Every good idea is a good idea until it turns out to be a bad idea. In college, my parents wouldn’t allow me to have a car. They believed it would encourage me to stay on campus and study. Having gone to college in the Pacific Northwest, it was only a matter of time before I wanted a car so I could go camping on Mt. Hood, sightseeing in Puget Sound, or snowboarding on Whistler.

So my roommate and I purchased a car together. The car needed some TLC, but it was cheap, we were young and impulsive, and it seemed like a good idea.

Paddy Young finished 2011 the same way he did the two previous years—as the National Steeplechase Association’s champion jockey. The Irish native rode 112 races in 2011 and finished with 27 wins, including the Pennsylvania Hunt Cup, to claim the money-won and races-won titles.

Young grew up with horses in Ireland and moved to England to continue his jockey training before landing a job at Jack Fisher’s Maryland barn in 2003.

From the moment the War Horse trailer first appeared online, the equestrian community spread the news like wildfire. By November, hype had reached an anticipatory crescendo: “War Horse—is it going to make us cry?”

I’d already received several emails promising tissue-stocked concessions at my local screening, and when at last I found myself in the darkening theater, a couple clad in paddock boots to my right, I resolved that—in case of tears—at least I was amongst compatriots.

A lifelong equestrian, Betty Oare rode professionally for her father, J. Arthur Reynolds, in Tryon, N.C., until 1981 when she took her amateur status. She’s enjoyed championship wins at most of the nation’s top hunter shows. Now 70 and married to fellow horse enthusiast and trainer Ernest Oare, Betty campaigns Capone and Fine Kiss in the amateur-owner hunter divisions and foxhunts with the Warrenton Hunt (Va.). When she’s not in the saddle, she’s an active U.S. Equestrian Federation R-rated judge, sits on the U.S. Equestrian Federation National Hunter Committee and U.S.