In Any Other Sport, You’d Be Fired by Now
In most sports, results decide who stays in charge. In equestrian sport, leadership appears to be a lifetime appointment.
In any kind of football, ice hockey, rugby, pick your “manly” sport if you like, leadership is temporary and conditional.
You win, you stay.
You lose, you’re questioned.
You keep losing, you’re gone.
Team captains are replaced. Coaches are fired. Entire support staffs are reshuffled overnight. Not because it’s personal, but because performance matters.
In equestrian sport, the logic seems somewhat inverted.
In our sport, captains and chefs d’équipe can preside over years of underperformance, internal friction, questionable selections, and dwindling results, and still return for the next championship as if nothing happened. Same job. Same trust. Same narrative.
No relegation.
No accountability.
Not even consequences.
For sure this raises an awkward question, what, exactly, is the role of a team captain in equestrian sport?
In theory, it’s leadership.
Strategy.
Athlete support.
Selection responsibility.
Creating a culture that delivers results and longevity.
In practice, it often looks more like ceremonial continuity, a position held indefinitely, completely insulated from scrutiny by tradition, politics, and familiarity.
Relentless evaluation!
Meanwhile, in sports like football or ice hockey, captains are not rewarded for loyalty or seniority alone. They are evaluated relentlessly.
Their presence must actively improve the team, tactically, mentally, competitively. If it doesn’t, someone else gets the “honour.”
Equestrian sport likes to frame itself as different. Individual. Nuanced. Complex. Horses are not balls. Riders are not interchangeable.
But that does not explain why leadership roles appear to exist outside the basic laws of performance.
Especially at championships, where results are the only shared metric. What’s even more striking is how normal this has become.
Poor results are explained away as “experience building.”
Missed medals become “valuable learning opportunities.”
No to forget accountability dissolves into vague statements about long-term plans that never seem to arrive.
In other sports, this would be called what it is, stagnation.
Perhaps the difference isn’t that equestrian sport can’t apply performance logic.
Perhaps it’s that it doesn’t want to.
Because real accountability would require asking uncomfortable questions, not just of the riders, but of those who select them, lead them, and remain in charge regardless of outcome.
Maybe that’s the most unspoken rule of them all. In football, the scoreboard decides. In equestrian sport, the hierarchy does, and that may explain more than any medal table ever could.
Finally, someone who said what needs to be said. This seems to happen in all countries, alas.