Lucinda Green spoke frankly and with great passion to a convention room filled of diehard eventers, officials, organizers, and friends of the sport on Saturday December 13. Those attending the USEA Annual Meeting and Convention in New Orleans, Louisiana, stood and applauded Lucinda at the conclusion of her relevant, direct, and emotional discourse, which was tastefully peppered with comedic relief when appropriate.
We’ve extracted some of the key points below which we hope you will find enlightening and engaging. You will also find the full “almost uncut” (minus technical malfunctions) audio file for your perusal.
Chapter 1: Lucinda Green Introduction
USEA President Kevin Baumgardner introduces Lucinda Green.
Lucinda praises four inspiring articles, one written by Dennis Glaccum, one by Jim Wofford, one by Danny Warrington and one by Derek di Grazia, which have all influenced and paralleled her current philosophies in eventing, understanding and working with horse’s natural ability and initiative, and the current direction of our sport.
Chapter 3: The Horse Is Incredible
Lucinda speaks of extraordinary qualities inherent to horses that can make them innately dangerous but which can also save us.
Chapter 4: Why Does A Horse Fall?
Lucinda explores reasons why horses fall on course and discusses why many riders, who think they are helping, are only hindering their horses.
Chapter 5: Only I Know The Feeling
Lucinda shares a personal experience to illustrate a point; “Only I know what I’m feeling [on a horse]. Not you,” and draws a parallel to illustrate that a horse should be able to feel his own distance to a fence without relying on his rider.
Lucinda eloquently illustrates the need to allow horses to learn from their experiences to him to find his own distances and do his job without interference from his rider.
Chapter 7: How Would You Like To Be Ridden
Lucinda explores differences in equestrianism from the late 1800s and explores the writings of Federico Caprilli and how he transformed the understanding of jumping balance and the mechanics of a horse.
Lucinda focuses on three reasons that make eventing more rewarding and enjoyable to her and the many equestrians who choose the sport over other disciplines.
Lucinda reinforces the fact that it takes time to train and allow a horse and rider to grow and establish a symbiotic bond and expresses that it is especially important to take that time now in this age of “instant gratification.”
Chapter 10: You Drill A Trooper; You Train A General
Lucinda explores the metaphor of training your horse to lead like an Army general and learn initiative on the cross-country course, rather than drilling him to do exactly as he’s told, without question, like a trooper.
Chapter 11: If You Drill A Trooper
Lucinda warns against the downward spiral of negative riding that can occur if a horse is drilled to be a passive servant rather than trained to be an obliging leader.
Chapter 12: Connection Versus Initiative
Lucinda esteems Jack Le Goff as an extraordinary horseman and explores some of his philosophies on how too much connection in advanced dressage training destroys a horse’s initiative on cross-country and can result in more falls.
Chapter 13: Let A Horse Be A Horse
Lucinda resolves the paramount importance of a horse’s innate athleticism, trainability, and initiative in a successful and symbiotic horse/rider partnership, and the danger of failing to recognize or, worse, destroying the very instinct that can save us.
Listen to the Uncut Audio Version here!
