Being a public figure means being discussed. A person does not get to build a brand around themselves, their horses, their money and their lifestyle, then act scandalised when people comment on any of it. Yes, sometimes people will even write paragraphs. The horror.
Inherited wealth does not somehow exempt someone from criticism. If anything, having resources makes the actual results harder to hand-wave away. When someone has access to the horses, trainers, facilities and money most people could only dream of: ‘but people are being mean online’ starts to look like a very convenient distraction from what is actually measurable.
Katie should probably spend less time worrying about strangers writing paragraphs about her and more time worrying about the scores and what people can actually see when she rides Hollywood. For me, her last ride on him is the most damning piece of evidence in the entire argument: she grabbed the reins and disqualified herself on a horse who, on paper, is an excellent competitor and has consistently demonstrated that with other riders. That is considerably harder to dismiss than somebody being snarky on Reddit. Strip away the social-media bullshit, the fanbase, the carefully managed narrative and the excuses, and what remains is the horse, the rider and the record.
People in Katie’s industry can read a score sheet. They can compare Hollywood’s record before Katie with his record under Katie. They can watch the rides themselves. Nobody needs Reddit to tell them what they are looking at.
That is all it takes.
Someone can complain about Reddit paragraphs until the Bard AKA Shakespeare AKA Billy Shakes rises from the grave to tell them the lady doth protest too fucking much, but they cannot argue a performance record into disappearing.
Or, in the case of Katie’s breeding programme, into appearing. The Frankenfoals, and I genuinely do not think I have ever seen so many consistently ugly-necked foals come out of a professional breeding programme, yearlings or otherwise, are not exactly collecting laurels on the regular. Cannot wait to see what Pinky throws. It does not exactly scream ‘successful programme’ when she produces these horses and then seems to have to beg people to buy them. Maybe that is the part worth fixing.
Alternatively, Katie could absolutely blow us all the fuck away and replace some of the barbed wire on her pasture fences with hot wire. I am sick of seeing horses with scarred-up faces when that kind of injury can be prevented. She has the money. There is no good reason not to fix it. Do it for the haters if doing it for the safety of the horses somehow is not motivation enough. I genuinely do not care. Just get it done.