When Will We Ever Learn?

When Will We Ever Learn to Improve Our Public Relations?

I attended the Mandatory Outing for the Eventing Team at the Horse Park of New Jersey. For the first time ever at an Eventing Mandatory Outing a big crowd attended - maybe as many as 500 people. This was due in good part to the Horse Park of New Jersey, which publicized the event on their web site and to the interest created by the Olympic Games. These people paid $15 per car to attend. Many of them went home with bad tastes in their mouths, and it wasn't from the barbecue!

A goodly portion the crowd spent from 10:00 AM, when the Dressage started, through the Cross Country, which began at 3:00 PM, and on through the barbecue to the Show Jumping, which began at 9:00 PM. (The late evening start for Show Jumping was in order to give the potential Olympians the experience of Show Jumping outdoors under lights. That is how the Eventing Show Jumping will be at Athens.) These spectators had more than twelve hours invested in our potential Olympians and what did we do at the end? We turned our backs on them, both literally and figuratively!

The presentation of ribbons took place in the covered pavilion, where not one single member of the public, unless they were over six feet tall, and pushy, could see it. The original decision to do this was taken because it rained shortly before the Show Jumping began. It did not rain at all during or after the Show Jumping. The presentations should and could have taken place in the ring, where everyone could see; but, the original plan was never changed.

I am a member of the USET Foundation Advisory Board. I stood right there and made only a minimal effort to rectify the situation. I am ashamed of myself!

Not one single thing was done to accomodate the members of the public who wanted to see their heros receive their awards. The riders, at least, could have been asked to stand on tables so they could be seen. They should have been in the ring so everyone could see them. Does Rolex-Kentucky present their prizes in the Patron's Tent? Hell no! They'd be ridden out of Kentucky on a rail, if they tried to do that; but, that's what we did at the Mandatory Outing.

The Prize Table was set up at one end of the pavalion. The riders were told by Jim Wolf, the USEF's Director of Eventing and Games Preparation, to stand in a semi-circle around the prize table with their backs to the crowd, successfully blocking the view of all but the tallest. How clearly, how blatantly, does that tell the public, "We don't give a hoot about you? Why don't you just go home?"

What a missed opportunity! What a terrible shame for those fans, some new to the sport of Eventing!

Teams in all three disciplines are sent to the Olympic Games because of donations from the public to the USET Foundation. Tuesday night we said, "The public be damned!"

I am ashamed of myself for not having done more to try to stop this counter productive performance. The milk has been spilt. Please, let's learn from it! Please, let's all of us who love equestrian sports and in particular the sport of Eventing vow to do everything we can in future to see to it that the public is never again ignored the way they were at the Horse Park of New Jersey on Tuesday night.

Will we ever learn?

When Will We Learn to Stop Turning Press Conferences into
Torture Sessions?

Tuesday night after the Show Jumping and after the "private" prize giving, a Press Conference was held in a room on the second floor of the building that houses the Secretary's Office. Everyone who competed was required to attend - all thirteen of them. God bless them, they came! - each and every one of them, including those who had withdrawn or were eliminated.

I have never attended a Press Conference anywhere in the world where the air was so filled with tension, exhaustion, depression, and fruitlessness!

These thirteen riders had just gone through a week's tough training in Virginia. They had just spent a sixteen hour day competing. They had to be ready to move their horses to Gladstone at 7:00 AM the follow in morning, for the Veterinary Examinations that would take place before the official naming of the Olympic Team, on Friday, July 16th. Yet they were expected to smile nicely for the few members of the Press who still remained.

Olympic Dreams had been smashed that day for several of those present. Couldn't we have let them go off to lick their wounds in peace? Several others were on the bubble even to be named to the squad to travel to England. Couldn't we have let them take their tension to some private place to try to catch few hours of sleep?

Nothing was yet decided regarding the team. Couldn't we hyenas of the Press have been satisfied simply to talk to the top three in the Combined Test, Kim Severson, John Williams and Amy Tryon? - or at most the top five or six?

No way - for half an hour, until after 11:00 PM, long after the few important questions had been asked and answered, all the competitors were required to sit there, chatting inanely about inconsequencialities. They were saints! There is truly a place for each and every one of them in Press Conference Heaven. The reason it will be heaven is that there will be no members of the Press present!

I have no gullty feelings about this one. I did my damnedest to get it changed and was basically told my opinion didn't matter.

Please let me make one thing crystal clear. Press Conferences are about winners! They should be run by a Press Officer and take no more than 10 minutes. Private questions can be asked of individuals afterwards.

Will we ever learn?

Cora C. Cushny, Editor