BY PIPER KLEMM Ph.D.
Walk into almost any barn in the country in any discipline and you will find buckles and ribbons and photos adorning a wall. Every barn, in their own way, feels like a celebration of all they have accomplished in the show ring using the most visible measures of success each discipline has. For people selecting a barn, it’s easy to imagine dreams of our own trophies being enormously persuasive.
A blue ribbon does not tell you how the horse felt on the way there. Just because the color is blue does not mean that someone is training in a way that we all might agree with in public. The idea that winning is proof of doing things right is one of the most deeply embedded and most quietly damaging assumptions in the equestrian world.
Logic might dictate—if someone is winning and especially consistently winning, surely they must be doing something right. Surely the ribbons are evidence of a system that works, of horsemanship that holds up, of training methods worth emulating or at least worth paying for. Surely the USEF, with their emphasis on horse welfare, would only endorse team athletes who do not do reprehensible things behind closed home rings. Surely.
And yet some of the most forceful, most physically demanding, most welfare-questionable training approaches in this sport produce blue ribbons with alarming regularity. Horses that are drilled into submission can be extraordinarily consistent. Animals that have been pushed past their natural way of going to fit a mold in the hunters, jumpers or equitation can look very polished in the ring. Winning in our current form of sport does not require harmony. It requires a result, and results can be manufactured in more ways than one.
This is where the judgement-by-winning method gets genuinely tricky, and genuinely dangerous. Because if you ask a parent who is new to the horse world why a particular trainer wins so much, the honest and troubling answer is that they often cannot tell. The people who are proclaimed to be best in sport and best in class know when and where they can get away with reprehensible behavior. Their staff sign on to hide their tactics from the owners, supporters, investors, and the world. They know how to only show tricolors and victory gallops to prospective students, parents, USEF, and fans. They know what people want to hear to sign the checks.
This creates an ecosystem where the forceful trainer with the full trophy case keeps a full barn, and the quiet trainer, who takes longer because they are building something real, who loses business because the ribbons are fewer and the timeline is more honest, struggles to compete. They struggle in the show ring and then they struggle to keep their barn aisle full. The economy of reputation drives this industry more than most of us like to admit.
We see this constantly. The trainer who is beloved by those who truly know horses, who produces sound, confident animals and educated riders, who turns down clients when the match is not the shiny choice for many. And then the trainer who dominates the trophy list, whose name is on everyone’s lips, who may or may not be doing things we would all be uncomfortable watching if we knew where to look, that person is booked solid.
The responsibility falls on all of us—from the experienced horseperson who sees something concerning in the warm-up ring and says something all the way to staff, clients, and students speaking up when a line is crossed at home or at the show. On the show community that conflates a full in-gate with a clean conscience, we all need to be aware and active. It’s all of our job to never celebrate results without ever asking what it cost the horse to produce them.
Ribbons are a metric. They are not a moral compass. Blue ribbons are worth working for, worth celebrating, worth the long days and the early mornings and the very real sacrifices this sport demands. But it is not, by itself, proof of anything except that someone won on that day, in that class, in that moment. How every horse got there and if it was in a manner we are comfortable with collectively is always worth asking.
