> As far as
setting something shorter for the safety of the
> horse - it
would require extraordinary ambient conditions
> to justify
this. If the only reason to do this is to slow
> down the
riders - then I don't believe it would be a
> reasonable use of "safety of the horses".
It is worthwhile to
note that the AERC Rule (6.2.1) that allows rides to have more stringent
completion criteria than the minimum requirements laid out in the subsequent
paragraphs to the same section does not require that these more stringent
criteria be for the "safety of the horses."
The rule states
(unless the on-line rules aren't current...which they probably aren't, but I
have no recollection of this particular one having been changed
recently):
6.2.1The minimum criteria for
the post-finish-line vet check are as follows. Any ride may adopt more stringent
criteria, but these must be provided to competitors before the ride in written
form. ...
Believe it or not, there is nothing in there that
says anybody has to have a good reason for adopting these more stringent
criteria.
I must confess, however, to being unwilling to
attend one Ride Manager's rides because one of the "more stringent criteria"
that he has adopted for his rides and sends out with the ride entry is (and here
I am paraphrasing), "Ride management can change any of these rules at any time
as they see fit."
I do consider it to be perfectly within this ride
manager's rights to do this (at least, that is what the AERC rules say), and I
appreciate it that he does so by informing people before they actually
come that he reserves the rights to change the rules halfway through the
event. And that criteria DOES keep me from showing up at all.
So, while I don't consider it necessary according
to AERC rules to provide the information in the ride entry form...the "pre-ride
meeting" IS, by definition "before the ride" it would be POLITE for ride
managers to inform people before they drive all the way to get there, that the
criteria are going to be more stringent than the AERC minimum standards (I even
think that it would be polite to inform riders that the pulse criteria MAY be
more strict than the 68 bpm that the AERC requires since that criteria won't be
set until the actual time of the event).
I would be extremely irritated if I were informed
AFTER I had already shown up (even if it were, in writing at the pre-ride
meeting) that the ride doesn't allow children under 10 (if I had brought an 8
year old kid along with me), that horses must be shod (if I had brought a
barefoot horse along with me), that I had to wear a helmet (because I hadn't
brought one along with me), or that pulse criteria were going to be 44 bpm (if I
had brought Windy, who has a resting HR of 52 bpm, along with me).
The problem with what happend at the Mariposa Ride
(by all reports) is that Ride Management and the Ride Vets were under the
mistaken impression that the 30 min to reach criteria was a new AERC rule and
that they had no choice but to adopt it...AND nobody had the current rules with
them (and if one reads the rules that are currently on the AERC website, they
can most definitely be read that way "The
equine must reach a reasonable pulse recovery based on ambient conditions,
within 30 minutes of arrival time at all control points during the ride." The post-ride vet check could be construed as being
"during the ride" since the ride is not considered completed until the post-ride
check has been passed) to disabuse them of that notion.
So, the question here, is not properly, "Were ride
management/the ride vets within their rights in adopting more stringent criteria
than required by the rules?" If they provided the information in writing, they
were, even though they didn't know that they were.
But rather "What is the best way to ensure
that the people responsible for enforcing the rules, ride management and the
ride vets, KNOW the rules?"
And this particular problem is not unique to the
Mariposa Ride. I cannot count the number of endurance rides I have been to
where nobody had the rules (for years a current version of the rules wasn't even
available and nobody but me and Bob Morris considered this inappropriate. I am
not even sure but what they still aren't--there is, I think, a clarification of
this exact rule that was adopted at last year's mid-year board
meeting....although it might have been at this year's convention).
I remember going to one ride where management
clearly stated that the hold time did not count towards the 12 hours elapsed
time allowed for completion and that they knew this because they had called the
AERC office to make sure, and one ride where neither the ride vets nor the ride
management knew if something that a rider had done, after the finish but before
the final vet check, was considered an "invasive procedure" and therefore
disallowed under rule 13a. To name but a few. In this particular
instance, a protest was filed (and upheld), but the penalties were slight for
the very good reason that there was no way for the competitor to have reasonably
known that he was in violation of the rules.
The fact that there is no way for competitors to
reasonably know when they are in violation of the rules is a SERIOUS problem if
you intend to enforce them (although, until recently, nobody has ever really
tried very hard to enforce any of the AERC's rules). And while the state of
affairs is better than it has been and a lot has recently been done in an
attempt to rectify this, the AERC still has a long way to go...as this most
recent example demonstrates.
