the recommendation IS taken, then everybody gets to 
say, "See, we shouldn't have replaced him."

And when it comes right down to it, I don't think it matters all that much.  
_I_ am of the opinion that the whole "team" concept is totally ill-conceived.  
The US did better in international endurance competition when the team was, in 
essence, self-selected, they paid their own way and managed their own horses 
(and this process worked very well just last year for the silver medal effort 
for the Pan-American games in South America).

The attempt to force a team dynamic on what is, for all intents and purposes, 
an individual sport is, if you ask me, detracting from the only real team 
aspect of endurance, which is the horse/rider team.  

If any of the US riders are going to be successful in Aachen (and by extension, 
the US "team"), it will only be to the extent that each of those riders is able 
to remember that competition isn't about the US team or who is the chef 
d'equipe or any of the politics, if there is any. But that its about the horse.

kat
Orange County, Calif.

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