Was stopping horse abusers - green eyed gods

["Tamara Jane Habberley" <tamarahabberley@lineone.net>]

Hi

I have read the current 'debate' with interest and a degree of saddness.

Firstly, what a shame for a horse to die in such a tragic accident, I
shudder to think what his rider must feel. A rider at a recent ride over
here had a similair misfortune when her horse fell of the path on a hill and
down a 200 foot drop having I belive summersolted on ehr rider. Amazingly
both horse and rider survived.These were not racing, they had an 1,000,000
to 1 accident just like this poor bloke.

As I am based in the UK I have no real first hand knowledge of this horse
and rider and rather wonder how many of the other posters on this topic have
had any real knowledge of the pair as opposed to malicious gossip.

My understanding from posts is that the pair were competative and
successful. A deadly combination in terms of attracting malicious gossip Im
afraid. For some reason the green eyed god of envy seems to get to work when
ever a competative or successful combination either succeed or experience a
tragedy.

In the UK I have recently been 'informed' that the winner of a recent 100
miler must have cheated (ie. missed out part of the route) to come in ahead
of the rest of the field - complete crap of course as this was a very well
policed and very well checkpointed ride, a male rider who wins on and of at
high level was supposedly well known to always hit his horse I crewed for
the pair and didnt see anything different to anyone else...I was also quite
disgusted by the back bitting in evidence between various race ride crews
and riders and even officials at a recent national levle event . Really
these people ought to get life.

Of course the quick way of preventing abuse if your definition of abuse is
to ride competitivly would be just to ban race rides and placings wouldnt
it?

basically if you win or ride to win you will end up with detractors so maybe
AERC ought to issue ear plugs to race riders.

tamara

----- Original Message -----
From: John Hafkemeyer <hafke7@netins.net>
To: <Merryben@aol.com>
Cc: <ridecamp@endurance.net>
Sent: Sunday, July 02, 2000 6:48 PM
Subject: RC: Re: Horse abusers need to be stopped


> My assumption did what they usually do.......made an ass out of me.  Looks
> like I erred in the horse history info in my last post.  Apologies to all.
>
> My original post was a failure in that I stupidly presented the wrong
horse
> history, but the intent was to try to insert some facts into the
> discussion.
> My purpose in trying to determine who the rider being referred to was to
> look up an actual horse/rider history (which our AERC on-line records
> allow) and see for myself if this horse/rider was really putting on that
> many miles and at what speed.  To try to get real facts.  Should have
known
> better than to guess.
>
> However, that doesn't negate some of my comments to the original poster,
> patrick mcdonald,  regarding this incident.  To those of you in the West
> Region, was his original post an accurate assessment of the situation and
> rider abuse history?  Was this horse's death really that predictable based
> on previous abuses?  Were ride managers and veterinarians truly powerless
> or was that post just one person's perspective of another riders approach
> to the sport?  Aside from the fact that the horses death may have been
> truly accidental in this case, mr. mcdonald felt strongly enough that it
> was rider abuse to announce it to the endurance world.
>
> While everyone is entitled to their opinion, I am tired of this forum
being
> misused to slander folks, typically giving some info but not all.  That
> original poster had to know what an uproar his post would cause.  Seems
> irresponsible and IF he's right in that the horse's death was due to rider
> abuse, given that he also stated it was predictable, a bit late, I'd say.
>
> While I know this will run it's course as other controversial topics have,
> I also get a bit up in arms when there is a call to make rule changes,
etc.
>  I believe that for many members, especially newbies and those who don't
> get out to many rides, ridecamp is their main information source.  This
> makes it imperative that more knowledgeable members step up to the plate
> and promote clear thinking and accurate information.  Not so different
from
> helping someone new at an actual ride.
> Again, it's just my perspective.
> Sally H.
>
>
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