Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

From: Tony Benedetti [mailto:tony@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]

The FEI Endurance Form was held in Paris on February 7 & 8 and there was a
pre meeting of the "Toulouse Group" on the 6th. The purpose of this forum
was to discuss issues regarding horse welfare and FEI competition.

Nancy Elliot, Art Priesz, and Tony Benedetti were appointed by the USA
Equestrian, our National Federation, as official representatives of the
United States. The ideas presented by the United States were based on many
meetings and conference calls by USAE, USET, and AERC International.

At the Toulouse Group meeting, many countries including the US, Australia,
New Zealand, Belgium, Spain, France, Portugal, Germany, UK among others
came together and discussed many issues. Agreed upon points were presented
at the FEI Forum. Eight countries, including the United States, were able
to make half hour presentations about endurance. While all of the
presentations contained horse welfare points, the US theme was loud and
clear - "the horse comes first". Following the presentations by the
countries, Dane Frazier made a presentation and then there was open
discussion. The next day there was a Technical Delegates course and the
following day a veterinary seminar. A report on all of the meetings
including the US presentation will be sent to Endurance News and/or
Ridecamp.

I was happy to see much discussion regarding horse welfare on Ridecamp
recently. There was much discussion about horse welfare in Paris and we had
the opportunity to hear how other countries deal with the problem. Many use
a system of graduation requiring the completion of one distance
successfully without any pulls in a certain number of rides before stepping
up to a greater distance. In the US, we have always held to the wild west
approach where you can ride any distance if you have a horse to enter.
Maybe it is time for us to look very hard at rider qualifications. I know
Tevis is implementing minimal rider qualifications for the first time to
protect the horse and the rider from him/herself. I suspect that stricter
qualifications will follow in future years at Tevis. I would need to study
it further and maybe it would need to be changed for use in the US, but
maybe we need to consider implementing the Australian system where riders
are required to drop to shorter distance rides when they have pulls at
longer distance rides. Maybe a suspension should be implemented when riders
are negligent. I know there are all kinds of legal issues involved but
maybe it is time we address these issues.

After flying to Europe to discuss horse welfare, I was very disappointed at
what I saw the very next weekend at a ride in the US. As I was riding
along, a rider cantered past me stopped and when I caught the rider, the
rider blurted out that his horse was very tired because this was only the
horses second 50. The rider was in third place at the time. I asked the
rider why he was riding so fast if his horse was tired. The rider said that
the horse wanted to go on. I told the rider that he had reins for a reason.
The rider pushed on only to be pulled at the next vet check when the horse
did not recover in 30 minutes. This rider had no understanding of endurance
riding nor empathy for his horse. We need to deal with these issues, we
need to be more critical of poor horsemanship, and there needs to be
penalties so that people will educate themselves. It has been said many
times that it is sad that people will ride their horse too hard for a
stupid t-shirt. What is sadder, is that as a sport we have allowed this to
occur.


Tony Benedetti



=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net.
Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp
Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/logon.asp

Ride Long and Ride Safe!!

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=