11/21/2025
"As the mother of a junior rider in her last year, I am reflecting on some hard truths. After much debate, we decided to splurge and let our daughter attend a few A shows this year. It was quite enlightening, revealing the stark financial barriers and cultural disparity that define elite junior riding.
My daughter was raised in a barn rat culture. Her coach was a pony clubber and always believed that the kids should do all the work. My daughter began working in exchange for lessons at age 12 and bought and broke her own pony at age 14. For us, this was a once-in-a-lifetime purchase. We have a well-established dual-income lifestyle, we like to travel, and we are saving for retirement and education. Spending an excessive amount of money on one child’s hobby seemed unfair to our other child and unwise financially.
My daughter had many mishaps throughout her junior riding experience; she broke her ankle and had to take time off. But she also had the chance to do IEA and ride several different horses while her pony was out on lease. The pony was returned to us this December, and so we decided to break her green card and attend some A shows.
Our first A show was a bit of a culture shock. My daughter headed to the barn early to braid her pony and lunge her. When her coach and I arrived a bit later, we heard that she was one of the few minors at the barn, and she had difficulty finding a place to lunge because coaches were out lunging other people’s ponies.
My daughter was the only one who rode her pony the entire time we were at the show. She was also the only one who cared for it. She fed it, wrapped her legs, packed her feet, and braided both her and another horse. Meanwhile, we saw countless ponies handed off to grooms and coaches while children and teens walked in a different direction.
While the first show was an eye-opener, my daughter had some good rounds and qualified for Pony Finals. So we decided to attend a bigger show to get that experience. This was when the financial disparity really became apparent. Every barn seemed to have a groom braiding, mucking stalls, and packing up their trailer. At the end of the weekend, this almost 50-year-old mom was exhausted, dirty, and covered in horse hair. I seemed to be one of the few moms nervously recording and watching from ringside.
The difference was even more noticeable in the pony rounds. My daughter was frustrated when she sometimes felt like she had an excellent course but was moved down due to how “unfancy” her pony was. For the first time, I felt like I was unable to provide for my child.
The ponies we competed against were listed for the upper 5 figures. This is unattainable for most people, and including the conformation criteria in the pony classes makes it biased towards these expensive horses. The conformation class systematically excludes the hard-working, but less-perfect, equine partners, reinforcing a show ring that prioritizes genetic/financial perfection over athleticism or partnership.
While everyone likes to hear stories about the OTTB or backyard pony who succeeds, as a discipline, I think that story is pretty rare. Many of the riders of these ponies handed off their horse to go ride another upper-level hunter in another ring while my daughter anxiously waited for results.
After one particularly difficult round, my child was visibly upset, as only hormonal teen girls can be. Some of the other girls around her seemed to be eyeing her with judgment. It appeared that they may have had difficulty empathizing with someone who was disappointed in how she rode in one of the few courses she had at this level, especially when they would be handing off their ponies to ride their jumper or 3 ‘3’ hunter in the next ring. We even heard one parent say, “It’s okay, we will be back next weekend,” all the while knowing that this would be our only trip to this venue.
Needless to say, it was quite a discouraging experience. My daughter had some good rides and some not-so-good rides, but the overall environment was what really set the tone for the weekend.
On our trip home, we had many discussions about these financial differences and about how some sports are just not accessible to all. My daughter realized that with her academic and career plans, she wants to be a large animal veterinarian, and she is unlikely to ever be able to compete successfully in this level of the hunter world. We discussed whether to even use her senior trip money to attend Pony Finals, where we knew we would feel out of place. In the end, we chose a family memory over a selective competition, realizing that the ‘hard truth’ is that some dreams are simply too expensive, and that’s okay."
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