What’s in a Ribbon?

Last month, the state-of-the-art indoor complex that is Roberts Arena in Wilmington, Ohio hosted their first owned and run hunter/jumper show under the facility’s brand new name: The World Equestrian Center. To celebrate the event, the Wilmington Spring Classic offered competitors lots of super-cool swag, including slate-colored coolers, C-4 belts, and saddle pads for the first place winners. But for every rider who pinned that week, there was another prize rarely seen on hunter/jumper circuits today: a truly awesome ribbon.

Now I know what you’re thinking: Who cares about ribbons? How cool can a ribbon possibly be?

To which I say to you: VERY COOL.

©Horse Network

Topped with a thick, crimped rosette and long, multi-hued streamers, each World Equestrian Center blue ribbon was decorated with delicate golden fringe that looked as if it was plucked from Napoleon’s own epaulets. There have been prize ribbons for as long as there have been horse shows—and chicken and lama shows too, for that matter—but these were truly something special, and reason enough to stop and consider. Cheap and insubstantial as the majority of them might be, are ribbons simply par for the horse show course these days, or are they still at the heart of why we compete?

Many of us can remember a time, perhaps during our pony days, when the answer to, “What’s in a ribbon?” was a resounding, “Um, EVERYTHING.” Unless you were a truly wise-beyond-your-years type of kid (in which case, mazel), there was probably a now-regrettable period in your life when, like Gollum with his ring, you coveted and obsessed over those China-made knick-knacks more than anything else. Mine were hoarded and arranged in neat rows in storage boxes under my bed, with favorites pinned in places of honor on my bookshelf. But if like me you weren’t yet a decent enough human to realize that those ribbons reeeeeallly didn’t belong to you, but to the 20-year-old school master/saint who carried you safely around that crowded, dusty show ring, never fear. That little oversight would rectify itself very soon.

Because the next stop on the horse show education train was a place I like to call, “The Learner Phase.” That was a hard horse who never won ribbons but who finally helped you to build all that competitive character you’d been lacking so far in your career. He might have been young, green, or an OTTB (or, God help you, all three—thanks, Tango!), but this fact never seemed to register as you watched your friends and fellow competitors, beaming as they sauntered out of line to collect their blue and red and yellow ribbons. At first, this experience could be grating, especially if you were used to joining them. But gradually, ever so painfully, you learned to rank the success of your rounds not by ribbon color, but by the knowledge that you gained, the improvements you made throughout the week, and the valuable experiences your horse added to his repertoire in the hopes of maybe retaining some of them the next time around. (Braiders are not midnight assassins, they’re just there to do their jobs; if at first you don’t succeed in the warm-up trip, school, school again.) These were important lessons, and they had nothing to do with ribbons.

If you were lucky enough to keep showing into your post-junior, over-18 adult years, or Phase 3 of our little exercise, you might have found yet another way to think about ribbons. Maybe you rode another horse who won occasionally, and as a result, you suddenly realized that ribbons weren’t quite the consummate tokens of achievement that they used to be. By now you’ve learned to count your successes in less physical terms, and, more importantly, you live in a shoebox-sized apartment and are actively looking to decrease your odds of dying under a giant tower of newspapers, stray cats, and boxes of old horse show ribbons. When you do win classes as an adult amateur, you might not pick your ribbons up, you might throw them out after the week is over, or you just toss them into that flea market masquerading as the backseat of your car (a place I also refer to as the ‘pit of forgetting and despair’).

By this timeline then, it would seem that the value of horse show ribbons isn’t black or white, but fluid. It changes based on things like your age, your horse, your experience level, and your apartment’s square footage. That said, there’s nothing wrong with the desire to win ribbons at any time in your horse show career. Hell, showing is stressful, exhausting, and time-consuming, not to mention endlessly expensive. It’s only natural to want to take home something concrete and tangible to show for all those hours, tears, and dollar dollar bills yo.

©Alex Carlton

What does matter, as we grow, is the ability to keep that desire in check and in perspective, a skill that cuts to the very core of good horsemanship. Most of us probably know plenty of “adults”—amateurs and professionals alike—who prioritize ribbons and the prize money that comes with them above everything else. This, often at the expense of fair competition, the health of their horses, and I would argue, the legacy of the sport itself. That’s a deep well, to be sure, but it leads to an important point. Perhaps instead of wondering ‘What’s in a ribbon?’ a better question might be to ask ourselves, ‘What am I bringing to this ribbon?’

Hopefully, when you walk out of the lineup and accept that sapphire-colored satin into your hands, the answer will be this: your best efforts, lots of hard work with an equine partner you appreciate, and the knowledge that, yeah, you actually had some fun while you were out there. And if that ribbon also happens to be a little extra special, with long, flowing streamers, and a few golden tassels for good measure?

Go ahead and hang it on your bookshelf for old times’ sake. It sounds like you earned it.