A recent guest editorial on Eurodressage.com has me shaking my head in disbelief.

The writer, Mr. Ton Corbeau, is editor-in-chief of De Hoefslag, the largest weekly equestrian publication in the Netherlands. In Corbeau’s column, entitled “Ton’s Tale: Impossible World Equestrian Games,” he complains about the expense involved in sending competitors from his country to the 2010 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games in Lexington, Kentucky. Apparently it will cost the Dutch hundreds of thousands of euros to ship horses, riders, drivers, coaches, and equipment to the U.S.

News flash: We in the States have been incurring similar expenses for decades, sending equestrian teams to World Equestrian Games, Olympic Games, World Cup Finals, and other international competitions. And of course we’re not alone, with our North American colleagues and those in South America, Asia, and elsewhere facing financial and logistical challenges. 

For some reason, when the competition in question is the Olympic Games, everyone more or less accepts the fact that the location is something of a roll of the dice and that travel will be involved. The past three summer Olympics have been held in Hong Kong, Athens, and Sydney, none of which is an equestrian hotbed. But when it comes to the WEG, Mr. Corbeau objects to the choice of site because it will cost more to send the Dutch than it has to previous WEG locations, all of which have been in Europe