USA wins team gold at Pan Am Games

[Scribbler]

@rothmpp

@Scribbler

Yes but in every Pan Am sport Canada and the USA top the scores, even things they don’t medal in at the Olympics.

I guess I’m not understanding why this is such a sticking point for you.

There has never been parity in sporting competition. It’s an understood fact that some nations/teams have more money to spend on sports or put more value on successful athletic endeavors. And within any country, there is not parity in the money spent/available for any sporting competition. All you have to do is look at high school football stadiums in Texas vs say West Virginia.

So they’re winning medals at sports that they would not at the Olympic level. So what? The nations who are not winning medals at Pan Am would not at the Olympics either. It is up to the NGB for each country to decide if they are going to send teams in any particular discipline - no one is forced to field a team.

I actually appreciate that Pan Am pares down dressage to 2 small tour and 2 large tour combos per nation. That is an attempt at some level of parity. I don’t follow the minute details of Show Jumping and Eventing to know if they pare those down as well.

At the end of the day, making the Pan Am team is more than 99% of those of us will EVER do. It’s still a massive achievement and it strikes me a little as mean girl to dis the riders by implying it isn’t a real achievement. All 4 of the Pan Am dressage riders are very accomplished and frankly would blow most of us away in any competition.

And for all this talk - it’s not like the US went 1-2-3 in the individual medals.

It’s not such a big deal, it was just a revelation recently to me that best in each country didn’t necessarily means best in the world. I had given the Olympic thing about zero attention as an adult, so maybe I figured this out rather late in life

[Mersidoats]

I saw Julio Mendoza Loor ride at a WEC CDI this year. Won by a good 10% margin. Was breathtaking to watch him walk his horse out for the arena on a long rein and then pick him up with this seat. He’s a superb rider and horseman and deserves this win.

[SillyHorse]

@rothmpp

It’s still a massive achievement and it strikes me a little as mean girl to dis the riders by implying it isn’t a real achievement.

I couldn’t agree more.

[BatCoach]

Someone get this man an editor STAT. Every paragraph is unreadable.

[Bogey2]

Do you think maybe English was not their first language?

[yaya]

He has always been unreadable.

[DownYonder]

He has been the king of the run-on sentence and convoluted paragraph ever since he started that web site. Someone told me that he used to be in journalism and I have always wondered if his writing style is why he is no longer a journalist. I once offered my services to him as an editor/proofreader but never got a response.

[BatCoach]

Its like he does not even give it a basic re-read before posting it. I just don’t understand it.

[Mondo]

@DownYonder

I have always wondered if his writing style is why he is no longer a journalist.

No, because real journalists DO have editors. So anything he wrote, for whatever publication he worked for, would have been edited by someone else. Many, I could say most, writers of fiction and non-fiction, are very poor at editing their own content. (Professional editor here. I always have my work professionally edited by someone else.)

[DownYonder]

I hear you. I am a writer and editor by profession and I know how easy it is to overlook “issues” in one’s own writing!

Other writers in the equestrian world manage to put out articles with much better readability than Braddick does. I wonder if they all have editors or if their natural writing style is that much more polished than his is. I also wonder if that magazine he produced - HorseSport USA - was as difficult to read.

[Equibrit]

Scores if you care to see them;

Juegos Panamericanos Santiago 2023 Pan American Games

Historic Dressage Gold for Ecuador at Pan Am Games

[Rackonteur]

Well we certainly did better at this competition than in football World Cup competition.
Talk about a stacked deck – we may be a wealthy country in some ways but in futbol we’re sad.

[Rackonteur]

@Mondo

No, because real journalists DO have editors. So anything he wrote, for whatever publication he worked for, would have been edited by someone else. Many, I could say most, writers of fiction and non-fiction, are very poor at editing their own content. (Professional editor here. I always have my work professionally edited by someone else.)

Still? I haven’t seen any evidence of even copyediting in recent online articles I’ve tried to read.

[Rackonteur]

I don’t understand it either but it seems to be today’s standard for at least online articles. There doesn’t seem to be any editing going on nowadays.

[Mondo]

@Rackonteur

Still? I haven’t seen any evidence of even copyediting in recent online articles I’ve tried to read.

No. Sigh. You are 100% correct. The demise of the copy editor in professional online journalism happened a number of years ago. I mourn the loss daily. I am a novelist, which is why I still have to have editors. I am a technical editor at a big tech company and the engineers and architects are brilliant, but they need a lot of editing.

[trubandloki]

And here I thought this thread would be all about how great it is that the US did so well.

Go team USA !

[Rackonteur]

Well, yeah, but, you know … COTH.

But back on track, I’m happy our team did so well. (And frankly I care more about equestrian sports than soccer.)