Live Stream of Wellington Young Rider Clinic January 4-7

No. No, they are not.

Anyone who actually watched the clip can form their own opinion, but it never crossed my mind that she meant that phrase literally. Ditto for running the horse into the fence.

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Really, really doubt someone at USEF did this. Think it originated overseas. Apparently us just barely making the Olympics this year was not enough for them so they decided to try and take out our entire pipeline.

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Thought that might be the case :wink: but I try to keep an open mind because well the world is just (gestures wildly) nuts. I’m heard phrases like that used for over three decades from instructors in dressage, eventing and h/j land and in the context you describe. Just wanted to make sure that hadn’t radically changed and the warm-up arena is now a literal free-for-all.

Oh, it is sometimes. But not because anyone is flipping over horses that won’t stop. Lol.

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I didn’t mean that I thought anyone manipulated what was said.
I wasn’t very clear :slight_smile:

Last weekend, I had seen and shared a post from USEF Network promoting the livestream (which is now gone). I recalled it as being one, linear segment from the clinic. Like when you share a Facebook Live video.

I could have certainly misremembered the substance of that USEF social post video but I believe it to have been vastly different than the one Voorn shared, which contains a lot of clips from different points in the clinic.

However, some individuals had commented to the effect that USEF had posted the latter, or that was where the Voorn video originated (“it’s a USEF video! Their logo is on it!” 
 thanks to the watermark, I guess).

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That’s the part that I think could stand to be cleared up.

I certainly don’t remember anybody making a big fuss about any of Katie’s remarks at the clinic in real time or shortly afterwards. It only seem to blow up after the compilation video started to gain attention.

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I feel like the posts that have been removed and the editing that was done under the guise of the full-length video being buggy and needing fixed, hasn’t been helpful.

I’m sure no pro or national organization or streaming platform wakes up thinking somebody is going to edit their material (with their logos on it, no less) into a thousand-share and counting social media nightmare, and the response kind of reflects that.

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There is a definite difference betweein animal rights and animal welfare.

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Media gets that wrong a lot; there could definitely stand to be more education on that.
Speaking of the fine points of language.

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Reading the Chronicle’s report, it sounds like Katie had a pretty consistent thread of talking about empathetic horsemanship- it is the rider’s job to know their horse physically and emotionally, “the horse doesn’t know and so we have to teach him.” But the language also included flipping horses over and laying into them with a stick and however hyperbolic that was intended to be, that language was used in a clinic for young riders that was advertised and live-streamed by thousands.

Regardless of who Katie is or isn’t as a rider or teacher, language that might be perfectly suitable for a teacher and student who know each other well, at home, on their own property, with Mom filming, is a different story from language that is suitable for a clinician teaching a group they don’t know with the expectation that the entirety of Eqstagram is watching you.

Katie’s previously been quoted as feeling that the industry (that she helped to develop) has become a sport for “rich, talentless people,” has called herself a “mean teacher,” and apparently thinks that sexual abusers couldn’t possibly have abused youths because they had a good name in the industry and nothing ever happened to her when she rode with them. All of that creates context that we can place her statements into, or not, and they might tell us about whether she meant what she said literally, or not. And that’s useful for anyone who might be considering taking a lesson with Katie.

But at the end of the day, both the national and international governing bodies are constantly discussing that social license to operate is a central concern for the industry to continue to exist. Which means that the people who are put up as the faces of those NGBs have to be aware of the issue and should behave accordingly. From that lens, it doesn’t matter if she intended to communicate “flip the horse” literally or figuratively. You can debate what language is appropriate to use with junior riders in a private setting all you want. This wasn’t a private setting. In such a public venue, even sarcastically, even hyperbolically, it never should have been said.

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This is the whole reason I became an instructor in my field. Initially I pushed back because I didn’t want to be the miserable, grouchy, bitter, unapproachable type that people don’t want to fly with and don’t learn anything from. Because I was taught by those types. Then it dawned on me that I don’t have to be like that to be an instructor, that I can change the narrative. Now here I am, naturally unapproachable looking, because RBF, but my guys only hear my “mom voice” when they do something blatantly unsafe and otherwise we converse until they understand and correlate the topic at hand. I think I teach a bit opposite of how I was taught


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I have heard trainers say they would flip a horse if it was rearing and know a trainer that has done it. There are also trainers that have used electric spurs, put battery acid on their horses legs under jumping boots, pole horses, and the list goes on. This is not anything new in jumper land, but it is unprofessional and people need to stop putting these trainers on a pedestal.

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I have only seen the clips. From my perspective as a long-time riding student and a retired teacher, my first reaction was “She doesnt know how to teach.”

It is the teacher’s job to take your students “As God made them and the last teacher left them” (Thanks, education Prof) Based on her writings, she came in with a low opinion of young riders. Then, when exercises didn’t go as planned, she didn’t have a lot of ways to address issues. Kind of a high level version of the local instructor who just endlessly repeats “heels down” to students.

I was not as appalled by what she said as I thought I would be, having read a lot of comments. Instead I was more struck by her frustration and lack of teaching skills. She was an odd choice for this program as she had voiced her negative views of “kids today”.

I wonder how many of the riders with problems “being strong enough” were on loaned horses. And how many had ridden many different horses. I suspect that some limited experience with horses not in their trainer’s program. Finding the buttons on a new horse is a different skill and may also have made riders reluctant to treat them harshly.

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@dags This may be single greatest post I have ever read (only a little hyperbole involved).

The only thing I will add is I sincerely hope that those riders (along with their trainers) are having a significant amount of healthy introspection that they were defeated by what should arguably be basic level gymnastics for anybody at their level. For this I don’t blame the kids, but I also expect the kids to buck up little beaver when you’re having a lesson and things get hard and just get it done. And since the only people I’ve seen losing their collective shit over this appear to be adults on the internets, I’m assuming that they are all doing exactly that
 but that their education to this point left them so unprepared speaks volumes.

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That thought had crossed my mind.
There are some people who are outstanding in whatever their field is who are just not that good at conveying what they know, and others, less skilled at whaterver the Thing is who excel at explaining it.

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You can have an opinion of her teaching style, but there’s absolutely no doubt of her ability to teach. Everyone who has ridden with Katie with the goal of riding on a team has accomplished it. We wouldn’t have Beezie without Katie.

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Posted by Colleen McQuay on Facebook:
This was Carlee’s second time to ride in the USEF clinic and we are very grateful to be included in the three days of intense learning! From the barn work, the classroom to the ring it was a valuable opportunity for those who want improve their show jumping and learn from those at the top of the game! Thank you to all involved for a great weekend!

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Except that she followed the flipping comment with “he wouldn’t DARE try that with me”. That bothered me more than the flipping comment. Which was a poor taste likely exaggeration, but rather than conveying a message about the importance of effectiveness, it went all
he (horse) wouldn’t DARE.

I have used the flipping over exaggeration before in a different scenario when I was teaching. Rider was getting dragged through turns. Rider wanted more bit. In my opinion, horse had a lovely mouth and was easy to stop. So I said something like, I could flip that horse over in the snaffle. You need to listen to what I’m telling you about why water skiing on your stirrups and catching the horse with your spurs is allowing him to drag you through the corner versus doing these steps to stop and/or get him back more will be more effective. No, you don’t get more hardware in his mouth. Not that I would have ever intentionally flipped the horse myself or would want the rider to do so in order to teach that horse a lesson.

There are plenty of top riders and trainers today who no longer think along the lines of “he wouldn’t dare” because of abusive consequences. There is a line between being effective and being abusive. And we understand a lot more on how to be effective without as. There is a trainer at my barn that likes to remind students that horses learn from the release of pressure. Of course that does require use of some pressure. Application of too much pressure takes the horse over its parasympathetic threshold into a place where it is not capable of learning.

The belittling comments are also just not helpful in any way. I know how frustrating it is to teach someone who is giving no indication that they are listening or attempting to follow directions. But belittling them doesn’t help. Even in dangerous situations. It’s not effective at doing anything other than getting the person to shut down or get resentful. Hmmm
that sound like any other outdated training methods?

I am not young anymore. None of this teaching surprised me one bit. I’ve heard it all. Got a real talking too from George when I was a child. Also was a star student in a clinic many years later when I witnessed him also being horrific to another young rider. Just because all I got was a blonde joke doesn’t mean his behavior was acceptable. And when I was the child, I really wanted to hit him with the crop at least as hard as he was telling me to get after my OTTB just for “practice”, after he tried to embarrass me, threw things at me, etc.

I learned a lot from other trainers who demanded discipline but didn’t do it in abusive ways. I got led down rabbit holes of draw reins and various contraptions and found my way out the other side through mostly a lot of self-reflection and access to a variety of horses, where I learned to be more effective without the excess, and I consider carefully my tools and their application. Still learning new ways of communicating and training from modern thinkers. We have to know better to do better. And perpetuating these old school training methods is not getting us there as a sport. Doing it just because we had to take our licks is backwards thinking.

On a related tangent, I’m grateful to work for a firm that encourages equality and diversity having had to “cut my teeth” as a female attorney who was treated like less than in a previous firm with only male colleagues and supervisors (would say treated like a secretary but today secretaries are treated better than I was at the time). And it was worse for females before me. I don’t think the new female attorneys should have to go through any of that misogyny just because that’s how it was done at one time. Why should it be any different for the up and coming top riders?

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Okay, let me limit my view. In this setting, at this time of her life, she did not show the skills to effectively teach the students she was given.

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I love you – but not in a creepy way. The “you’re my hero” way.

Re Russian Troll Farm-esque and the metric f’ton of effort that must’ve gone into this
 I kept thinking it but didn’t want to say it because it seemed downright shroomie outside my head.

More seriously, what you said in closing, about “insulting actual victims of abuse” is 200%.

Horse racing Twitter (the last somewhat decent corner of that platform) was discussing it, too. Racing is becoming hyperaware of social license and has all its own problems so it was amazing to me that people there - fans, followers and some people who work in the industry - were willing to get in on the collective freak-out based on the three-minute video while dismissing watching the entire clinic.

How quickly we seem to have forgotten that time PETA secretly shot and edited a bunch of video in Steve Asmussen’s barn (IIRC, images of bottles of bute accompanied breathless claims of horses being drugged). Okay, that was a decade ago which is like an ice age in internet years but, you know.

One of the individuals who was emphatic about not needing to see the whole clinic video has herself been the victim of some pretty horrific online bullying. She works in the industry and I generally have a lot of respect for her so I can imagine her being (rightfully) reactive on the subject. It was still a little disappointing to me, some of the people willing to buy into that video.

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