March 24, 2025 
I was lying on my stomach on the hotel bed paging through photos on my computer, tears streaming down my face.
I was crying because horses are so beautiful.
I texted someone, snot on my face: “Why are horses so beautiful?”
“Horses are beautiful!” he replied.
“No,” I texted between sobs. “I’m asking why. Why are they so beautiful? They jump, you don’t need to be beautiful to do that. So why are they so beautiful?”
I texted someone else: “Do you think horses are ACTUALLY beautiful or if, like, an alien came down to earth and saw a horse maybe the alien would say, ‘Oh my god why are you guys riding around on such ugly creatures??’ I mean, like, maybe horses aren’t actually beautiful, we only think they are?”
“Horses are beautiful!” she replied.
This week I wandered north, with everyone else, up to the World Equestrian Center in Ocala, Florida for the second leg of the 2025 Longines League of Nations, where ten nations competed for glory, points, and $770,000 in prize money.
For those who haven’t been (although since EVERYONE was there this weekend, I’m not even sure who I’m writing this to), the World Equestrian Center is a veritable Disneyland for horses, a mega-complex built in defiance of our national federation, who keeps a strict lockdown on which shows can and can’t exist.
It took a few years, but the rebellion turned successful, and now not only does WEC exist, and not only am I lying on a bed in a hotel directly adjacent to the main competition ring (blissful convenience), but they’ve also managed to land one of the legs of the newly-branded FEI competition series, the Longines League of Nations.
Of course the euros are pretty angry about it. “You will see,” says my friend the Frenchman, “There is NO atmosphere.”
The Frenchman doesn’t seem to understand that money rules the world, not crowd size, and besides, for us, this IS an enormous crowd. In the U.S., we are a participant-based sport, not a fan-based one.
And I can’t get into the Yellow Pony, the ever-popular drinking hole off the lobby of the Equestrian Hotel. The wait is an hour to get a table, and just shy of that to get a drink! Does that not prove that we are bursting at the seams here this weekend?
It is true that Swiss riders Steve Guerdat and Martin Fuchs, third and fourth-ranked riders in the world respectively, have announced a boycott of the series due to what they feel are its poorly-chosen venues. Both attended the Ocala leg last year, and Fuchs won the Grand Prix, but was forced to endure an embarrassing prize-giving ceremony with only “50 spectators, maybe 100” watching him receive his ribbon and do his victory gallop.
So, ok, fine—it is a bit mortifying to invite your European friends to your house only to have them continually tell you your enthusiasm is flagging and your countrymen are indifferent and boring. But here, in America, this sport is a bit of a secret, kept out of populous areas by USEF’s mileage rule, which sanctions one show within a 250-mile radius as-the-crow-flies, and determinedly kept boring by a tradition of silence and dignity, which is how proper rich people act (this is a rich man’s sport).
But I don’t like people too much anyway, I like horses, and that is why I am crying in bed.
What really set me off is the series of photos I took of Ilex, the equine partner of McLain Ward, whose every rippling muscle, whose proud head, arched neck, eager eye, is on glorious display in front of me on my laptop screen. I am not interested in shooting precisely, but rather I hold down the shutter button before, during, and after a jump so that 30 frames tell the story of the leap over an obstacle, the horse’s body frozen in a series of precise movements that are as wondrous and beautiful to me as anything I’ve ever seen.
But beauty aside, we also have victory. Ilex and McLain were the last to go, and only a clear round would win the night. Team USA was on 4 faults, Germany was on 5. Sophie Hinners and her partner Iron Dames Singclair had just put down a clear round, so the pressure was on. Absolutely no room for error, if you want to be standing at the top of the podium. If you don’t want to let your teammates down.
Game on.
You know how it ends. It’s McLain, after all.
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