RE: Barney/Valerie

["Maryanne Stroud Gabbani" <maryanne@ratbusters.net>]

When the UAE first began throwing money at a bunch of backyard riders in Egypt for endurance, the first question that was  asked by everyone was "Why?"...... We had neither the organisation, the riding experience, the seasoned horses, nor the same equine infrastructure in terms of breeding, buying or training endurance horses. The first and easiest answer was that H.E. Sheikh Mohamed bin Rashed Al Maktoum wanted his picture taken riding past a pyramid, and Egypt is definitely the best place to do that. Being the local endurance techno-geek, I was assigned to do some research on endurance, UAE endurance, the FEI, and other endurance organisations world wide. Reading press releases from the UAE and the FEI, it became obvious that the ultimate goal was endurance in the Olympics....a goal that Michael Stone confirmed in the last issue of Endurance World, the new magazine being published in Abu Dhabi.

 

Hmmmm. Okay, we might be something of an equine backwater here, but many of our riders travel for fun if not for riding and we hang out with other riders. We try to keep up with the news and so on, and everything that we could come up with indicated that the IOC was actually in favour of cutting back on equine sports in the Olympics rather than increasing them.  And if one of the major sources of funding for the Olympics is broadcasting, then it makes sense that they would first cut the more esoteric "paint-drying" types of disciplines. Dressage, unfortunately, falls in that category for Joe Public since if it's really done well, the viewer can barely tell that the rider is doing anything at all.  I personally think that endurance is pretty much the same. It's a lot of fun to do, but frankly, watching riders rush in from some distant trail and have people pour water over a horse who will then be left to eat for 1/2 an hour hits about .03 on my excitement scale. Much more interesting to watch those lunatics chasing over log cabins in the cross country part of 3 day....Unless there are connections and power plays going on behind the scenes, my bet is that this bubble is going to burst and we can get back to having more laid-back endurance rides with the odd international thrown in for as long as Dubai is happy to keep footing the bill. That's fine with me.

 

Maryanne Stroud Gabbani
Cairo, Egypt
maryanne@ratbusters.net
www.ratbusters.net

 

  He also commented that the Olympics needs to  shrink - it is too big and there are too many events. He is going to work to srink it. He also said that he would consider adding golf and rugby ( and those were the only two mentioned ) but not until after the 2008 games. So if endurance every makes it if will be a long time coming.

>