By JOSEPH WHITE -- Associated Press
 THE PLAINS, Va. -- For 14 years, Karen and David O'Connor have shared work and life on the farms of rolling horse country in northern Virginia. In 1996, they took togetherness to a new level, becoming the first husband and wife to share a medal podium at the Summer Olympics.

 After winning silvers for the United States in the three-day team equestrian event in Atlanta, the O'Connors are preparing again to compete with -- and against -- each other in Sydney.

 "The horses are our life," said Karen O'Connor, sitting in the tack room on the 1,000-acre Stonehall farm she manages with her husband. "So there's not a lot of distinction between our personal life and our private."

 The two sides have a higher profile this Olympic year: The O'Connors will try to repeat, or even outdo, their historic feat.

 Television crews have scheduled visits to the farm. People recognize them at airports, not necessarily by name, but as "that husband and wife team from Atlanta."

 They have become ambassadors for a sport long seen as elitist but growing in popularity as a more affluent society takes up horsemanship.

 "We take that part of our life very seriously," David O'Connor said. "Everybody wants to know who we are. That's never happened before.

 "This isn't going to change our lives a ton. We're not going to get the Nike sponsorship, the Chevrolet sponsorship. We're going to be doing the same thing 10 years from now when we're not riding internationally."

 But maybe, in a decade or so, one of their students will be getting a nice sponsorship and a hefty winner's check. The O'Connors don't own the farm or the horses they ride, and they spend many weekends teaching and training to supplement the income they get from prize money and their few sponsors.

 "The amazing thing about David and Karen is that when I ride in the arena, I have access to not just one international opinion, but two," said Becky Douglas, who left her home in Kansas City to train with the O'Connors and stays as a guest in their home.

 It's paid off. Douglas was listed as an alternate when the preliminary selections were made last month for Sydney.

 "They have such different personalities, so between the two of them there's a solution to everything," Douglas said. "They work together to solve problems. It's serious teamwork."

 Karen O'Connor handles more of the business side because her husband can't stand the telephone. He's quiet before a competition, zoning out everyone with his headphones, while she isn't distracted as much by the commotion.

 They are both very competitive, yet there is no husband-wife rivalry, even though equestrian is one of the rare sports in which men compete directly against women.

 David O'Connor compared the sport with golf.

 "It's a very individualistic sport in that you're not competing against the next person, you're competing against the course," he said. "You don't feel like so much that you're beating other people. It's not like track and field where you're going head to head."

 Because they are emotionally linked, the tough days are the ones in which one half of the couple does well and the other doesn't.

 "That makes the drive home a little long," Karen O'Connor said.

 Her husband added: "It's hard for the person who's had a bad day to get themselves up enough to be happy for the person who's had a good day, and vice versa. That's the hardest part to deal with. The competition basically intensifies that emotion."

 At the Olympics, three-day events -- team and individual -- include dressage, show jumping and cross-country. Riders also compete in some of those events separately.

 Sydney will be more difficult than Atlanta because of the travel and the five weeks in quarantine for the horses as required by Australian law.

 Karen O'Connor, who started honing her skills jumping over a kitchen table and chair that she dragged into the yard as a youngster, also competed in 1988 in Seoul. Last-minute injuries to their horses knocked the couple out of the 1992 Barcelona Games.

 The final team for Sydney hasn't been chosen yet, but the O'Connors are shoo-ins. David O'Connor, 38, is No. 1 in the latest world rankings; his 42-year-old wife is tied for eighth.

 He hopes to keep competing through the 2004 Olympics in Athens, while his wife's future is less certain. The couple wants to start a family after the Sydney Games.

 "We'd better get on with it," she said, laughing. "After three Olympics Games, you have to look at it and say if I never get back to it, that's OK."