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Re: [RC] The Emperor's New Clothes: Why Endurance isn't, never will be, and shouldn't be an Olympic sport - Joan RuprechtGood going Kat " Joan ----- Original Message ----- From: "k s swigart" <katswig@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> To: "Ride Camp" <ridecamp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Friday, February 21, 2003 12:35 AM Subject: [RC] The Emperor's New Clothes: Why Endurance isn't, never will be, and shouldn't be an Olympic sport Let me preface what I am about to say with the acknowledgement that what I am about to say is going to be pretty insulting. And might be pretty insulting to people who are either total strangers to me or maybe even some people that I know and like. Proceed with caution. Undertaking to insult friends and/or total strangers is not something to be done lightly, and I thought long and hard about whether any of what I am about to say needs to be said (possibly not) or whether I am serving any purpose in saying it (possibly not). But since you are reading this, obviously I decided it does. It is something that has been simmering in the back of my mind for quite some time now, and I must confess that it was the press release about the President's Cup that sparked it to the front. After reading the release forwarded by Steph to RideCamp about how the event was to be televised, the first thought to come to my mind was, "Do you (the author/s) really believe this shit? And if you do, do you really expect me to believe it?" I was reminded of the childhood fable (which I am not going to repeat here but merely assume that everybody is familiar with) of the Emperor's New Clothes. If we pretend that we believe something for long enough, repeat it often enough, and get others to nod in agreement for risk of appearing offensive or stupid; does that make it true? For how long can we maintain the pretense? So that nobody has to read between the lines to get the insults that I threatened to dish out, I will state them bluntly: I am firmly of the opinion that anybody that says they believe that endurance is going to become an Olympic sport is either ignorant, delusional, or villainous...or some combination thereof. (And yes I am aware that not one of those adjectives is even remotely flattering.) There is nothing about endurance riding (or even endurance racing) that is remotely Olympic sportlike. 1) For starters, endurance riding is almost totally uninteresting to non-participants, and while there are some sports already included in the Olympics that also fall into this category, most of them were a part of the Olympics before the Olympics became an event for spectators. Even among its proponents endurance was touted to attract a mere "tens of thousands" of interested people from a world-wide population of 6 billion! 2) An endurance ride is a very expensive event to stage. 3) The IOC wants to REMOVE horse sports from the Olympics; it doesn't want to ADD them. The FEI already had to agree to "dumb down" the three day event in order to keep it in the line-up...which, if you ask me, was just a delaying tactic anyway (but that is a separate topic that I am not going to allow myself to be distracted by). However, if it is going to add anything, it will remove eventing and add reining...but only after reining ceases to be dominated by the Americans. 4) Sometimes, horses die at endurance rides, and that is a PR nightmare that the IOC wouldn't want go get anywhere near (nor, I might add, would the FEI...so, come to think of it, maybe the IOC WOULD put endurance in the Olympics in the hope that a horse would die the first time out and then they would have an excuse for removing all the horse sports from the Olympics :)). There is no way to make rules keep...ummmm...overeager or unscrupulous competitors from killing their horses at endurance rides, and there is no way to make rules to keep overeager or unscrupulous competitors from participating in the Olympics. 5) But this one is the clincher. Even if it didn't matter that endurance riding is about as exciting to watch as watching paint dry, and even if horse sports in the Olympics were not already threatened, and even if money were no object, and even if horses could be kept from dying; endurance riding won't be an Olympic sport because endurance riding isn't really a human athletic endeavour. Endurance riding is mostly about the horse. We had a dicussion just last month, or so, about the WEC in Spain being won by a "jockey" and how many people didn't consider that much of an accomplishment on the part of the rider (and how could we change the rules to make it so this didn't happen) because he had never ridden the horse before. It was bred, raised, conditioned, trained, owned, handled, and cared for by somebody other than the person who got the medal. Not even among the endurance community itself (puny though it is) can you get the participants to agree what accomplishment actually is. I pointed out that jockeys really are quite consumate athletes, but what I didn't say was that I don't consider endurance riders to have sufficiently earned the title of jockey...few of them ride well enough...myself included :). One need only look at the roster of WEC winners so far (women and children) to understand that the athletic part of the event is done by the horse. I cannot, for the life of me, ever imagine that the IOC would decide that it should be giving out Olympic medals to horses...or to the people who they would consider to be nothing but lucky or rich enough to be the horses' passengers on the day. Yes, there is a great deal that goes into the selection and preparation of an endurance horse for a world class event, and when that is done by the competitor him/herself it is a thing of beauty and a feat worthy of admiration and alcolade, but it still isn't a human athletic endeavour even if you could limit the competition only to those who had done it all themselves. It would be naive to think that the IOC doesn't think this, and since I haven't been privy to the conversations, it is entirely possible that they have actually already SAID this--although they MAY be among the villainous and unwilling to say it for fear of putting off some very rich people who look willing to spend a lot of money in the pursuit. I don't believe the officials at the FEI are ignorant of these things either, but I refuse to speculate whether they are delusional and have convinced themselves that these things are surmountable, or that they, too, are fully aware that endurance will never be an Olympic sport but are unwilling to say so to people who are giving them so much money to pursue that agenda. If is so, that would put the officials at the FEI among the villainous as well. Why did I spend the entire week arguing with myself as to whether I should fling out insults in this way? And to decide in the end that I would? Because after reading the press release again, and taking into consideration the year's worth of full-page, four color ads in the _Endurance News_ including Jim Baldwin's (I think) piss poor explanation at the end of what it was all about: that we all have the same goal in mind, endurance in the Olympics, I came to the conclusion that ignorance might be able to be educated, delusions might be able to be seen more clearly, and villainy could be brought to light. And that if I could do this, that the sport of endurance riding, the participants, and the horses themselves would benefit from no longer being exposed to so many knaves and/or fools. But also because I did not want to be tacitly among the knaves and/or fools. I am not ignorant nor have I deluded myself into thinking that endurance will become an Olympic sport, so if I don't say something, it is almost as if I become one of the villainous. I don't like to see deluded people taken advantage of, even if I think they are deluding themselves for selfish and/or unscrupulous ends. And I don't like to even marginally benefit from deluded people being taken advantage of, even if they are being taken advantage of by people who are equally as deluded. _I_ would like to think that the people who are participating in the sport today are interested in the sport itself and not just as a means to Oympic glory. And that people, if they are told, "No, this won't get you to the Olympics," will not then say, "If that is the case, I don't want to play any more." But if so....welllllll...good riddance. So there it is. Endurance isn't going to be an Olympic sport, and it is time for people to stop pretending to themselves or to others that they think it is: to enjoy it for what it is rather than trying to turn it into something that it isn't by running a con game. Even if we all nod and agree and are afraid to say anything, he is still parading down the street buck naked. The emperor has no clothes. kat Orange County, Calif. p.s. I have laid out my reasons for thinking this (they may be good or they may be crummy), but I have been sufficiently offensive that I have absolutely no intention of arguing with anybody who thinks me wrong or making any further statements on the matter at all...unless, of course, at some later date it becomes apparent that I was right, in which case I will gloat and say, "I told you so." =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net. 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