I was pondering last night, if I should feel guilty or not and after talking with several folks about it the answer is definitely not.
You see, even before I left the states to train in Holland with Anky van Grunsven I had parents, kids and businesses asking me to bring them back this or that autographed by Anky. My first reaction was sure that’s something neat I could do for people but then I realized it’s fair to ask her for a max of two autographs so then how would I decide who would get it and under what conditions were the most needy, deserving and was that even for me to decide? I even had a couple of parents email me requesting autographs for their children as Christmas presents. Then there was the online horse website which wanted me to get an autograph they could raffle to their members. Wow! Now on the kids and Christmas, well, that would be a great Christmas present for sure but I contemplated was it my place to provide this Christmas present for these parents? I liked the idea of getting an really nice autographed photo, framing it an auctioning it off giving the money to a not for profit organization like I did with my boots and the Wounded Warrior Project.
I guess the long and the short of it is I decided not to get anything except I asked Anky to autograph my dress boots since I’d ridden in them many hours with her and it just seemed fitting.
So my thought was there has to be an autograph session at WEG with Anky and perhaps we could focus on that? Another thought was hey, just ask her directly as she’s quite approachable regardless of what you might hear. Maybe email the anky.com website and inquire if you were to send a photo with postage paid both ways could they ask Anky to autograph it?
So I’m sorry to all the folks that requested but figuring out who, which and why just doesn’t seem fair and I hope everyone understands. It would definitely be an honor to have Anky’s autograph but I think the real honor would be in asking her directly and watching her actually sign it. Where there’s a will, there’s a way and I’ve completely proven that with my training here abroad!
Happy day to you all!