Further to my extensive rant of earlier today, I am indulging an irresistible urge to share with you the announcement of the US Olympic Dressage Team, which reached my inbox a few minutes ago, while being simultaneously posted on the USEF’s website. On a Saturday, no less. The final class of the US Dressage Team selection trials ended today at around 11 am EDT, which makes the turn around – not just for the competition results but for the Olympic team announcement that Cheryl Tataryn at EC is so determined to prevent Canada from issuing – around seven or eight hours. Weekends and same-day press releases aren’t really EC’s thing. Days to weeks is the norm up here in the frozen north, where apparently not just molasses in January flows slowly. ‘Out for translation’ is the popular refrain used by the M&C dept.
I’d like to share with you the nice little experience I had (among many pleasant experiences last week) in Bromont. I was involved with writing and posting the press releases for the event. Being not only in Canada, but inside the province of Quebec, the organizers felt compelled to make sure the press releases were posted in both official languages. The longest gap between end of competition and posting of the releases in English and French was about 18 hours. That was the LONGEST it took. And that was on a weekend. The translations were provided by a very nice woman named Laure who is a full time Monday-Friday employee at the Quebec Federation, and who kindly gave up her weekend for the worthy cause of helping get the word out about a three star event which formed the final and all-important observation trial for the US and Canadian Eventing Teams. I don’t need to point out the fact that the US Eventing Team announcement came out days ago from USEF, while Canada remains steadfast in its policy of ‘soft’ non-announcements that the mass media is never, ever, ever going to see.
In an age of ever-more-instant news reaching an ever-larger proportion of the population, EC M&C dept. is doing its very best to back peddle into the last century. Back to the Future, indeed.
