The Long Road Ahead - George Morris on the state of the hunter/jumper industry.

The storied Wellington, FL-based horseman is not shy about expressing his opinions. As the USEF Show Jumping Team’s outgoing chef d’équipe — Morris, 75, handed the reins over to Californian Robert Ridland this year — a sizeable share of those opinions centre on the crumbling standards of North American show jumping.
Horse Sport sat down with Morris during his clinic at Iron Horse Farm in Burlington, ON, last fall. He’s says the sport faces a long road to recovery … and it’s time we started down it.

Horse Sport sat down with Morris during his clinic at Iron Horse Farm in Burlington, ON, last fall. He’s says the sport faces a long road to recovery … and it’s time we started down it.

HS: What steps are needed to rebuild show jumping on this continent given the recent European dominance?

GM: Our problem in North America is we haven’t kept up with Europe in our standards. First of all, they had a great head start in sport horse breeding. We had great racehorse breeding. After the Second World War, we didn’t think sport riding was going to be a big industry. If we had thought about it in both of our countries [Canada and the US], it would have been like the racehorses; we would have been ahead of the curve with sport horse breeding. Hindsight is too late. Now the Europeans are so far ahead. It is such a big industry [there]; it is so professional, so scientific. Yes, we will do our part in breeding, but I don’t see how we could ever catch up.

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Horse show standards have been let down. The professional horseman is interested in his own business, which is really too bad. Years ago, Bill Steinkraus, the greats of Canada, [Jim] Elder and [Tommy] Gayford, were interested in the big picture; they were interested in the sport and the future. Professionals today, unfortunately, are interested in their own life, their own pocketbook, their own customers. If something jeopardizes that, [they say] lower the fences; take out the liverpool; don’t have real hunter fences, they’re too difficult. They will opt for their own protection, rather than the sport.

So the professionals who are supposed to run the sport – I believe in the professional first – are lowering their standards. Horse show managers, horse show judges, horse show course builders, those people are beholden to the professional. If the professional says, “I don’t like his courses, he’s too difficult,” he’s not hired again. If the professional says, “That horse show doesn’t let us school the day before, I’m not going there again,” [that show will struggle]. So the professional is responsible for the lowering of the standards of every other aspect of horse show management.

Also, if that horse show isn’t up to snuff, the professional is supposed to speak up. If that judge isn’t good enough, the professional has to tell the judge or the show manager. I say the buck stops at the professional.

HS: Some feel that the hunter industry is mollycoddling its hunter riders, offering them more prize money than the professionals. Do you agree?

GM: What has happened with the hunter industry is it has gotten very artificial. They don’t really go by the rulebook. First of all, the courses are supposed to be built with fences that simulate the hunting field – gates, brush boxes, proper rampy oxers. The courses today are very artificial. They have some fences with four elements: for the oxer, it’s quadruple bars; verticals are triple bars. Those aren’t real fences that simulate cross-country riding. They are very easy for every horse and rider. That’s why the professional likes them, because people who can’t measure a fence and horses that aren’t very good jumpers still look all right. It caters to mediocrity. That lowers the standards.

Second, they don’t read the rules. Of course, eight good distances are a factor. Pace is a factor. Variety of course is a factor. Variety of obstacles is a factor. The first thing you inject into a horse and rider is bold. Every horse, every rider – flat riders, jumping riders, eventing riders – the first thing put into them is bold. Then you put in variety – different, different, different – that gives them confidence and that gives them bold.

Prize money is not my pet peeve. Personally, I think prize money should be relative to the difficulty of the competition. But if that’s the way they want to do it, that doesn’t bother me. What does bother me is the courses that hunters jump, the fact that they don’t really go by the rules, the picture of the riders, even the top professionals. There’s no form over fences anymore. That has to be factored into judging a hunter. The picture should be classic; it should be invisible aids, it should be with pace, it should be proper-sized fences. It should go by the rules of the division – not new rules; traditional, historic rules.

That’s where the jumpers are far better than the hunters. I have some criticism of the lack of variety of fences in some countries, but for most part the evolution of the jumpers has been pretty good. The fences are still big, the fences are often still airy, there are liverpools in interesting places, different cutout walls – the evolution of the jumper is far superior to that of the hunter.

HS: In Canada, people are coasting in the hunter and equitation divisions rather than using them as a stepping stone into the jumpers. Are you seeing that in the US as well?

GM: For some people, that should be their end. We have people that will never, ever be jumpers. It doesn’t have to be a stepping stone, but it does have to be a sporting event with real fences that are big enough. There has to be some sport to it. There has to be some difficulty to it. And pace! I don’t care if it’s a 3’ adult [class] and that’s their career, it still has to have a sporting element.

HS: Do you support Jane Clark’s decision to put British rider Ben Maher on her horses?

GM: I’m sure there are two sides to every story, and I certainly don’t want to take sides. I’m a very good friend to the [United States Equestrian] Federation, and I’m a very good friend to Jane. I would say that her decision to take Ben over a Will [Simpson, or other US rider, for example] … it’s not the easiest [to find] people who would work out with Jane. She likes to have her own horses at home. She’s old-fashioned; she likes to be involved with the organization, the management, and all that. Some people can’t do that; some American professionals can’t be with their horses in Wellington all the time. Some top riders already have top customers, so they can’t have another top customer. If you ride for Jane Clark, with her means, her background, her stature, her rider should be her rider. When you go down the list, once you eliminate people who want to keep the horse at home, once you eliminate the people who have other top owners, once you eliminate the people who live abroad, you are getting down to the lesser professional (maybe there are a couple she could have looked at) or the very wealthy amateur. That was one thing.

There were probably some disagreements with her case in Wellington that irritated her. [Clark’s horse Urico was disqualified from the US Olympic Selection Trials following a positive drug test while Mario Delauriers was his rider.] There are probably several reasons why she made that decision. I don’t think it was a rash decision; I think she thought about that for months.

Jane is still very supportive of the USA. She just bought Leslie Burr a new horse. She has great horses on the dressage team with Katherine Bateson. She’s big in driving. She gives real money to the USET Foundation … she is still very much supporting the country.

HS: Now that your tenure as chef d’équipe is over, what’s next for George Morris?

GM: I’m very happy to be finished with that. I did enough; they had enough of me. It’s time for a new face, and it’s time for me to get back to this [teaching], where I really concentrate on educating with whatever future I have left. That’s my passion; that’s my contribution.