Havent read past this but you friend are sorely uneducated.
Lets take care not to bash those in the upper echelons of our sport, as they are often the ones providing jobs, sponsorship and scholarships to so many in our industry. Think: Gochman Grant.
trust that I know from experience … even if you own one of these top hunters, you still have to know how to stay out of their way (no easy feat) and find the jumps. Watch some replays from PNHS or the small ponies are devon if you want to see examples of some of the most expensive ones NOT coming out on top.
I was telling my trainer the other day about how I had the Pony Finals hack winner in the Large Greens, 11th in the model and top 25 overall every year in the Regular Larges, and we bought her the weekend she was champion in the Large Greens at WEF for under $40k. Her “hole” was a hard lead change, though. I know that’s impossible nowadays, as that was about 20 years ago. My trainer said you can’t find the hack winner at Pony Finals for under $200k nowadays.
I know from the horse’s mouth (pun intended) that the Junior Hunter National Champion (I won’t say which size or age group to preserve their identity) in 2005 was sold in the Midwest for slightly over $500k. Also, a family friend bought 2 top Small Junior Hunters from Don Stewart in 2003 or 2004 for $250k and $300k each.
In my opinion and experience (granted, am still young and was very generously supported by my parents while showing, but was never in the same financial universe as the level being discussed here), this is where realistic goals come into play. You might not have a horse that will go to Indoors and sweep the division, but a decent riding amateur with a good eye for a young horse can make one up and eventually qualify, and go, and have a great time. When I was a junior on my OTTB reject that no one wanted, my goal was to qualify in the junior hunters for Junior Hunter Finals and Harrisburg, and the understanding was that I had fewer shows to get it done and was going to rely on good ribbons, but not necessarily blue ones, to get there.
Even if you never own a Catch Me or a Flamingo K, you can still get in the big rings and have a wonderful time, OP
supershorty is very much underselling her resume here, but her very valid point is that there is more to the sport than sweeping the division at Capital Challenge.
If the only thing you are interested in is winning at the biggest name shows and riding horses that are at the top of their divisions, then sure, you’ll be priced out unless you have a million a year to spend on horses or dedicate your life to a very specific professional career.
Other riders find other ways to enjoy the sport. The 99.99% of the sport that doesn’t have the winning champion at Capital Challenge still finds something else they value enough to go to the barn for.
That is the same as any horse related discipline. You can spend several million to buy a horse who has already won enough money to qualify for the Kentucky Derby or you can spend several million on countless numbers of cheaper horses that may or may not pan out to become what you want. If you don’t have several million you can buy young and relatively inexpensive and pray.
“It makes me wonder how even an upper middle class rider with a nice income with a real passion who rides well and practices has a fair shot. Where I show entries have been down. I feel it has to do with competitive balance. Just my opinion. It’s also getting more and more expensive to show and many of us have to pick and choose our A shows. When I do go to A shows I like to see the horses I hear about all year. It’s always been a dream to one day own that perfect mount. I’ve admired some of these horse so much and it just broke my heart to hear that they are so out of reach. Geez, a $100,000 horse is out of my range but I guess I was thinking these top horses were maybe five times more expensive than my horse (still unaffordable) and not twenty times more expensive. One is a dream and the other is a fantasy! Does that make sense?”
Yes, 100%. Add in when one works to earn said living being gone for 4 days to show twice a month in the “Amateur Hunters” is really hard. I have reset my goals. Like Super Shorty said, lots of other reasons to go to the barn (and in recent years many fewer shows)
And you can even (theoretically) buy the Derby favorite the last week of April and have him scratch on the morning of the Derby for any number of soundness issues. I seem to recall one years ago who scratched on Derby day because he had a bandage pin stuck in his foot or leg on Friday night.
Similar thread from 2013 discussed a hunter named Rumba who sold for $650-$900,000 depending on who heard the info. Other discussions here support the idea that IF you could buy one of those elite hunters, $750k would not be a surprise. Maybe more.
Dressage world is no different. I know people who have laid out $1.6 million total for 2 well bred 4 yr olds one of which dropped off the scene at Prix St. Georges; the other is now 11, at Grand Prix with pro rider and is probably just below the real “elite” category. Also know someone who spent something in the $750k -$800 range for a horse that was highly placed at the Pan Am games. This person showed horse as an amateur for a couple years, not at the top levels, then gave up riding.
What I find interesting is that the “elite” in many sports can MAKE lots of money thru salaries, winnings and advertising opportunities. The elite in our sport mostly only SPEND money. Oh well.
I agree with what you said about it being difficult to show even with a nice income.
Even though there are many different circuits, at least in my area, it’s not always possible to take the time off work to do a couple of classes during the week. Although I could use vacation time to cover this, then I’d have less left for family.
I also look very closely at the quality of the footing and facilities when determining when and where to show. Some local circuits offer the opportunity to show on saturday, but if the footing isn’t great, I’m not going to ride there. The shows in my area that have great footing in the main ring as well as the warmup rings happen to be the larger A/AA shows where if I want to go, I have to do it during the week. Sometimes it’s only 1-2 class on a given day which is hard to justify.
On a somewhat related note, my personal philosophy is to never spend more on the initial purchase of a horse than one can afford to flush down the toilet. When you’re on the level of some of the elite in the show world, $500-$1M is chump change. So yes, prices can be driven up accordingly. If they have the ability to pay $X for a horse because they decide they absolutely must have it, that can drive the prices up for everyone else.
Skylar Riley made a comment about this a few years ago, joking that when she first got started, you only needed to be a millionaire in order to buy a made horse for the jumpers. Now she says you need to be a billionaire and is why she focuses on bringing hers up through the ranks and not going out to buy a made horse.
Scary because she’s what many would consider very well off.
If I ruled the horse world, I’d eliminate the under saddle classes. Or at least eliminate them from championship points. It would make the champion horse quite a bit more obtainable. Take the fancy trot out of the equation, and we have lots more at the top. Not using hack ribbons would also reward consistency more. I see too many horses whose hack points cover for a bad trip in the o/f. The hack winner is just a way of buying your way out of a bad trip.
If you have the trot, use it coming in the ring. If the judge loves your horse for it, there’s enough reward right there.
Someday I might host little shows at my place. There will be no hack points, and the lines will be bending to accommodate different sized horses.
Hack prizes at rated shows though only count for the top four horses over fences… so the hack winner alone doesn’t get a tri color unless it was top four over jumps as well. That said, we have lost two tri-colors because our horse is a good mover but the judge that day didn’t care for him. Oh well these things happen. Horse beat 37 others the day before in a hack under one judge and couldn’t get a single ribbon out of 15 the next day under a different judge.
Isn’t it funny? I don’t think a “fancy trot” is rewarded at all. I think it’s definitely penalized in favour of a flat, ground covering, “comfortable” trot. It’s one of the few legitimate hold overs from fox hunting, a steady, workmanlike trot, rather than a fancy trot with lots of action and engagement.
They are right to worry. It is very hard for a young adult not in the horse industry to have the money to own a horse at all any more, let alone show at the A level, and also have the time to do so.
We really have no place for people who enjoy the sport but don’t currently have a lot of money to play, especially if they can’t own a horse at all, and that is becoming more and more true as lesson strings go away and the like.
That said, going back to the original posts, I think you CAN play and enjoy yourself without owning the best horse in the show. You have to find goals that are meaningful to you. This might mean showing on less competitive circuits, it might mean just going to show up and get a glorious picture of yourself and your horse at the toughest show in the country, or it might mean getting a green horse and enjoying sitting on it every day and making it better. Or it might also be choosing a different discipline. There are so many great ways to have fun with horses and you can have a really really good time with $100k in this sport.
If you need perspective, maybe spend $90k on the horse and $10k on an amazing horseback vacation.
I just looked at the number of entries for the younger amateur divisions (low and high) at Capital Challenge and Harrisburg, and based on this n of 2, this doesn’t seem to be true. It looks like the younger amateurs outnumbered the juniors at Capital Challenge. In my limited experience at the barn where I ride, parents seem way more willing these days to continue funding their adult children’s horse habits today than they did thirty years ago. I remember a few years ago there was an interview in the Chronicle with one of the younger amateurs who won at one of the indoor shows, and she described the moment she first saw the horse she won on - she was quoted as saying that she called her father and asked, “Daddy, can we get him?”. And daddy got him for her.
I don’t think the problem is that there is a lack of enough young adults with the means to buy lots of expensive horses to spend lots of training and show expense money on; I think the problem is that there is little incentive for juniors who have just aged out to start their own teaching/training businesses.
If that’s their worry then it still may follow from the first problem, because if the only people who can afford to play don’t have to work for a living, then…
That said, I think we will never run out of people who want to run their own teaching/training business. If fewer people try to do so at age 19 or 22 that would honestly probably be better for the sport and the quality of teaching available.
Genuinely curious - who are all these people who aren’t young adults who are going to wow the equestrian world with their quality of teaching and betterment of the sport, and what are they doing as young adults that they are going to drop it to start a training/teaching business as soon as they are not “too” young?
Apparently I hit a nerve there. With respect, I think at 19 most young people are ready to begin an apprenticeship under a strong mentor, and not so much ready to teach and train either horses or riders unsupervised. There’s so much to learn about how horses work, about how people learn, about how horses learn, and I think even the brightest and the most precocious among us cannot have it mastered by 19. In addition to the skills to teach horse and rider, there are the skills to manage cash flow and an ethical business that have to be learned as well.
Over the many decades I’ve been in this sport, I’ve learned something about picking coaches, at least for myself. I had a wonderful young assistant coach as a mentor when I was young, but she was part of a team.
What I would say is this: there are already thousands of young people who would teach riding and train horses if they could afford to do so and if there was demand, who instead end up in different careers. I do not think there is a shortage of interest. Maybe they won’t be the winners of the eq finals, but they are out there.
In addition to working as an assistant, I’ve known - more lately than in decades past - amateurs who left their careers and came back to riding and horsemanship for their work, either as trainers or barn managers. They too are out there and probably always will be, many who are quite able and talented, and many whose other work experience is useful in running a successful horse business.
College is useful, working with and for multiple trainers is useful, and experience in “normal” workplaces as an employee, all useful. We don’t need to slurp them in at 19 to have talented professionals.
