Olympic equestrian competition and the United States?

Question

Germany has 3 gold medals - 1 each in team dressage, individual eventing, and team eventing

The United States has 1 silver medal - in individual eventing

Australia has 1 silver medal - in team eventing

The Netherlands has 1 silver medal - in team dressage

Great Britain has 1 bronze medal - in individual eventing

The Unites States is lagging badly behind Germany in the Olympic equestrian competition and the UK is doing even worse. What's with that?

Answer 1

The germans are better horsemen and the have better horses.

Answer 2

Germany has been really good at dressage for a long, long time, so that would affect both the dressage and eventing competitions.

Answer 3

i personally think its the change of atmosphere thats affecting the horses

Answer 4

Wodering the same here!

Answer 5

i dont know! it pissed me off soo bad! i was like wtf? why are we soooo crappy? for the first time ever i was like ashmed to go to ride mah horse with my germaqn friend! cuz she like called me and was all like, ahahhaha yall suck! ugh wtf!

Answer 6

I was wondering the same....  The American team has great horses this year, but something is not on their side. But I sure enjoy watching all of it! LOL

Answer 7

Germany always wins all upper levels know this.

Germany wins because they have superior athletes and even better horses. Before you are even aloud to sit in a saddle in germany you have to do a min. of 3 months vaulting training in order to develop a seat, balance, a feel for the horse.

But here in the US we just through the kids up and expect great things.

Germany has also been doing this way longer. The whole training scale that Dressage training is based on is called the "German Training pyramid"

Dressage is basic training the foundation. My horse competes in first level dressage and does really well then turns around win's eventing, hunter jumper, jumper and huntseat classes just like that because his dressage foundation is so strong. In germany that is were everyone starts doing dressage before branching out. We don't in the US or UK its pick your discipline and go.

So it is no surprsie that Germany is winning they have been doing it longer and better then we the us.

usually the UK, US and Aus. are all up in the top four and i have looked at the results and it looks normal. thats how it always looks.

Answer 8

The Germans are just better.  I sure do wish that we had better luck so we can represent USA better.  It's fun to watch though!