@ Willesdon, Kalele and others, I agree that the perspective from inside the American bubble can be so different.
I ride in the US, but with German trainers; the barn does jumpers and dressage, no hunters or eq. A lot of time is spent teaching “correct riding”, but I’m not sure how well our excellent young jumper riders would do in the eq ring. It might be an interesting experiment!
I am an event rider at heart - but I spent a few years in an H/J barn, and I showed mostly in the jumpers - BUT I did ride in some Eq. and Medal classes - Why? My trainer required it. She required that all of her Jr’s ride in medal classes so that we sure to be working on our position, and riding classically and effectively, which helped our jumper (or hunter) rounds.
This wasn’t big buck AA stuff though, more B level shows (which they used to have back in the 90’s 
)
[QUOTE=leyla25;7450736]
It doesn’t set Americans apart. It is only celebrated in this country. No one cares about the eq. outside the US.[/QUOTE]
The equitation itself isn’t important, but the basis it gives you for the jumpers does set Americans apart. You don’t have to do the equitation to be successful in the jumpers, but it’s a good way to go. When confident, successful equitation riders do the jumpers for the first time (those who can’t or haven’t done both at once), you can put them in a 1.30 or 1.35 class and they are fine. The same would not be true of most of the confident 1.10m jumper riders. Is spending a few years in the eq faster in the long run? Maybe, maybe not. But IMO it’s a very valuable few years.
I’m not saying it’s a bad idea to do some eq. but the amount of emphasis on it is misleading. Some juniors do it for five, six years over and over because they get caught in the potential finals’ glory. And because to be competitive you have to spend money on a good horse it doesn’t leave much to spend on a jumper ( A good/worthy of finals ribbons horse is usually lease for 100K or more per year) And unfortunately having a great horse is no guarantee either, the judge has to like you, your trainer, etc. In the jumpers the horse counts but the rails are the deciding factor not who sold to who, or what business deals might be cooking among interested parties. Peter Wylde spoke about his own experiences. He did the eq. and went to Europe and saw how unimportant it is given the weight that it carries in this country. I’m glad someone is honest.
There are plenty of jumpers in the US who didn’t come up through the equitation ranks - at least not as a goal in and of itself.
You just don’t hear about them as often because they are frequently the kids who didn’t have the money for the equitation/hunter horse and didn’t have the self-marketing package that comes with having fancy well-known horses and expensive, well-known trainers.
In fact, most of my friends in the jumper world didn’t rise up through the equitation ranks. That doesn’t mean that no one did equitation, but often it was simply another class to ride in as opposed to the goal of qualifying for finals.
