O Canada - Vancouver Here I Come!
I am very excited to be leaving tomorrow for beautiful Vancouver, B.C. to attend the Coaching Symposium being conducted by two good friends and colleagues, Ellen Bontje and Christoph Hess. These are two of the top people in their fields and they will be working with riders and horses at various levels from Juniors and young horses through international Grand Prix combinations. It will be fun to watch so many people and horses I have never had the pleasure of meeting before.
I also hope to have some time to spend with the riders and coaches to discuss their personal goals as well as my thoughts on short and long-term programs to bring Canada, with their help, to the medal podiums at every FEI level. It is my intention to, in the next 8 weeks, have strategies in place using our vast resources of top, experienced professionals to help administer our programs. I know this sounds like an awful lot to produce in such a short period of time, but that’s just it - we have less than one year to the World Equestrian Games and I have every interntion to do all I can to field a top team! I am already working in many different directions to help support our elite riders as well as doing what I can to enhance our depth of our Grand Prix combinations. At the same time we will be putting together a major meeting or group of meetings to amass an overall strategy to create and fund programs necessary to assure Canada of sustainable long-term success.
Sounds like too much for one person to undertake? Right you are, and that is why I am putting out a “MAJOR CALL TO ACTION” to every top rider, trainer, coach, owner, sponsor, ancillary professional and official, so that all of us together will craft and implement programs ensuring the brightest possible future for Dressage Canada! See you in Vancouver!
Cheers!
RD
Marci Brown — October 21, 2009 @ 9:02 pm
I am telling everyone that I know to read this ! What great plans ! We are so fortunate !
You already have my offer, I am glad to be put to work in whatever capacity will help !
Victoria Lee — October 22, 2009 @ 2:24 pm
“Well…call me crazy for speaking up….but I am sure by the time I am thru expounding….you will not be calling me shy!!!”
I guess the 1st thing I would like to emphasize is my absolute joy that Canada has been able to secure such a talent and high energy, high profile individual as yourself (not at all the typical conservative Canadian personality…which is a good thing…..trust me). We need a self confident, not afraid to speak out or step up to the plate kind of individual…..we need your positive energy to become the Dressage Diva’s that we all inwardly feel we have the potential to be…but outwardly are too inhibited to become!
“Here’s the problem has I sees it” (a little Newfie accent to show off my Canadianism).
Due to the geography of our great Country and lesser population per capita than South Dakota, not to mention lack of wealthy cast amongst that spread….it makes me wonder if there is not some way that we can not centralize ourselves in a location (anything other than Manitoba where even the Moose have a hard time surviving the frigid winters) for training and/or competitions during our Summer months.
A place like Spruce Meadows per say where we have perhaps 2 months of fierce schedules of competitions on the weekends with clinics during the week. We can learn from the success of Florida and the Dressage circuit there. We seem to be such isolationists in Canada and are quick to work alone rather grouping together to work on our Dressage. It is like we are all habitually going thru puberty and none of us want to change in front of each other in the Locker Room in case it’s discovered we are not as well developed as the others.
I spent from 1990 in B.C. until 2006 trying to develop my dressage skills and for some of that time was training under Dietrich Vonhopffgarten. The lack of skilled Coaches, clinics and/or competitions was extremely detrimental to those who hoped to advance in the discipline. So many went off on their own and fended for themselves, myself included.
I think what your leadership can help provide us with is a voice and a magnetism to draw in other top trainers and Industry professionals. Perhaps Dressage Canada might be better to operate under the umbrella of the USDF or at least a similar skeletal framework for awards, competitions etc. since we all follow the same FEI regulations. Perhaps we should study the growth and resulting success that Dressage has realized in the States and implement a similar curriculum. Unity….unity…unity…that is what we need now and it is not just geography that divides our discipline…! We have taken a first serious step towards cultivating our talent…we have invited a cultivated Leader to come on board…now we need to cultivate our organization…and I see nothing wrong with looking South of the Border to glean some more potential for our future…ehhh!
P.S. thank you Robert for offering us a platform to voice our opinions from.
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