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[RC] Automatic Penalty - k s swigart

Joe Long said:


IMO an automatic penalty (beyond not finishing) for a horse
being not able to complete a ride would be arbitrary, capricious
and counterproductive.


I did not ever, and have now corrected people twice, suggest and
automatic penatly for a horse not being able to complete a ride.  The
penalty I suggested was that world class riders who present their horses
to the vets and say, "I belive my horse to be fit to continue" and the
vets say, "Well, it is not." should be told that they need to go home
and learn more about fitness to continue before they can call themselves
world class riders.

Riders that go to the vet and say, "I know that my horse is not fit to
continue; I retire from the competition" will receive no such penalty.

This is NOT, NOT, NOT, NOT, NOT, NOT, NOT, NOT, NOT (how many times do I
have to say it) the same as saying all riders who don't finish are
automatically penalized.

Is ANYBODY actually suggesting that a world class rider really IS a
world class rider if s/he doesn't even KNOW that the horse s/he is
riding isn't fit to continue?

And I will state, unequivocably, any rider who doesn't even know that
the horse s/he has been riding for miles and miles is not fit to
continue (after having had a chance to stop and have the team vets
evaluate the horse as well) has absolutely no business being at a world
championship.  Being able to properly evaluate the fitness of your
horse, surely, ought to be a necessary precondition to being allowed to
compete at that level.

At local rides with novice and less experienced riders, the vets are
there to help you to evaluate the condition of your horse.  By the time
you get to the world championship you ought to be able to do it without
help (or with the help of your own team mates/support crew, etc. if DIMR
has set in:)).

And the purpose for this sanction is make it so riders won't try to
sneak their unfit horses past the veterinary officials.

I am not suggesting that everybody who can't finish be sent home;
although I did suggest that teams who cannot finish atleast 75% of the
time be sent home.

If endurance is a sport in which 75% of the world class riders cannot
even finish the course, then it has absolutely no business even having a
world championship (note that I did not say 100%). Yes I know that even
the best of riders can have "bad luck" with totally unforseeable
mishaps, but that doesn't explain the current poor completion rate at
WECs.  The poor completion rate at WECs (which is worse than the
completion rate for the average joe schmoh--although better than mine)
can be explained by the fact that there is nothing in the WEC format
that gives riders any incentive to complete if they can't medal.

If the FEI wants to improve the "bad press" that it got at Aachen (by
Steph's report) then it is going to have to do something to give riders
and incentive to ride further from the edge.  And two of the tools that
is has for doing this are the COC of the rider and the invitation to the
country to field a team.  It needs to take a good hard look at these two
"controls" to see if it can use them as a way to get world class
endurance riders to make better decisions for their horses....because
right now, it is not.

I contend that the poor completion rate at the WEC cannot be put down
the the "natural risks of the sport" and "general bad luck."  That it
is, in fact, a result of poor decision making on the part of the riders
and the chef's d'equipe.  However, I could be wrong. It MIGHT be that
even with the incentive to make better decisions, there is still a huge
non-completion rate because it can all be put down to the nature of the
sport, and if that is the case, then the sport itself is entirely
unsuitable for the world championships.

kat
Orange County, Calif.





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