It happened again. My two weeks in Welly World vanished faster than you can say Bellissimo. Every year I go down thinking I’ll have all kinds of time to socialize, go for bird-watching walks, even sneak down to Key Largo for a night or two. And every year I arrive home feeling like I’ve been on one of those hamster treadmills, spinning so fast that I get spun back out again before I realize what happened.
It truly is a phenomenon down there at WEF; it’s even replicating – at the rapidly expanding and monopolizing Global Dressage Fest. Being a west coast girl, I have an aesthetic preference for California, but California can’t come anywhere near Florida – not in numbers, not in calibre of competitors. Which got me to thinking: what is it that makes Florida so dense and intense while California remains not much different from how it’s been for the past ten years?
Sr. B’s vision of creating a winter circuit that rivals anything in equestrian sport world wide is coming true, in spite of all the enmities – or perhaps because of them. Some people thrive on adversity, preferring to fight their way to the top. The one Saturday night Grand Prix I watched had more than a smattering of European star power, with Scott and Ben vying for the top spot, followed by an Olympian cocktail of Brazilians, Irish, Americans and Canadians. And that was only week three. Over in Dressage Land, where peace reigns – at least on the surface – barely a third of the entries in the Grand Prix were Americans. And while the level of European participation isn’t at the world beater level that can be found next door at WEF, there were eight countries representing in the Grand Prix dressage class.
So why Welly and not Cali? Is it because Florida is easier to get to from Europe than California? I don’t think we can argue that the density of shows and amounts of prize money are a contributing factor, since they are a result of the numbers of horses and riders who flock to Florida. They qualify as effect, not cause. After much puzzling, I’ve come to a startling conclusion: the reason Florida has become so huge in the world of horse sport is because it’s flat, swampy and nondescript. Allow me to explain.
Thirty years ago, Wellington was an undeveloped extension of the Everglades – a swampy, gatory, mosquito-infested stretch of nothingness (unless you were one of the myriad native creatures that lived there, in which case it was paradise). The thing about Florida is that one patch of swamp is as good – or bad – as the next. All that unclaimed real estate made it easy for the millionaire and billionaire pioneers to grab a soggy square and build their Shangri Las in one another’s faces. Unlike in California, where one property might be worth more because of its terrain, or trees, or water courses, it’s all identical in Welly World. And that made it perfect for making it into what it is today.
There was no history or prestige attached to any part of Wellington when it first began to grow into the horse mecca that exists today. That’s changed somewhat now. Inhabitants of Grand Prix Village barely know Loxahatchee exists, and they wouldn’t be caught dead anywhere north of Southern Blvd. But that’s not because South Shore is more ‘beautiful’ than G Road. If you remove all the artifice – the palm trees and fountains and lawns – it’s all the same.
So, thanks to the fact that Wellington has nothing to distinguish one piece of land from another, it lent itself perfectly to becoming the place it is today. It’s the most remarkable unremarkable place around.
