I personally wonder about the future of eventing as we know it. Will there be pressure to remove it from the Olympics following 2028? It seems like there is some significant risk for a number of reasons. Stories like this one certainly don’t help the situation.
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and still not suspended. Not making much sense at all.
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As far as I can tell, we don’t even know where the report currently stands in the FEI process. It’s not very transparent.
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In a few weeks this whole situation will likely be on the back burner for everyone involved, including the public.
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This seems about right. I’m honestly expecting him to continue to have a thriving equine business. If Ellen Doughty Hume can do what she does and still operate/compete/run a business - I suspect AM will as well.
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It will be interesting to see how soon he is out and about competing again. Then folks will have a better idea as to which clients have stayed with him, and which other local professionals seem willing to continue being generally cordial to him, and to look the other way.
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anyone who has kept their horses in training with him through this should be ashamed. And anyone who continues to do business with him should also. It always amazes me that people continue to support these abusers when there are actually some good trainers out there not doing shitty stuff.
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One of the owners of his top horses literally moved to a nearby town in NC to be closer to AMs operation.
If she stands by him through this mess, and he keeps that horse as well as Wakita (who he owns)… and he doesn’t get a lengthy FEI suspension or ban… he will probably survive this professionally speaking.
Just my best guess.
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Sad. For the horses. The fact that he hasn’t made a statement tells me everything I need to know.
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I just don’t understand, and never will, how someone who sees this abuse, keeps their horses with him. It would appear too many people own horses for the wrong reasons.
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And therein is the real problem. IMO. The money is OK with his methods. Success at all costs.
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We go to Carolina Horse Park for Events. I would be appalled if they allow him to compete there again.
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I think his partner’s practice is a sponsor of CHP…
I think if he is not suspended or banned, he’s going to be able to compete at all recognized venues… they might face issues if they tried to implement their own personal ban of specific individuals without investigations or any sort of fair process, or an official suspension or ban from a governing body in the sport.
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My trainer and I have been talking about this a bunch since the story broke and her comment yesterday was, “If I tried to report something like this, everyone would look at me and go ‘who the heck are you?’ and blow me off about it” because, even though she’s ridden at the 5* level, she definitely isn’t a big name to take seriously.
The frustrating reality of our sport is that she’s one of the people who we’d think could report something like this because she’s almost entirely self-funded and when she isn’t it’s because she’s in partnership on something with a boarder from our barn who has known her almost as long as I have (nearly two decades), so it’s not like the money is at risk. Because she is self-funded (and not independently wealthy), though, the ability to maintain a string of horses to consistently campaign at the top levels is pretty much nonexistent, so TPTB don’t really care what she has to say.
I’ve watched her retire her 5* horse after their first run around Kentucky even with people pressuring her to keep him going and campaign another year because she said, and I quote, “he doesn’t owe me anything.” I’ve watched her take an incredible horse that was winning or nearly winning after dressage every time and intentionally lose her placing on XC because she felt the mare wasn’t ready to go for time yet at Prelim and Intermediate and she wasn’t going to fry her trying to do too much soon (only for the rider that bought the mare from her to do exactly that—they never made it around a 5*).
But sure, give developing rider grants to people like AM, make it so that people feel like they can’t report abuse due to either personal consequences or feeling that they won’t be taken seriously (or both), and drag your (USEF/FEI) feet on investigating and implementing consequences, because that is making our sport so much better.
I love eventing but sometimes I really, really hate it.
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Funny she also won the same grant as him, but the lesser amount of money. Saw her name on the list and thought how ironic.
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I had to look it up, because surely you were mistaken???
The words rattling around in my head are colorful, but I’ll leave the same I had for AMs father upthread.
Dumbfounded, truly aghast.
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She really is the best. The only downside is that she and my first trainer were so great when I was a kid that it took me way longer than it should have as an adult to realize how unethical a lot of other people are in the horse world because I was so used to people who did it right for the right reasons 
I’m eternally thankful to be back in her barn now both for my own sake and because I think my horse would still be broken if it wasn’t for her and the team of people she’s managed to assemble around her (not for lack of my trying, but we all get access to the same resources that her top horses get so my BN goofball is being treated like you’d hope a 5* competitor would be).
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Unless the FEI comes out with a life long ban, which I seriously doubt unless there is video evidence of pain and suffering equivalent to death, I don’t think CHP will get into the business of banning individual competitors. That would set an interesting precedent on their part that I doubt they’d be willing to entertain. (Banning a competitor for something that happened off grounds and does not align with the governing bodies ban).
I don’t think we want to get into a world where each venue holds a specific black list of who they allow and who they don’t. Again these venues, mostly run by non-profits or private farms, don’t have by-laws that would allow them likely to even create such a ban. They probably only have language such as “any competitor caught doing XYZ on grounds will be asked to leave”.
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I dont think we will see a life ban for AM. A FEI ban of 10 years is currently being served by Andrew Kocher for the regular use of electric shock spurs on 5 horses. The longest ban FEI ever handed down was 18 years, to an endurance rider who inevitably appealed it to CAS. CAS overturned the whole thing. CAS has also reduced but not completely overturned other FEI bans for horse abuse, while dismissing Kocher’s appeal.
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