Anyway, I want to share with you my one degree of separation from Mario Gutierrez. He spent the last six years racing at Hastings Park before the big break that took him to California and ultimately to the Derby winner’s circle.  For the past three years I have raced my loyal dog Chorizo at Hastings Park during the wiener races which take place in between horse races on the third weekend in July. I’ve blogged about the great fun had by all at the wiener races, and even posted video of Chorizo’s efforts.  It’s not just possible but probable that Super Mario was in at least one of the races I’ve watched between wiener heats. I might even have bet on a horse he was riding. That’s almost like being pals with him, right?

Racetracks across North America are struggling to stay afloat. Ontario has special problems thanks to the provincial government, but Hastings Park in Vancouver –  which has one of the most spectacularly beautiful settings for a racetrack anywhere in my opinion – has more than its fair share of troubles.  There is now a casino at the track, and on a Saturday afternoon there are more people playing the one armed bandits than there are watching the horses. I passed through the track one Wednesday evening during the Pacific National Exhibition (which no longer has a horse show – it’s not only racing that has been replaced by other forms of entertainment) in 2010. The last race at 10 pm was about to get under way, and there could not have been more than a dozen people in the grand stand area.

Vancouver newspapers are bristling with renewed optimism for Hastings Park, riding the wave of excitement created by a talented young Mexican jockey who honed his skills there.  I’d be lying to say I share their level of hope, but what the heck. It certainly can’t hurt to believe that a gossamer thread connecting Vancouver’s racing community to the Kentucky Derby will give the local racing world a badly needed bump.

There’s been a lot of news this week – some of it good, some of it bad and some of it downright weird. In good news, we have learned that Canada’s Eventing Team has a couple of potential new faces in Peter Barry on Kilrodan Abbott and Jessica Hampf on High Society III, both of whom finished in the top 20 at Rolex last weekend – and it was one of the toughest Rolex Kentuckys on record, with fewer than half the starters completing the competition. Now, I can’t give you a link to an EC press release because none exists (technically that’s bad news but the gravitational pull of the good news is strong enough to keep the whole story in the ‘good news’ category), but I can give you a link to the Rolex results so you can see how fine Peter’s and Jessica’s performances were. I also recommend a visit to EventingNation.com. John may be American but he’s  by far the biggest promoter of our Canadian eventers.

In other good news, and this time it does come from our national federation, EC has sent out an online survey that encourages members to give feedback on a  few high flying notions, such as mission statement and strategic priorities. I took the survey on the weekend, and I strongly encourage all caring Canadian Equestrians to spend the few minutes it takes to choose an answer from Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree and participate in the survey. Resist the temptation to let cynicism or apathy dictate your actions. A survey is a sign of at least one democratic thought process in someone’s mind, so please nurture it with your input.

On the bad news front, I’ve just had word that the FEI has decided in favour of Brazil in the Dominican Republic protest against Brazil’s Olympic qualifiers. The FEI has not put the decision up on its site yet, and I rather doubt they will draw unwanted attention to the matter by issuing a press release, but I plan to keep tabs on this story, which is far from over. Once again, this is an instance of an organization applying ‘rule of law’ (and legal loopholes where rule of law doesn’t work) in place of more philosophical principles, such as morality or adherence to its own principles of promoting ‘fair play’.

A few weeks ago I was perusing the notes from the FEI Dressage Committee’s March 26th meeting, which the IDRC posted on their site, where I found something very interesting buried among the championship allocations and discussions about tight nosebands. It was in the section titled ‘Olympic Qualification Period 2012 – experiences’. Here is the innocuous little sentence that caught my eye: ‘Two problematic issues were new events appearing in the middle of the season, often made to suit the needs of a few riders, with so far no rule to stop this.’ That’s food for thought, isn’t it? While the FEI legal department rips through a legitimate protest about Olympic qualifications, using testimony from members of the FEI Dressage Committee, those same committee members discuss a ‘problem’ that has  a rather  thick strand of string connecting it directly to the protest that was shot down like a clay pigeon. I’m starting to get the feeling that most of the cubicles (or windowed corner offices) at FEI HQ are peopled by lawyers and not by individuals who give a rat’s ass about the sport or genuinely respect the athletes without whom there would be no need for an FEI.

Lest you think I’m taking one athlete’s side over another’s in the Dominican vs. Brazil/FEI dispute, I believe it does a disservice to ALL athletes from all countries as well as to the sport to unevenly spread cream cheese icing on the cake, then give some countries  the piece with the thickest layer.

And finally, two entries in ‘weird news’ for this week. The first comes from the afore-mentioned international sport organization, with an announcement that Saudi Arabia is going to save the Nations’ Cup. To be specific, the press release shares the joyous news that the Saudis are funding a ‘financial face lift’ of the NC series.  I’m pretty sure I’ve never heard of a bailout described as a ‘face lift’. But actually, the euphemistic use of a plastic surgery term was not what gave me pause when I saw the release. What first came to my mind was the fact that the names of two Saudi show jumpers -  Abdullah Waleed Sharbatly and Khaled AbdulazizAl Eid – are on the list of ongoing doping cases with the FEI. Both of their horses tested positive for the same two forms of bute at CSIs in the past few months. I think I’ll be keeping a close eye on that list over the next three months, not to mention on the list of Saudi team members in London.

Our other piece of weird news is actually a week old, and it comes from that good ol’ down-home endless source of blog material, EC’s communications department. Even though the horses and riders were already in Europe competing, EC sent out an announcement of the Canadian Show Jumping Team named for a pre-Olympic European Tour, reaffirming EC’s belief in ‘better late than never’. But what makes this release so fascinating is that it inadvertently reveals that Ian Millar’s horse Star Power has – perhaps while spending the winter in the World Anti-Aging capital, Wellington – discovered the secret of anti-aging. According to the press release, Star Power is nine years old. Since he was ten years old when he so ably lived up to his name in Guadalajara last fall, the only explanation is that Star Power has so successfully applied anti-aging therapies he is actually getting younger. If this keeps up, Ian will have to rename him Benjamin Button. Or Mork from Ork. Or Joan Rivers.

One thing the post-coitally joyful release doesn’t mention, but which can be found in the minutes of DCB’s latest meeting, is that Sarah will not have voting rights in her Chairmanship. Call me crazy, but that seems to entirely nullify the point of bringing her in at all. Like a policeman with no gun, or a guard dog with no teeth. Without voting rights, Sarah will be nothing more or less than a sounding board, which the Board can choose to ignore at any and all times.  On the upside, at least the population of the DCB is starting to look more like a ‘who’s who’ of Canadian Dressage instead of a ‘who’s that?’, thanks to new statutes which were birthed under the capable eye of the 2010 DCB Chair Karen Thompson-Harry – along with a new statute the DCB Chair can stay for more than one year (if he or she lasts even that long, which was not the case in 2011).

I’ve known Sarah since my fearless eventing days when she and I were both being studious little alumni at UBC on week days and spending weekends trucking all over BC’s nether regions  with our steeds. Yes, Sarah and I have shared a few spaghetti meals cooked on a Coleman stove set up on the fender of a horse trailer. Sarah is a straight shooter, and has a firm grasp on what makes sense for an organization. She has both the creds and the chops to be of great use to DCB. Too bad she has been put in the position of nanny, instead of enforcer.

Toasting our heritage in Meat Cove, Cape Breton

In case you want to hear the sound of my voice when I have a bad cold, give a listen to the World Cup preview chat I had with Christ Stafford at Dressage Radio a few days ago. As always, I try to make things easy for my readers: just click here to be whisked away into the world of internet radio, DQ style.

And since I’m on the topic of putting links to things, I’d like to apologize for the great hardship I have been causing a reader named Pamela, who complained on my last post that she has to go to more than one place in order to read all my blogs. She says she finds it “hard to be bothered to go to another site.” Pamela, I grieve for you. I realize that single click of the mouse can sometimes be more than a person can bear after a long day, or even at the beginning of one. For those of you who can bring yourselves to open more than one page in your browser at a time, I have made a point of embedding links (just like this one) from one blog to the other within posts; I have even put a permanent link to Low-Down on Straight-Up’s home page and vice versa.  I guess some readers have failed to note that, rather than spreading my opinions more thinly because of the second blog, I have in fact doubled down. More posts, more topics. Surely that helps to compensate for that exhausting extra mouse click, no?

Now I have to go pack the dog’s back pack (no, he is not made to carry it)  and rubber boots for the Tofino beaches,  and go buy some delicious treats to cook my mom for her belated birthday party.  TTY next week.

A release came out from EC HQ first thing last week to herald Ashley Holzer’s excellent results at the five star in Welly World. It also included results of the other Canadians who had done well not only at that show, but in California too. It even had two actual photos (tempted to use another exclamation point). I never in a million years would have thought I’d catch myself saying I was happy to see EC’s Communicators return to doing something they used to do, but in this case I say HURRAH.  Now if they could just keep it up as the eventers, show jumpers and Paras start ramping up their Olympic preparations.

Back to Olympic DQs. It’s quite heartening to see that there are a team’s worth of qualified pairs already, and that is with the highest score criteria for a Canadian team since I’ve cared to notice. I’ll go out on a willow branch and say it’s probably the highest threshold criteria ever for Canada. There are also several pairs who are on the cusp of making it into the corral of qualified hopefuls; with two months of competitions left and the scores quite close (as long as your name isn’t Ashley Holzer) I’ll predict there is going to be some intense shuffling around as those who are qualified and soon to be qualified work on bettering their averages. You can see how the leaderboard looks by clicking here, but I’ll warn you that the lay out of the Excel spread sheet takes a bit of getting used to. Okay, I’ll come right and say it. It’s user unfriendly. But at least it exists.

There has been some grumbling about a couple of aspects of the London dressage – legitimate grumbling too. For instance, I was completely shocked to learn that, contrary to how it had been sold to the international dressage community, countries qualified with teams would not get to send a fourth competitor as an individual – and as a last minute replacement in the event of illness or injury to a team member.  Instead, the extra individual spots freed up by reducing the team to three (dressage is the only Olympic equestrian discipline including Para not to enjoy a throw away score for the team) were doled out to individuals from countries that didn’t qualify a team. Except for three countries, who will enjoy a significant advantage by being the only teams with a fourth member waiting in the wings, and those three just happen to be the three who don’t need a leg up: Great Britain, Holland and Germany.  When I heard about the distribution of individual qualifications, I went straight to the Olympic criteria, and it was spelled out clear as day. It’s obvious that the nations which stood to gain an individual berth have been well aware of things, so how did this come as such a shock to so many of us? The three-per-team format was highly unpopular in Hong Kong, especially for Spain and Brazil, which lost their teams when they had a horse that didn’t pass muster. Why is this happening all over again as if it was a winning idea? I’m not saying we shouldn’t be expanding the Olympic dressage universe. Isn’t it time we thought about increasing the number of competitors in Olympic dressage? It has the lowest quota of all the  disciplines.

Another source of unhappy muttering is  the new GPS test, which I just read in the IDRC’s latest news bulletin is not any shorter than the original GPS it replaced for exactly that purpose. What? Did no one have a stop watch when they tested the thing out? Jeepers creepers, this isn’t rocket science (more temptation to use an exclamation mark).  They could have asked any freestyle designer worth his or her salt to sit down and crunch some average stats on how long it takes a horse to get from A to B to C to X- because we all have plenty of that information right at our fingertips. Then again, I suspect hell might have to get some hoar frost on its fever trees before my advice will be sought by the FEI.

And on that note, please allow me to point out that I was joking (April fool’s style) with my last remark in Monday’s post.  I thought it was obvious I was kidding, but at least one person whose intelligence I have never questioned thought I’d actually been asked to sit in on the FEI vs. IDRC hearing. She warned me to be careful not to let myself become the mouse in a game of cat and cat’s prey. And speaking of the FEI vs. IDRC, make sure you keep an eye on my other blog, because I’ve been spanked yet again by Mission Control and will be posting about that tomorrow.

I’m sorry I don’t have any funny cartoons about cats and mice on today’s post, but until I develop the patience and skill to draw my own , I have been forced to stop ‘borrowing’ images from the web. I kind of thought that a black and white drawing with some kind of well-known punchline under it was uncopyrighted, but I was wrong. And I cause enough trouble to the brave and long-suffering publisher of these blogs to not cause further grief. Unless it’s absolutely necessary.

I was in Calgary over the wonderful day that is April Fool’s, and talk of jokes over dinner extended to someone mentioning WestJet’s April Fool’s video for this year. I love everything about WestJet, from its enthusiastic and humour-enabled staff to its confidence-inspiring brand spanking new planes. And thanks to this video, I found it in my heart to love WestJet even a little bit more.

I had actually come up with an April Fool’s joke to play on all of you, but time was not on my side and the space from midnight to noon on April 1 got away without my having posted that the FEI had invited me to sit on their Tribunal for the IDRC hearing in June.

Not familiar with tent pegging? Here is a little example of it, thanks to the wonderful world of Youtube:

I don’t doubt the History Channel is poised to launch a series on tent pegging any day now.

One final comment on Canada’s tent pegging phenom, Akaash Maharaj.  Some of you may have read the investigative article I wrote about the circumstances surrounding his resignation in January, but it’s clear as day to me that no one cared enough to question the actions of those who orchestrated his departure. Oh sure, I received a few nice emails from people who were shocked and saddened by the loss of Canada’s Most Eloquent Equestrian, but I never heard a peep about people asking tough questions at the EC Convention. Of course, Akaash himself did not exactly help push the matter to the surface. He attended the convention and from what I have been told was the picture of poise and good will – gone were the anger and indignation he had expressed just a few weeks earlier. Are Akaash’s detractors right after all? Is he really just a career politician with no agenda more noble than to further his own public image? If that is true, I’m disappointed for sure, not least in my own ability to judge character. But I’m still more disappointed at this latest display of Canada’s apathy when it comes to demanding fair play and accountability from the board members who rule over EC. I guess I’m a really slow learner.

In EC’s ‘week in review’, which I received a few times on Tuesday, Jessica Phoenix’s win in the CIC1* got a mention under the eventing category. Not to take anything away from Jessica’s victory – it is absolutely newsworthy. But also newsworthy and not mentioned at all was the fact that Hawley Bennett-Awad won the Advanced B division with Gin ‘N Juice. It WAS a horse trials division and not FEI sanctioned, but how about creating a bit of buzz around one of our strongest Olympic hopefuls in the months leading up to London? No newspapers on earth will pick up news of Canadians winning competitions if EC doesn’t bash them over the head with it.  And no, I’m not going to shut up about this any time soon. If tent pegging gets a press release, then so should our Olympians.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about the protest the Dominican Federation lodged against Brazil’s Olympic dressage qualifiers. I have some news to share on that front, but I’m going to put it on Low Down in order to consolidate my FEI ramblings onto one place.

There was a comment from EC Prez Mike Gallagher in response to my last post, which is not surprising since the post was almost entirely dedicated to making a raspberry at the organization he shepherds.  What is perhaps a bit surprising is that Mike’s comment was not a defense of the EC communications dept in any way, but  of EC’s vocal support of the racing industry.  You can file that under ‘things that make you go hm.’

I think one of my criticisms might have been misconstrued by a racing fan or two. I am NOT taking the side of the Ontario politicians who are using racing as a high-stakes pawn in their relentless pursuit of votes.  Stories like the one published in the February 29th National Post make it pretty clear that the McGuinty clan isn’t even bothering to put vaseline on the broom stick they plan to insert into racing’s hind quarters.  I have ridden many ex-racehorses, and I have been to races from Hastings Park to Hong Kong, as well as the harness races in Sydney, NS don’t you know. I have, for the past three years, supported the Vancouver TB track by taking my  dog to the wiener races and entertained the Saturday afternoon crowds with his great speed and agility (I also entertain readers after the fact with photos and video on this very blog). I even like the odd flutter, though I am not known for picking a winner. I always pick the horse that looks like it would be the nicest to ride, and that is usually not the fastest one.  I have many friends who own race horses, and others who have worked at the track, including my coach and longtime friend Rebecca Garrard, who used to gallop horses at Hastings Park once upon a time.  No, I’m not anti-racing by any means. I just wish EC would post a damned press release about Ashley and Poppy winning the GP at the WEF CDI two weeks ago.

Speaking of Ashley, Poppy and all things high performance in Canadian dressage, I see we now have a team’s worth of qualified horses and riders, though we will lose one of the two best horses since Ashley can ride only one in London. I do hope Ashley has read the criteria carefully. She was quoted in a press release last week as being very pleased to have both of her horses now qualified for London, but Breaking Dawn is still missing a GP Special score before he can be considered qualified. Of course, it’s just possible Ashley was misquoted, since the same writer who quoted her also described Poppy as a ‘big’ horse, and put Ashley’s number of children at three. By the way, Jamie, I can’t access any of your press releases on the  GDF site. When I go to where the list of releases should be, there is just a message telling me “There are no GDF Press Releases Types for that Category!”  I have to go find them reproduced on, you guessed it,  Eurodressage. What ever would we do without Astrid?

Jacquie Brooks must be over the moon that she has cemented her partnership with D Niro as quickly as she has; she sits right there near the top of the qualified list. She even came within a whisper of beating Ashley and Poppy a couple of weeks ago. I saw her mom Mary at the GDF ten days ago and she confirmed that Jacquie is indeed very excited about how swimmingly things are going.  It’s also great to see Diane Creech get some more consistent results with the sensitive Devon L. It’s been a bit of a haul but he’s a very special horse, which he has now proven by meeting the London criteria,  the toughest criteria for a Canadian Dressage Team in a long time – maybe ever.

If the way I  bounce around, with such diverse topics from Welly World politics to wiener dog races, is leaving you hungry for more actual sport coverage, head on over to  Canadian Team Leader Kerri McGregor’s new blog, which you can find here. Kerri needs to learn to live on just three hours of sleep so that she has time to post more often, but it’s a great blog and I’m sure it will make for some mighty fine reading, come London.

I leave you today with yet another random and very undressage-y item: a swimming wiener video sent to me by a friend.

Here’s the thing. In principle, I applaud EC’s efforts to get more news out in a more timely fashion than they have done in the past. Today’s weekend preview lists all the major events where Canadians might be found competing in all the FEI disciplines this weekend, along with those events’ websites so people can quickly check on schedule and results. And the reviews, if they list competitions that happened more recently than three weeks ago, are already doing more than the press releases have been doing. It’s almost an insult to press releases to even call them that, since they have often come out so long after the fact that print magazines had their own news on tack store counters before EC managed to grind them out. So, all good, right? Not so fast. Being the lover of lists that I am, I will now list my complaints and suggestions, though I don’t harbour any illusions that any of them will be considered by the overlords of communication at EC. I just want to get this off my chest, because it does annoy me rather a lot.

1. Complaint: why on earth EC didn’t send out a press release to warn people about the previews and reviews is a complete mystery to me. Actually it’s not, since what I said above is an indication of how good EC has been at using press releases to disseminate information in a timely manner. But let’s say they did manage to send out a missive to let us all know that these things would be replacing most (but not all – more on that in a bit) press releases. If they had, I would not have assumed that a ‘week in review’ is like the USEF’s week in review or the FEI’s week in review – basically collections of press releases that those organizations already issued, just in case you missed one. The word ‘review’ does not say ‘news’ to me.  When I read about the DC symposium on Eurodressage, it never occurred to me that the announcement had been buried inside something called ‘review’. Suggestion: Send a press release to explain what the previews and reviews are. It’s not too late. Besides, we are already used to getting told things long after the fact.

2. Complaint: several helpful individuals have pointed me to the place where the symposium announcement can be found on DC’s website. You go to the home page, then go to coaching and then go to clinics. Of course. How obvious. Everyone does that much navigating when they look for things they don’t know exist.  The DC home page still has its scrolling news banner at the top, but there is nothing up there dated later than February 17th, which is over a month ago now. So not only did EC not tell us about the reviews, the disciplines no longer have ANY NEWS on their own sites. Not even a link to the reviews and previews. Suggestion: put the reviews and previews on every discipline’s scrolling news banner, and do it when you send them out – not a week or two later.

3. Complaint: I’m not the only member of the media who was befuddled and/or aggravated by EC’s random new direction with news sharing.  One editor asked about whether there would be photos and press releases about the news contained in the review. Late as they were, at least press releases contained some detail and photos of the athletes who had merited the press release. The answer from EC’s communications department was that Canada is doing ‘better and better’ internationally and it’s getting too hard to ‘keep up’ with press releases. The reply went on to explain that unless a Canadian had won a ‘major competition’ there would no longer be press releases. They were still deciding if they would be making photos available to the media. So, let me see if I have this straight. Canada’s equestrians are gaining an ever-greater foothold on the international stage. Therefore, there will be no press releases about them. That makes so much sense my head is spinning like something from the Exorcist. EC doesn’t seem to know much about the mass media universe. If they are not handed a document that gives them – in one click – the basics of the competition, the results and a photo or two, they are not going to go looking for the news of Canada’s growing international successes. And this is an Olympic year, where Canada is one of only six nations to qualify teams in all four disciplines, including Para. Good thing Own the Podium doesn’t set benchmarks for communications. Suggestion: don’t just abandon the idea of press releases altogether and think that the reviews nicely cover all the bases, because they don’t.

4. Complaint: this is a biggie – EC issued one release in the last week: it’s about the horse racing industry in Canada. It’s really all about Ontario and it’s in response to some political pressure to effectively kill off racing in that province. There was another release specifically about EC supporting racing in Ontario a few weeks ago. It was titled ‘Equine Canada Supports Ontario Horse Racing’.  I’m not siding with the killers, but I really have a BIG PROBLEM with EC spending so much of its energy on a horse-related industry that doesn’t represent the membership – except coincidentally, with members who are also involved in some way with racing. I think the Canadian Jockey Club might be an affiliate member of EC, but I can’t find anything on the EC site to support that suspicion. When you hold your mouse over the tab ‘disciplines/departments’, there is no mention of racing as one of EC’s represented disciplines. There isn’t even any mention of racing on the Industry home page. What the hell is EC doing issuing press releases about racing – an industry that is not included in any national equestrian federation that I’m aware of – while issuing no releases at all about the disciplines that are an integral part of EC and its membership? Suggestion: I don’t know who’s back is getting scratched, but please stop.

5. Complaint: if you, like me, try to keep a clean inbox, you may be inclined to delete emails that you know you can find on the site of the organization that sent them to you. One week I received the week in review about eight times. I got annoyed, so I deleted all eight of them, thinking I could just go to the EC site and look if I needed to ‘review the review’. I’ll be damned if I can find those things anywhere. Suggestion: so simple it nearly makes me weep to have to say it – put the reviews on the EC home page, and put them somewhere obvious, so clean freaks like me can find them easily.

Quite the rant today, I know. It doesn’t quite offset my litany of complaints, but there is one bright spark that I stumbled across while digging around the DC site last week: DC Board is now publishing the minutes of its meetings on line. It’s quite the read, and I highly recommend it. Of course it’s buried about five layers down, so let me save you the search. Click here. Enjoy!

Gotta go get on a plane now. I have one husband, one horse, one cat and one wiener waiting for my re-entry into home space!