People say riding isn’t a sport. What do they know? It’s in the Olympics isn’t it? We have competitions that would crush you. We ride every single day just to improve even a little bit. And its not just us. We have to work with a thousand pound animal that has its own thoughts and feelings, and we love them to death. Those that say you become one with your horse are right. Everyday is centered around them. We dedicate our lives to understand our horses, our partners more. And to make that ride right. Long weekends at the show grounds, up at 4 am, and not in bed again till midnight. Hours mucking stalls, cleaning tack, washing our horses to get every last speck of dirt off. The rule books are inches thick, and heavy with rules to keep competitions fair, and horses safe. It’s 90 degrees out and we ride through it, pouring rain and we ride on. We’re out there until we’re forced to come in by a natural disaster. While your spending your weekends partying, were in the barn or out riding. Riding is our lives, and our sport.

In my sport, we don’t have breaks or timeouts, there’s no off season and no one sits out on the bench. We don’t postpone because of weather and we don’t quit on account of injury. I don’t ever talk to my teammate,we communicate without words. We don’t practice 5 hours a week, more like 5 hours a day, 6 days a week. All my sport really is, is galloping full speed, finding distances, swapping leads, spinning, doing the required pattern EXACTLY how it is written, and looking good doing it. If you think that running, jumping, shooting, or throwing a ball or anything else is more difficult than sitting on an animal that weighs 10 times as much as you with a mind of its own… while riding full speed towards a solid stationary object that stands taller than you do is harder? Prove it to me. I dare you to get on my horse and do what I do. We’re dedicated and gutsy. We fall, and get right back up there and do it until its right.