USEF "S" judge, founding member of USDF and former USDF "L" program instructor.
Thomas Poulin from Royal Palm Beach, Florida, boasts a distinguished 50-year career as a clinician, trainer, coach, USEF Senior Dressage Judge, and USDF “L” program instructor in the Dressage arena. According to L.A. Sokolowski, Tom’s nominator and an acclaimed New York-based multi-platform journalist, “Since 1968, Tom has served his sport in various capacities through five Olympic competitions, including roles as assistant team coach for Mexico and Sweden, and as chairman of the USDF Freestyle Committee. With his retirement, we’d like to add one more title: ‘Modern-day Gulliver.’ As a young man, much like Swift’s philosophical adventurer, Tom chose to eschew human company for a time, embracing a vow of silence and living among horses in his family’s Hillside Farm barn in Maine.” Sokolowski asserts, “Dressage in America would never be the same.”
Tom was a founding member of the New England Dressage Association (NEDA) and served as an advisor alongside notable horsemen such as Jonathan Burton and Jack LeGoff. His talent for keeping esteemed equestrian company included joining Dr. Max Gahwyler and Margarita ‘Miggie’ Serrell as original members of the American Dressage Institute (ADI), the Saratoga Springs, New York-based organization that garnered attention, including from the New York Times, for its clinics and demonstrations. The ADI also fielded the all-female U.S. Olympic Dressage Bronze medal-winning team of Hilda Gurney/Keen, Dorothy Morkis/Monaco, and Edith Master/Dahlwitz.
Tom participated in the inaugural USDF annual meeting and led the effort to merge the ADI and USDF educational systems into one official U.S. standard, continuing in a leadership role with the first USDF-developed judging and trainers programs.
Sokolowski states, “Tom’s legacy is most likely to be etched into the dressage hierarchy as the dedicated educator behind numerous lectures and symposia. He authored the handbook for a transcontinental North American Dressage Institute seminar series for riders and trainers in Bermuda, England, Hawaii, and South Africa, and enriched the family tree, notably through his daughter, Elizabeth Poulin, a licensed USEF ‘r’ judge and USDF “L Graduate with Distinction.”
The horse that had the most significant impact on Tom’s life is “Phoebus,” a Trakehner gelding whose primary discipline was dressage who is pictured above. Two quotes Tom lives by are: “There is no substitute for experience,” and one he finds humorous: “May the haunches be with you.”
