Sadly, Whenever someone tells me their kid is in Pony Club, I assume that at some point in the conversation they will strongly imply that their lil' darlin' (who might be as far along as a D1) is "soooo talented and advanced" that they are certainly destined for the Olympics. I then assume (again usually correctly) they have this child taking 50$+ an hour lessons several times a week with a mediocre instructors who has never had any student do well beyond the local level pony club events. These instructors never demonstrate their skills in open competition but are really good at feeding parents egos and forming loyal cliques. I then assume that in a few months/ years this same family will have dropped out of horses because "horses are just sooo political and not based at all on ability and talent because, after all my child is just so talented 'cause our instructor kept telling us that" or something like that.

Bleh. Yawn. Can you tell parents that endlessly boast about their kids talents annoy me?

On the other hand, the parents whose kids do the best at the toughest levels are often the ones who are also the most self-defacing and modest and more likely to say "oh, we did ok" "it was a good weekend, we learned a lot".