On the Line

Margie Engle, you're such a good sport.

Ah, stage fright. I haven’t had a visit from that old friend for quite some time. In fact, after getting through two huge interviews over the winter with nary a misstep, I was even thinking I might be over the shaky handed, stumbling-voiced nervousness that I’ve fought since my first “big time” interview in ‘04 (Guenter Seidel. He was very patient.) Reporters probably shouldn’t admit to stage fright, not even if they grew up a shy, introverted child who talked to her horse more than to other people (me me me!!) But I’ve worked hard at putting on a confident air and asking all the right questions. It’s an art!

My penmanship is always this bad.

So there I was at HITS Saugerties last week, feeling pretty on top of it after seeing an email on my phone from Bill Tagenhorst, Sidelines’ go-to PR guy, asking if someone on staff could interview Margie Engle, who’d just won two grand prix at Saugerties. Well what do you know, at that very moment I was at the show, and I could surely find Margie for a quick interview. Score! I crouched under a barn overhang, quickly wrote down some questions, and tracked Margie down next to Jumper 2, where she’d just finished walking a course and was waiting for her horse to get to the ring. And she was happy to talk to me on the spot. Perfect. I was good right up until the moment that I brought out my pen. Suddenly, my hand started shaking and the order of my questions left my brain. That’s about when it hit me that this was the Margie Engle, superstar Olympic grand prix rider. The fact that she was friendly and approachable didn’t do much to put me at ease, and even though she could clearly see that I was writing chicken scratch, I bought some time by scribbling on my notepad for a little too long between questions. I survived, of course, and pulled together a decent article (I hope) from the indecipherable notes pictured above. Margie, bless her, was also very patient.