The Year in Horses: 1996

1996

• Prior to the start of the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia, animal welfare organizations
  and—rumor has it—then-FEI president Princess Anne were opposed to the Atlanta
  location as the heat and humidity could be dangerous for the horses competing
  in eventing. Nevertheless, the American equestrians enjoyed success on home
  turf, earning eventing team silver and individual bronze, dressage team bronze
  and show jumping team silver. Germany
  once again showed its Olympic equestrian immortality, taking home all the gold
  medals in dressage and show jumping. Australia’s
  team took eventing gold with New Zealand’s Blyth Tait earning individual
  bronze.
• In Louisville, Kentucky, an American version of Germany’s
  Equitana took place at the same time as the Olympics. Equitana USA featured
  clinicians, demonstrations, and of course, shopping for horse owners and
  enthusiasts. The expo became an annual event for the next few years.
• Also in Louisville, saddle seat went international for the
  first-ever Saddle Seat Equitation World Cup. This inaugural event drew teams of
  riders from the U.S., Canada, Great Britain, South Africa and Namibia to
  compete on borrowed horses for team and individual medals. This event has been
  held biannually since then, with the U.S. and South Africa dominating the top
  two spots every year.
• In January, the world of top-level hunter/jumper show horses
  was in the mainstream news for the worst possible reasons. Olympic hopeful (and
  heir to a cellular phone company fortune) George Lindemann Jr. and Marion
  Hulick, his barn manager were sentenced to 33 months and 21 months,
  respectively, for electrocuting a show horse and passing it off as colic to
  collect the $250,000 in insurance money. Later that year, trainer Barney Ward
  pled guilty of conspiracy to kill four horses and was sentenced to 33 months in
  prison. He is permanently banned from attending AHSA (now USEF) competitions,
  even as a spectator. Altogether, 35 people were convicted of fraud, obstruction
  of justice, extortion, racketeering and animal cruelty in relation to the
  deaths of between 50 and 100 horses.

In the Pages of
Horse Illustrated

• Rust breeches? Still a-okay in 1996. Not only that, but you
  could pair them with a plaid hunt coat and wear them out on the town. In the
  ultimate 90s fashion endorsement, we pointed out that the character Elaine
  Bennes on hit sitcom Seinfeld was often seen sporting equestrian apparel. Click the image on the right to see the equestrian-on-the-street fashions that we featured in the March 1996 issue.
• “The hottest place in the horse world right now
  doesn’t exist. Not really…it’s found in cyberspace, that intangible, real, but
  unreal world that people enter via computer.” This is how we marveled about the
  fantastic new online world in the April 1996 issue. OK, the Internet wasn’t all that new in 1996, but horse people aren’t exactly early adopters. We
  instructed readers on how to enter the online horse world via such cutting-edge
  services as America Online and CompuServe.
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  A sidebar in this article listed several
  horse-related websites, not a one of which still exists today. This helped to
  kick off a short, monthly feature titled “Equines on the Web,” where we listed
  some of our favorite online equine destinations. Also in the April 1996
  article, we announced that we could now be contacted by email, which was then a
  single aol address. How about a Horse Illustrated website? Not yet. No need to
  rush into anything.

Go back to the Horse Illustrated 35th Anniversary main page.