Re: [RC] endurance discussion topic - Barbara McCrary
I have thought this for 20 years, and
when I was a director, I was ready to fight to keep AERC just as it was,
without FEI compelling us to adopt their rules into AERC. I was
angrily scorned by a European FEI supporter once for not agreeing that we should
run AERC under FEI rules.
I still feel the same way I did 20
years ago, and although we have adopted some more stringent rules for horse
protection, I do not yet see that we have become as rigid as FEI.
Actually, I think FEI has become more lenient as time has passed. Is it
still a requirement that horses have to be stabled with locks on the stall doors
and a guard standing by all night for fear someone might throw in a
"ringer?"
Personally, I don't want someone in
Europe telling us Americans how to run our endurance rides. Grump,
grump...(opinionated soul, I am)
Historically, endurance was referred to as a "renegade sport", which I
always thought was descriptive but not accurate. To me, most of the equine
ACTIVITIES out there do not constitute a sport, as was brought home to me just
a handful of years ago when there was some idiotic movement in the show
...persuasions...to have HALTER reclassified as a performance class! Yes,
indeed! So now if we separate disciplines that can actually be classified as a
sport from those that are almost solely ornamental, we are left with POSSIBLY
dressage, certainly hunter/jumpers, track racing, CTR, Mountaineering perhaps,
and endurance.
A a "renegade sport", then, my heart felt desire is that it be left as
such, which means that organizations such as FEI go play in their own sandbox,
one supporting the other in theory and focus, but in the end, they need their
own sandbox! Having haled from the show ring, and still having connections, it
frustrated me to no end to see what was AHRA hijacked for their own purposes
by the ASH - a new half Arabian registry - not a purebred anything of course,
but it changed permanently the way not only AHA did business, but also the way
Arabians were bred and assumed to be!
The current pressure from FEI supporters for AERC to come into the fold
as it were, reminds me of that scenario, and it would be to the detriment of
AERC and its rank and file (who BTW is what it is about) to conform to a
structure or form that exists to support another group's desires.
In the end, while I have no objection to the existence of CTR - and many
love it as I love endurance and hunters and MSAR - it would be equally as
wrong for NATRC to hijack AERC to suit their needs and reduce the hard work
needed to build an org of their own...theoretically.
So...my current concern if you want to call it that is the future of AERC
as an organization that serves, supports and organizes events for the
families, kids, moms, dad, brothers, sisters - the whole of those who have
relied on it for decades to keep the door open to this "renegade" sport:). I
think I would have more respect for FEI as a whole if it simply tended to its
own instead of trying to change AERC to support it. And yes, we have
participated in FEI events over the years, well before FEI
was...FEI! S
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