#TodaysKidsWillNeverKnow is a popular hashtag on Twitter and it is always good for a few smiles… today’s kids will never know the thrill of going to Blockbuster Video as a Friday night treat; or the excitement of seeing a TV and VCR wheeled into the classroom (MOVIE DAY!). Remember how annoying it was when the spiral cord of the wall phone had a backwards coil in it, or how you used to fix a cassette tape with a pencil?
Here are 10 Eventing-related things that #TodaysKidsWillNeverKnow:
1. Schooling in full leather chaps. Maybe this is more of a hunter-jumper thing, but back in the 90s full chaps were the thing to wear, everyday. Half-chaps weren’t en vogue yet, and you saved your tall boots for showing. Chaps were warm in the winter and hot in the summer. But you could wear them over your shorts! If you were fancy, you had custom smooth leather chaps decked out in your cross-country colours. Most of us didn’t have that kind of money, so we settled for off-the-rack suede chaps. No big deal though, those things would make you STICK to the saddle and ride through all kinds of naughty pony shenanigans. Speaking of saddles, you NEEDED those sticky chaps because…
2. Jump saddles had plain flaps. Unlike today’s couch-cushion saddles, made of uber soft calfskin, with balloony-squishy knee pads, the most common jump saddle of the 90s was a variation of the Crosby Prix Des Nations (PDN). Pancake-flat with no strip of leather wasted, it was the ultimate “close contact” saddle. Only Stubben Siegfrieds had padded flaps (suede ones)…and I bet many of those same Siegfrieds are still in use today, giving someone out there a bruised butt. Today’s kids will never know just how hard a saddle can be.
3. Overgirths. Back in the day, if you were competing at a CCI level, you used an overgirth for cross-country. At that time, the Endurance Phase lasted nearly an hour, with Roads & Tracks and Steeplechase. Since “if it can go wrong, It will,” most eventers opted to use an overgirth as insurance in case a saddle billet or their girth broke during that hour of competition. I can’t give any first-hand account of an overgirth saving a life, but I’m sure there was a reason for it. I used one, too, and remember fondly the day I took my 48″ leather girth to the saddler to add three overgirth loops. How do you tighten an overgirth? “As tight as you can, then let it out one hole” after your regular girth is snug, often after walking/trotting a few steps after mounting. Today’s monoflap saddles make using an overgirth too complicated, and besides, if your billets break unexpectedly during 8-10 minutes of competing…well you should take better care of your tack!
4. Petal bell boots. You can still find these occasionally in the bargain bin of tack shops, but trust me when I say I’d prefer that you didn’t. Anyone who competed in the 90s remembers the (unavoidably annoying) thwack-thwack-thwack sound of multiple horses galloping around cross-country warm up wearing petal boots. Users of the boots claim that they work well because you can add/remove petals for custom fit with style, and say they like the noise as it helps them keep their rhythm. I am glad that this fad has ended.
5. Porter protectors. If you had an Eventing poster in your bedroom in from the 90s, you would notice a horse on cross-country wearing front Porter boots. The lightweight foam boots did not hold water, were some of the first to incorporate a tendon shield, and could be custom-fit for the individual horse. The professional riders kept them on with coloured VetRap and two neat stripes of black electrical tape. You might have noticed a trim of white Tubi-grip at the top and bottom too, that was to prevent rubs.
6. Weight pads. Thanks mostly to Carol Kozlowski and the awesome Connemara stallion, Hideaway’s Erin Go Bragh, the mandatory “weight requirement” on cross-country was officially dropped by the FEI in late 1997. Prior to that, all horses had to carry a minimum of 165 lbs. on course, forcing smaller riders to use leather saddle pads with lead weights to meet the requirement. The dead weight caused horses to jump differently, and certainly added unnecessary fatigue.
7. The long format at the upper levels. It is my hope that every up-and-coming rider will have the opportunity to experience the thrill and challenge of completing a true three-day event. Although such events are really only found at Training level (and below) these days. Prior to 2006, all CCIs included an Endurance Day of four phases: A (Roads & Tracks), B (Steeplechase), C (more Roads & Tracks, slower), and D (cross-country as you know it). It took months of fitness work to prepare for one of these events, and it allowed the true cross-country endurance athletes to shine. There is nothing like the feeling of blasting around steeplechase, and then riding a truly forward, confident horse out of the startbox.
Boot hooks are becoming extinct!
8. Pull-on tall boots and boot hooks. These “relics” will still be around for a while, as many who own them will not give them up until the very end. However, if you’re shopping for new boots off the shelf, you probably won’t need a pair of boot hooks any more– it seems that every boot available at the tack shop today is conveniently fitted with zippers. I admit, I just bought my first pair of Tredsteps with zippers, and they look NICE…and it is so convenient to put them on or take them off. But my trusty old pair of Ariats (those with holes in the calf) will remain in the trailer with their boot pulls, just in case a zipper breaks.
9. The Omnibus in print. Now, with EventEntries.com and all the features of USeventing.com, you can plan your whole season and enter any event from your smartphone. But I’ll never forget the sheer excitement of opening the mailbox to find a 9″ x 12″ copy of the latest Omnibus. Before you even got to the events, you had the delight of flipping through pages of the latest Bit Of Britain catalog. More recent editions of the Omnibus are down to half that size, with no more ‘tack porn’, but there’s still something about the simple pleasure of turning pages, reading details about events from different areas, and folding down the page corners of horse trials you might enter.
10. Combined Training. The “USEA” wasn’t always the United States Eventing Association: it used to be the USCTA. The sport of Eventing used to be known as “Combined Training,” a rather descriptive term from which, you can guess it requires the combination of dressage, cross-country, and show jumping. I think it sounds MUCH better than whatever newfangled term the FEI is trying to come up with (Equestrathlon?!). I still have an old USCTA sticker on the back window of my horse trailer; though peeling badly at the edges…I’m proud of that history.
USCTA News cover February 1992. Karen Lende (O’Connor) with Mr. Maxwell. Note the leather weight pad beneath the saddle.