A former Olympic rider, Ridland now manages the Washington International Horse Show, which kicked off Tuesday and runs through Sunday at the Verizon Center. How do you get 500 horses into the Verizon Center in downtown D.C.? Even a Lady Gaga concert can’t be that complicated.

You’re right. It’s probably one of the most complicated events put on anywhere, in any venue, primarily because we’re downtown in one of the major cities of the world and we have 500 horses. And of course 500 horses don’t fit in the building, so it’s a little bit of a sleight of hand that we’ve got to pull off. That’s with horses stabled on the street. … And not only that, we don’t have 500 rooms at the inn, so basically we’re shuttling in horses every couple of days.