<<Teams only have 4 members, no matter how many riders the
country
sends/gets to send (so even though there were 12 US riders in Kansas,
only
4 of them were part of the "team" event). Teams
can compete with either
3 members or 4 members. Extra riders don't
count, and if you only have
two, you can't play in the team eevent
either.>>
Excellent point Kat. However, since we were allowed to field
a team out of 12 participants while the rest of the world could
only choose from 6 , I still feel that there is a "stacking of the
odds""
in favor of the host country.
> As I see it, our goal should be to take the first six places
in the World
> Championships. Then there is no doubt about
who is the best. Let the
> other guy worry about the consistent finishers
in the 7-25 place.
<<You may see as a worthy goal, but as a team
riding strategy it would
probably be pretty ineffective. Additionally,
having a single qualifying
event to determine the 6 people to go would be
unlikely to give you the 6
best horse/rider teams to pursue this
goal.>>
Kat, I respect your opinion, but can you give some good rationale for
why an event to determine the 6 people to go would be unlikely to
give you the 6 best horse/rider teams to pursue this goal?
Endurance is not a team sport where each member has to learn to
play with all the others in order to be successful, as you would in
basketball, etc. It is an individual sport where , at the end, you
add-up
the individual performance of each rider. There is really very little
one rider can do to help another rider succeed. They each have
to ride their own race. Even the believe that riding together the
horses motivate each other is hard to accept since the horse rider
teams come from different parts of the country and most probably
have never ridden together.
Personally, I believe that the term "Best" is
a relative term that can
only be determined by contest. There are too
many variables that
weight on the outcome of any competition and which can only be
sorted-out by the contest itself. The stress and adrenaline of a
major
competition transforms man and animal alike. Some for the better
others
for the worse. Competition is the very essence of life, without it there
is
no determination of fitness to survive . This simple but efective
rule is
what determines which species will thrive and which will disappear.
I am perplexed at the thought that even "God" has chosen
competition
as the means of determining the right to survive but in endurance we
believe that a group of people, can sit in a room, look at records of
past performance and believe that they have chosen the
""best".
<<What the FEI really needs to make Carlos happy is a World Cup
of Endurance
(which is not a team event) like those that they have in show
jumping and
dressage. All the riders in the world accumulate points
during the course
of the ride year to qualify to the World Cup event, and
each individual
gets to attend based on that performance (no matter how many
from which
countries). Then they have the event, and one individual
wins the event.>>
Kat, perhaps this is what the World expects from a World Championship.
Most other countries do select their teams by competition.
<<Personally, I would ilke to see this kind of event in
endurance. ANd
leave the team event/s to USET. And USET has the
responsibility of
fielding the team that has the best chance of
winning. In doing this,
USET is not required to be
"fair.">>
I will not subscribe to this submissive approach. It was once said that
a
slave is someone that sits around contemplating his chains while
waiting
for someone else to liberate him. I , for one, refuse to be a slave
of USET,
FEI or AHSA. If they are not fair we will make them fair.
However, I have to say that, as far as I have seen AHSA and
USET have
always come to AERC for comments and guidance on anything related
to Endurance. Maggie Price has been extremely effective in
accomplishing
diplomatic victories in favor of our view of endurance and Gerry Gillespie
has
always yielded to our views of the sport. Perhaps the short-comings are
not
the fault of FEI, USET or AHSA but ours, and I am not referring to
the Board
of AERC Intl. but all of us. Lets get our act together. If its broke
lets fix it.
Regards,
Carlos Crespo
Florida
Events