Warmblood By Scot Tolman
I posed the following question: Is heroism dead? My students’ immediate responses went to the obligatory and predictable ends of the answer spectrum, either yes or no. With some further exploration of the actual qualities of heroism, these seniors’ examples of heroic ideals moved from the clichéd super-human man with a red cape, flying in to save the city from destruction, to more personal, tangible examples, such as the single mother taking on extra hours at work in order to provide for her daughter, the neighbor who gives up two nights a week with his family to cook the evening meal at our local homeless shelter and the football player in our class who is a Big Brother buddy for a boy with Down’s Syndrome. Because I’m so touched by this kid’s sense of humanity, I have to tell you just a little more. My student, Alex, recently attended a national Special Olympics conference with his Little Brother/Buddy. During the welcoming get-to-know-you festivities, he befriended an especially shy girl, also with Down’s Syndrome. By the end of the conference, the little girl told her Big Sister to convey a message to Alex: she had just broken up with Justin Bieber so she could date him. Alex and she spent the rest of the conference holding hands. I love this kid. At any rate, let me get back on point. If I were to pose such a question to Warmblood breeders, adjusting the question to read more like, “Does heroism exist in the world of sport horse breeding in North America?,” what do you suppose I’d get for answers? My prediction: the initial responses would be similar to those from my class; people would opt for the obvious answers and go with the names of our most well-known Olympic/team riders and, perhaps, their sponsors as the people upholding the heroic ideals of the greater sport horse world. For me, this equates directly to the man in the red cape. These people work incredibly hard and deserve all of the recognition and respect they achieve, but is it heroic to fly to Europe with a massive budget, buy a horse that someone else has trained to upper levels and then return home to finish the training and make a U.S. team? Robert Dover has recently made a seemingly magnani- mous gesture on his blog. He’s looking for the next Valegro,
R 98 November/December 2013
ecently, after reading Beowulf and Grendel with my senior Literature and Composition Honors class,
a true international superstar to represent the U.S. dressage team. In response to people complaining that the vast majority of our top horses are European bred, he’s asking American breeders to send in video footage of their truly promising young horses. If he agrees with the horse owner/breeder, he will make sure that horse gets into the hands of someone who can help actualize its inherent talent. Although it's hard to criticize Mr.
Dover's intentions, which I sincerely believe to be for the continued long- term health and strength of our national dressage team, the likelihood of seeing a shiny van show up at your farm to transport your horse off to stardom isn't far removed from the likelihood of seeing the bat mobile pull up. Valegro was a coming three-year-old stallion, super fit from months of conditioning in preparation for stallion approval when
Carl Hester saw him and selected him. I’m not saying this because I don't think Robert Dover could have recognized the same qualities in Valegro that Carl Hester did—I'm saying it because Valegro was noticed because he was being channeled through a well-established system for preparing and evaluating the quality and talent of future sport and breeding horses. The most successful sport-horse-producing countries have such a system. We do not. If we really want to be serious about growing our own
Valegros, we need to do more than occasionally recognize a talented horse. Our ideal should be to work through our various sport horse studbooks to establish a national pipeline of breeders, trainers and riders—a systematic pipeline that creates the horses, fosters their development, and, eventually, helps these horses make the transition into sport. We need someone with the vision and the connections to unite our separate Warmblood breeding organizations toward a common goal. A Big Brother, if you will, who can recognize that there are many of us out here with breeding programs on par with our European counterparts—we just need a national system in place to help us get our horses trained and seen. It’s a heroic task. Mr. Dover, are you up for the challenge?
Scot Tolman has been breeding Dutch Warmbloods for over 20 years at Shooting Star Farm in Southwestern New Hampshire. Read more of Scot’s writing at
shootingstarfarm.com.
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