Resilience, Change and the Sport of Three-Day Eventing

What does it take?

What does it take to be resilient? To rise from falls? To find joy in the shitstorms of life, or to excel in the rough and tumble sport of Three-Day Eventing?

You may wonder how these things relate and what the hell the sport of Three-Day Eventing even is. Fair questions!

I am going to write a little series and interview my friends, who are still active in the remarkable sport I left behind 20 years ago. I ran screaming from Three-Day Eventing for a variety of reasons, not all of which we’ll get into today. Turns out, I almost had what it took … but not quite.

Over the past two decades my peers have evolved and excelled, and the sport has changed dramatically. I am currently travelling around to watch them in action and the thought, “You are not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy!” has occurred to me more than once. Things change. Life changes. And what drives change? Necessity, usually. And safety.

Three-Day Eventing began as a military test of Cavalry officers and their mounts between wars and was first included in the Olympic Games in 1912. It was so named, because it was a test of three distinct phases performed over three days.