Re(2): RC: RE: AERC & International & FEI

[Leonard.LIESENS@cec.eu.int]

I agree, but if we want our sport to become more popular, if the breeders want to sell their offsprings, how else could we do ?

It's already like that in France in particular : several professional trainers and brokers at the same time, recruiting good prospects and selling them to persons having money (nouveaux riches or not); why should we fight against that as long as there is a place for an amateur conditioning his horse by himself and achieving good performance. But this is not FEI related. Our sport is not the second equestrian discipline and attracts new practisers, some of them willing to spent big buck for buying a top level horse... all benefits for amateur riders or breeders willing to sell ... no reason to condamn them...

Leonard, Belgium

> Leonard wrote:
> ---
> 
> >Another point concerning money and FEI...>You are wrong!!!>
> 
> 
> 
> Well, that's putting it succinctly.  But seriously, thanks for enlightening
> us re prize money etc.
> 
> 
> My concern, however, as expressed in previous posts is that endurance, like
> other equestrian sports, may become "big money" without there necessarily
> being huge amounts of prize money being doled out.  Show Jumpers make their
> money from sponsorship, dealing, training, and not from competition - the
> competition merely serves to :
> 
> a.  massage their egos; and
> 
> b.  show off how brilliant they are so all the daddies of sixteen year old
> Portia, Tosca or Lysander will queue up for the jumper in question to train
> his little future star; and
> 
> c,  show off young horses at lower level, for which they can then charge
> enormous amounts of money to the aforementioned Portias, Toscas and
> Lysanders, by telling them that "he'll go A Grade, no problem.  Will
> definitely take you to the top").
> 
> 
> I know I sound cynical, but equestrian sports have always, for reasons
> beyond my ken, attracted the nouveau riche, who will expend large sums of
> their hard-earned cash to compete at the top.  How long before endurance
> becomes another fatality in the "keeping up with the Smythe-Joneses"
> mentality?
> 
> 
> Tracey
> 
> 
>