Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

Title: Re: [RC] Endurance - FEI - glass houses?

Didn't two or so of the horse deaths in AERC result from horses getting kicked with resulting broken legs?

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From: ridecamp-owner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx on behalf of Diane Trefethen
Sent: Mon 2007-04-02 13:38
To: Ridecamp
Subject: Re: [RC] Endurance - FEI - glass houses?

Steph Teeter wrote:
> There were 10 horse fatalities related to AERC endurance events in 2006.
> (or perhaps 7 - I'm not postitive on the number). Even at 7 this is
> more in ONE year than the last TEN years of WEC's.

Are you being deliberately or accidently misleading?  You imply that dying
at an AERC ride is much more likely than at a WEG.  According the WHC,
there have been 24 fatalities out of 67,000 starts in the last 3 years, 15
of those endurance-related.  Going back to 1998, there have been 5 WEC/WEGs
with a total of 788 starters.  I was able to locate only one report of
horse fatalities,  2 horses dying at the 2002 WEG (anyone have more info on
horse fatalities related to WEC/WEGs?).  Assuming these were the only
horses to die at or withing 6 weeks of a WEC/WEG, that means that at AERC
rides, .022% or about 1 in 4465 starts died while at WEC/GS, .25%, 1 in 394
starts, the equivalent of about 11.3 in 4465 starts died, more than 11
times as many horses as at AERC rides.  Looked at another way, even if not
one more WEC/G horse dies, assuming the number of participants in WEC/Gs
remains relatively stable, in order to equal the low death rate at AERC
rides, FEI will need to run 85 more deathless WEGs spanning 170 years.

But all this is irrelevant because your comments vis-a-vis the relative the
statistics on fatalities in AERC vs WEG rides are Red Herrings.  The issue
of concern isn't who is worse.  It is how we can expect the American public
and politicians to react when they see a horse or horses die on television
during an Olympic Endurance race and then see that a substantial percentage
of the starters wind up on iv's.  Using the recent Horse Slaughter
resolution as a paradigm, it isn't hard at all to imagine that first the
animal rights/welfare groups will set up a hue and cry over this inhumane
and cruel sport, followed shortly by zealous, vote-seeking,
I-am-a-friend-to-all-animals politicos proposing legislation to outlaw
Endurance in the United States.

THAT is what is scary.

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