Whenever we interview an applicant for our internship position here at the Chronicle, I ask them to orally identify the names of 10 horses or horsepeople. It’s a way to try to judge how familiar applicants are with the participants in the horse sports we cover, a way to determine if they really have that passion for horse sports that our readers have.

The names I ask them always vary, but two names are always on my list: Bill Steinkraus (just honored by the FEI [p. 92]) and Rodney Jenkins. And I’m always discouraged by how few can give me anything more than just a blank stare about two of the most significant horsemen of the second half of the 20th century. Even people who can guess that Steinkraus “won the Olympics” can’t begin to guess the year (1968) or the horse he rode (Snowbound), and I don’t recall anyone telling me the name of Jenkins’ most famous horse (Idle Dice). Similarly, if I have Bruce Davidson’s name on the list (I usually do), and they tell me he’s “an Olympic event rider,” they can never answer my follow-up question: What did he do that no other rider has ever done? (Win back-to-back World Championships’in 1974 and 1978.)

Lack of understanding about the accomplishments and contributions of our equestrian predecessors was one motivation we had to compile the Turn of the Century Issue in December 1999. We believed that, as we turned into a new century, we all needed to have a better understanding of how we’d become a major sporting industry. (Steinkraus, Jenkins and Davidson were shoo-ins to be among our 50 Most Influential Horsemen of the 20th Century.)

Although a teenage boy who loves football or baseball is practically overwhelmed with TV shows and books about “the greatest football players of all time” or “baseball’s top 10 hitters,” it’s much harder for a horse-crazy kid to find similar equine compendiums in the library and impossible on TV. They say you can’t force people to become educated, but formal education should play a role for kids studying to pursue careers of any kind in the horse world.

Almost all of our intern applicants are college students or recent graduates, and many of them come to us from equestrian-degree programs, but I don’t recall any of them saying they’d ever taken a course on equestrian history or even influential equestrian scholars or writers. So I asked our current intern, Kelly Lamphere (who says she identified Jenkins but not Steinkraus), to see if she could find any schools with such courses listed among their offerings. Of the nine she checked, none had such a course listed, but I’d be happy to hear from someone at a school that does.

So often, our culture lauds “what’s new” or “modern” without recognizing the accomplishments or inventions of the people who came before us. We wouldn’t be riding like we do if not for Federico Caprilli. The teachings and writing of Harry Chamberlin, Vladimir Littauer, Gordon Wright and Bert de Nemethy created generations of horsemen and teachers, and Federico Tesio bred the horses from whom so many of the ones we ride today are descended. All of them, as well as Steinkraus, wrote one or more books on training and horsemanship. Their work could easily form the curriculum for a semester or’better yet’a year of study at a college. We’d be happy to send along a few Turn of the Century Issues as an introduction to the great horsemen and horses of the past.