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Faygo Kid (19,148 posts)View profile Ann Romney's horse and trainer qualify for U.S. Olympic teamSource: Los Angeles TimesAnn Romney’s dressage horse, Rafalca, and her trainer, Jan Ebeling, earned a place on the U.S. Olympic Equestrian team on Saturday, cementing the Romneyfamily’s already deep ties to the Olympic games. The official announcement is expected to come Sunday by the U.S. Equestrian Federation.Rafalca and Ebeling will compete for the U.S. in the London Summer Games.The Romneys’ involvement in dressage has raised the profile of the sport, linking it to the American presidential campaign in a way that has brought both adulation and mild ridicule as some have poked fun at dressage as a sport of the elite.Kenneth Braddick of Dressage News said Ebeling had “the best performance of his life†Saturday at the second of two Olympic trials at the U.S. Equestrian Federation national dressage championships in Gladstone, N.J. In a post on the website, Dressage News, Braddick wrote that Ebling has also taken in stride the ribbing he’s gotten from comedians such as Stephen Colbert.Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-ann-romney-horse-trainer-qualify-for-us-olympic-team-20120616,0,1966631.storyWhew, I was so worried about this. God knows that dressage is at the top of Americans' concerns right now, and only the GOP has the sense to nominate a candidate who appreciates the dressage crisis we face in competing with the rest of the world.
JDPriestly (31,782 posts)41. The thing about the dressage horse is that it represents visually the disparity in wealthbetween the Romneys and most Americans.This is not about education. It's not a question of liking classical music or opera.Most American girls around 12 or 13 and a lot of boys dream of owning and riding a horse.Their families couldn't dream of affording it. The most they can do is maybe if they are pretty prosperous, purchase a few riding lessons for their daughters.The Obamas are not poor, and their girls may take riding lessons -- but the cost of buying, feeding, housing and then racing a horse?This dressage business is like a dagger in the heart of every American parent who can barely afford to feed his or her child, maybe send the child to a summer camp for a couple of weeks (if they are lucky) or give the child a few basketball or music or art lessons.Spending money on your dressage habit is symbolic for the kind of waste that the rich indulge in when they get additional tax cuts. This story is a double-edged sword for Romney.
Brigid (7,777 posts)49. I know.I had just read that thread before I read this one. It's absolutely ridiculous. I hope they lose, and lose big.
JDPriestly (31,782 posts)41. The thing about the dressage horse is that it represents visually the disparity in wealthbetween the Romneys and most Americans.
Jackie’s love of horses started at an early age. As a child of six, she began schooling in dressage—the art of controlling a horse with subtle movements of the hands, legs, and weight. She kept a horse at Miss Porter’s, the boarding school she attended in Farmington, Connecticut. It was her Vassar classmate Gay Estin who encouraged her to get a hunt box—a weekend house with a small barn and paddock—in Virginia.
