Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

The debate here on Ridecamp over the direction of FEI/International 
Endurance tended to be in the same category as hens picking at each 
other... until Kat's thoughtful and unpleasantly accurate assessment of 
the relationship between high caliber Endurance rides and the 
observations/opinions of the generally ignorant public and media.  
Endurance as a spectator sport is boring and the only planned 
"excitement" consists of one brief dash to the finish line.  Even that 
is boring too if there is only one horse there at a time.  On the other 
hand, just as car crashes provide excitement in auto racing (another 
boring sport but not as boring as Endurance), horses in crisis too 
provide a sort of excitement.  We do NOT want those outside the sport to 
see the pulls without their being able to put these pulls in the context 
of thousands of hours of careful preparation and competition.  The 
public will not remember that 60 horses successfully traversed 50 fast 
miles, 50 of those another 10 miles, 40 more completed 80 miles and 30 
raced 100 miles.  They won't SEE those efforts so what's to remember?  
They WILL see the lamenesses and iv's so THAT is what they'll remember.  
That is what their impression of Endurance will be, a bunch of lame, 
sick horses that need iv's to survive... and some of them die anyway.  
This latter vision of our sport is NOT good and so yes, we had darn well 
better figure a way to fly below the radar or the AERC will be 
dismantled by lawsuits and we will all be poorer for having no 
legitimate Endurance venue.

We here in the US bemoan the racing turn that international competition 
has taken.  The comments about leaving rocks on the WEG 2008 course are 
attempts to figure out a way to change the focus from an 8 hour dash to 
a "real" Endurance competition.  Some have suggested that a more 
technical trail than the flat Dubai desert would help while others have 
pointed out that since the goal is winning... there is only this one 
race on this one day... every rider who wants the gold has to push 
his/her horse to its absolute limit and technical smechnical won't make 
a damn bit of difference in the quality of the race.

This conundrum got me thinking and I realized that this problem isn't 
with the sport.  It is with the perceptions of some who participate.  
They see Endurance as a RACE ONLY.  The enduring part is completely 
ignored.  We need to find a way to replace "racing" with "enduring".  
After all, that is the norm in the other equestrian sports that involve 
time.  In Open Jumping, speed counts a lot but a horse that completes 
clean will beat out a horse that is 10 seconds faster who knocked down a 
fence.  In other words, the GOAL is a clean round with SPEED as a filter 
to the clean rounds.  In Polo, a fast pony is great but if he is too 
hyper to be maneuvered into position to take a shot on goal he's 
worthless.  The GOAL is to score and speed is a tool to get up and down 
the field.  The only equestrian discipline that rewards the fastest 
horse still alive at the finish is Horse Racing.  Currently, 
International Endurance has the same objective, except that the horse 
must appear to be sound instead of just alive.  Otherwise, they're the same.

How do we make "finishing first" the filter instead of the objective?



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