Sue Blinks first became a household name in the international dressage world with the expressive Flim Flam. Blinks and Flim Flam won team bronze at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney and were part of the silver medal-winning team at the 2002 FEI World Equestrian Games (Spain).

Blinks, 55, and her current Grand Prix partner, Robin Hood, have won CDI Grand Prix classes in California, Quebec and Ontario. Based out of Leatherdale Farm West in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., Blinks is a popular clinician and trainer, in addition to her riding duties.

The Board of Directors of the National Sporting Library and Museum has appointed Melanie Leigh Mathewes as its new executive director.

Mathewes served as the executive director of the Hermitage Museum & Gardens in Norfolk, Va., for the last eight years. During her tenure, she oversaw the first strategic plan for the Hermitage, which resulted in numerous improvements in the physical plant and a dramatic increase in membership and visitation.

Like you'd expect from any activity involving green horses, the 100-Day Thoroughbred Challenge offered spectators at the Maryland Horse World Expo, Jan. 18-20 in Timonium, Md., some thrills, spills and surprises. But it also offered inspiration (to ride better), information (on why Thoroughbreds off the track do some of the things they do), and a solid case made on behalf of ex-racers as excellent sport horses-in-waiting.

Ever have a co-worker ask, “How was your race?” after a weekend of showing dressage? Does your non-horsey husband refer to your horse’s fly mask as a blindfold or scarf? You’re definitely not alone. Posters on the Chronicle’s online forums started an amusing thread sharing what their non-horsey significant others, family members and friends say about their hobby.

• My husband, in a very endearing voice, once asked me, “Do you know what I see when I watch you ride?” I prepared myself for some profoundly sweet response. 

It used to be that if you wanted to check out a promising horse coming off the racetrack, you needed an “in”—someone who could get you access to the backstretch and put you in touch with race horse trainers who might have good sport horse candidates. Those two universes—”race horse people” and “sport horse people”—well, it was often a case of “never the twain shall meet.”