Rafalca drops a shoe

It didn’t take long for the venerable grey lady to feature on page B12 on the “New York Times ” ‘SportsThursday’ [July 26, 2012] an 1800-word feature article by Mary Pilon on Rafalca, an American equestrian entry in the Dressage category.

 

 

 

 

 

[Photo: Policymic.com]

In fact, Pilon’s piece is prominently placed at the SportsThursday first page over Sam Boden’s story on the Women’s US Soccer team’s 4-3 victory over France in Glasgow, before the opening ceremonies the London Summer Olympics officially open by the lighting of the flame on Friday, in London.

Let’s face it, were it not Ann Romney but Ann Schmidt, owner of Rafalca, would Mary Pilon be assigned to a feature on Dressage? Hardly. If anything, the Times would very well “passer sous silence” on the matter. In fact, the American paper of note might have simply made mention in a laundry list of medal winners, who won the Gold, Silver and Bronze in this category.

It doesn’t take rocket science to figure out the reason why the Times’ spotlight is on this thoroughbred: the headline tells more than half the story–“Behind a Gifted Horse, a Powerful Owner.” And this powerful person who has one-third legal title to Rafalca happens to be Ann Romney, wife of Willard Mitt Romney, the heir presumptive to the 2012 Republican nominee to the White House. (La Romney, herself an amateur rider, credits horseback riding for the remission of her multiple sclerosis.)

But this is not the story as far as Rafalca is concerned. The 15-year-old mare has a long German lineage. Her rider, German-born Jan Ebeling, is the husband of Amy Ebeling who also has a 33-percent ownership claim on the horse. (Beth Meyer owns the last third share.)

[Photo: Dressage-news.com]

With great detail Pilon goes into the particular ancestry of German-born Rafalca. According to “Dressage News,” reported in the Times,”Rafalca is a classic horse,” and she “fits with Jan’s personality and Jan’s training, which is very consistent and classical. They fit each other.”

Pilon goes on to trace Rafalca’s life and career from birth in Menslage, in northern Germany, to her diet, and then to her early training and races and second- and first-place wins. Qualities inherited from illustrious sires and dams, mingled with a reference to genes, has overtones of racial purity that once flourished in the 1936 Summer Games in Berlin.

But, the description is standard stable-door talk in evaluating thoroughbreds. Yet, in the age of Occupy Wall Street and the large disparity of wealth socked away in Swiss bank and Cayman Island accounts and the personal wealth of the Romney, supplemented annually by Bain Capital funds, this kind of ownership and “racial talk” might shock and stir up unpleasant moments in Olympics history.

Ebeling himself defended Dressage against a rich man’s sport, which Thorstein Veblen had something to say in his “Theory of the Leisure Class,” as “not an elite sport.” Well it ain’t something for the masses, either!

[Photo: democraticunderground.com]

Still, the Times has set the tone on coverage of La Romney at 12-day Summer Games. And will indirectly shine her husband’s family coat of arms as he vies for president of the US in the upcoming November elections.