WEG2010 Eventing: Phillip Dutton vs. The Rest Of The World

Phillip Dutton - Rarely Out Of The Saddle

When you start trawling through his results you start believing this man has more horses than the Terracotta Army (they have 520 according Wikipedia), and he really could take on the rest of the world. I gave up trying to analyse the potential of the American team for the AllTech World Equestrian Games, when I unearthed his scoresheet, not to mention the fact that the US team has 16 horses on the 'shortlist' and USEF "reserves the right to add more". Add more! what on earth for? Four of these reside with non other than P Dutton.

According to US Eventing, Phillip is a keen golfer and tennis player, I don't believe he can possibly have the time, the man's permanently in breeches and probably has a saddle sewn into them for good measure! A wife and 3 daughters will do that to a man.



There are a few riders based here in the UK that run almost as many horses as Phillip, Andrew Nicholson for example. What's interesting is these "hardest working" riders get a good share of results at all levels, but struggle to get individual medals or the Badminton win everyone is chasing.

Anyway, as the American's clearly can't make up their minds about who should go and have insisted everyone must attend pony club camp the American Eventing Championships in mid September, I'm going to help Mark Phillips be more productive with his time over the next few weeks by using my tried and trusted selection method - Spin The Bottle! Here we go:

Kim Severson - On The 'Short-ish' List

Phillip Dutton riding "any one of his four"
Karen O'Connor riding Mandiba
Boyd Martin riding Remington
Kim Severson riding Tipperary Liadhnan
Will Faudree riding Pawlow
Buck Davidson riding My Boy Bobby

Whatever happens at pony club camp, the Americans are bound to pick at least one WEG 2010 medal winner, whether that will be Phillip remains to be seen.

ps. you can follow Phillip's Blog "Road To WEG"