Re: Unofficial WEG team

[jlong@mti.net (Joe Long)]

On Wed, 14 Oct 1998 14:41:14 EDT, LSimoni197@aol.com wrote:

>Carlos,

>I like your point of view, and you support it with excellent logic.  A
>democratic manner of selection, which would be fair to all contenders is what
>AERC needs to look for.

Actually, that is an important point.  What is the AERC's goal in
fielding an International team?  Providing a fair and equal
opportunity for those members who wish to go?  Or sending the team
with the best chance to win?

International is a whole different game that will always remain a
somewhat exclusive club, due to the limits on team sizes.  Only by
establishing our priorities can we adopt a selection process that best
fits that priority.

From the beginning, the AERC's priority was to send the riders who
gave us the best chance to win the Team Gold.  I believe the current
selection process is the one that best achieves that -- it's not
perfect, any subjective process is prone to politics and the biases of
the selectors.  But I am pursuaded that it is still better than a
qualifying-race process at producing the most competitive team, as
qualifying race systems do not take consistency, reliability, balance
or teamwork into account.  Nor do they take into account last-minute
changes in a horse or rider's readiness.

If the members want the AERC to change to a system that gives everyone
who wants to be on the team a "fair" chance to be there, even if that
produces a weaker team (less likely to win the Gold), then they should
make that known to their Directors and a qualifying race system could
be adopted.  But unless such a priority change is made, I support
keeping our current system pretty much as it is.

-- 

Joe Long
jlong@mti.net
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