For FEI championship endurance when the horse starts to lose a step they are not going to be able to win - they find another one.?
Hi Truman. Can you give examples of this having happened? Enough examples to merit the implication that this attitude is characteristic of FEI championship endurance?
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For my part I went to the results of the WEC in Aachen and scrolled down the list to find the first non-winning non-European horse. Shar Rushkin came ninth, ridden by Shk Duaij bin Salman al Khalifa (Bahrein). Since not winning the WEC he has competed in 8 more international competitions. He was lame at vg2 in the 2007 European Open Championships but incredibly they didn't take him out back and shoot him then, either, and he went on to win his next two starts, over 120 and 160 km respectively.
Then I scrolled down the list to find some horses that not only didn't win in the sense of 'didn't come first', but were actually eliminated and thus became prime candidates for being taken out back and shot. Jazyk, ridden by Shk Ahmed bin Mohammed al Maktoum, metabolics at 4: six subsequent starts including a win over 160k. Nashmi, ridden by Shk Hamdan bin Mohammed al Maktoum, lame at 2; 3 subsequent starts. Oh, here's Veronika Munger, from Switzerland. Her horse Jannik was lame at the end. By some oversight he was allowed to live and has so far competed five more times without winning, most recently at Terennganu.
The records only show involvement in international competition, so even when there are no entries for a horse after a given event we still can't assert that it has been retired/thrown away/taken out back and shot. Well, we can, but it would only be malicious gossip. It might be that the horse is continuing to compete happily on the domestic scene. It might be having a long and luxurious holiday, or having a foal. Not all alternatives to competition are bad. ?
