selection process

[Anastasia Hurley <ahurley@cncx.com>]

The selections for dressage , /SJ eventing  and endurance are a real
problem. I am glad that I am far far away from it all ;-)

I think that the riders for dressage/showjumping and eventing end up having
to travel back east to be seriously considered. 

A few years ago a very successful Show Jumping  rider sued because there are
no set criteria for the US olympic team  - they were just chosen by a group
of people and she was not chosen. The selectors argued that that they wanted
a balanced team of talent and experience. But what is talent and experience?
You can see how a rider could think that she wasn't chosen for on the basis
of her last name or because one of the selectors had a grudge.


US eventing was in real trouble back at the Barcelona olympics as they tried
too many things all at the same time. They had one team coach for the first
time and picked on merits only  at a couple of events before the olympics -
(this is the way that I remember it anyway.) The coach was not that familiar
with the horses or the riders and so it was hard for him to advise. They
trained in the cool of england(!) and then tried to go to Spain and run
around in the heat. It was a mess. One of the young riders on the team
totally cooked his horse on CC and the horse nearly dropped at the end. I
think that the only  US rider that did not have any problems was Jil Walton
from CA. Her mare was used to the heat in CA. One of the experienced US
riders horse was a warmblood that also had trouble in the heat. On the merit
system, these horses had been chosen on how they performed in cool spring
weather and the riders on performances in a couple of events. I think that
US eventing ran into problems because they changed everything all at once
and made choices that looked good on paper but were not practical in
reality. 

You can see that anyway that you try to do this fairly you will have those
that do not like it. I don't know what the solution is. 

All IMHO, 

Stasia