equestrian games have always been and will be a matter of money - but no matter how much money you supply, it ìs also a question of mentality, tradition AND - last but not least- “equestrian infrastructure”.
with respect to championships as such, where countries can APPLY for the games (and hopefully know how much it will cost them AND how they fund it) the matter stays somewhat reasonable but with the olympics its different. once you have them you are tacked down to the equestrian part of it, too. but even with the non-olympic championships we have seen in the past that many countries simply underestimate the financial AND organisational burden, bills haven’t been paied, some events needed to be rearranged on short notice to different countries - the latest example still very alive in most organizers heads surely is the european championship of dressage 2005 which was supposed to be taken place in moskau. the event had been allocated AND planned for long in advance - to finally realize three weeks (!) before that it couldn’t be done - for any reason you can think of. and here we are talking dressage ONLY. not even to mention highly expensive eventing or any further discipline.
three weeks.
it was taken over by a tiny place in germany called lingen, home of kasselmann, a privately run entity.
it was refered to as the “miracle of lingen” by the media as it seemed impossible to provide for an event like that within only three weeks.
well, the rest is history, those european dressage championships turned out to be a great success in any respect.
the point i am trying to make is: how far can you strech “idealistic” demands within in the sense of “spirit of games” without loosing control? where does reasonability overcome idealism and spirit?
when the word was spread around that aachen COULD provide for the olympic games (and i doubt it was the organisation committe of aachen who started this as everybody knows: it is a highly political matter) people were torn apart but the one thing they agreed upon immediately was:
“these are olympic games - and the spirit of the games requires everything to be taken place at the same place … BUT we could think about having any further (non-olympic) championships (european or world championships) taking place in aachen in the future…”
which suggests that the discuccion about hong kong is rather of idealsitic than reasonable matters. as reasonability clearly speaks for itself. and that is not any exotic place anywhere in the world.
fact is:
the spirit of the games has already been somewhat abused by moving the equestrian games from peking to hong kong in the first place, for all the good reasons mentioned.
the FEI did NOT support such move and had to finally give in to what the IOC decided.
should the FEI now really support a further final move to a third location for simple reasons of economics AND hippological background - i don’t think that anyone could blame them for simply being consequence in that matter, specially when there seem to be certain signals of “insecurity” coming from hong kong with respect to confidence and committment.
and again: if there are signs like that coming from hong kong, they certainly are acceptable.
as it does make a huge difference being home of a highly priviliged race horse culture on an isolated ISLAND serving a comparable “handful” of (again: privileged) race horse people compared to hosting games some 14-21 days in a row with different demands for groundwork, eventing courses, infrastructure etc to welcome some 600.000 non-privileged people from all around the world who continue to travel in and out, need space, facilities etc… all that ideally provided at affordable prices simply to make sure people from all over the world really COME to see it and pay the open bills… as those games are MEANT to be for poeple from all over the world, too.
hong kong?
i just don’t see that happening.
not for jo doe jetting over to find a 2 x 4 double-bedroom/wc and breakfast incl…
but i guess it is fair to say that aachen has just delivered a masterpiece of logistics and horesmanship providing for the best WEG ever held (thats how they refer to it in the media overhere already) - and they even managed to break even on it. masterpiece, i’ld say, as this has never been heard of with respect to equestrian games before.
and it does seem that on top of that they made everybody happy: participants (horses!) AND visitors from all over the world.
except for me.
as i am used to parking right in front of the main entrance of the stadium every year when i go watch the CHIO in aachen. but guess what?
THEY MADE ME USE THE PARK&RIDE FACILITY HAVING TO SQUEEZE ON A SHUTTLE BUS TO GET TO THE STADIUM!!!
how could they possibly do that???
i was so p…ed at them!
even worse so, how could they do that to some 45thousand visitors a day NOT being able to park right in front of the stadium?
do you know how long it took me having to make the detour from the autobahn to get to the p&r facilities?
and do you know how long it took me to get on that damn shuttle to finally be able to enter the stadium???
it took me some 20 minutes surplus time…
no one had to spend more than 20 min in order to get into the stadium once having dropped their own car at one of the p&r facilities.
THAN i started thinking of athens.
and yes, i do acknowledge the equestrian background even athens can provide with respect to having hosted equestrian games: wasn’t it the greek who inventend the trojan horse to finally conquer their enimies and take back beautiful helena (who, after all those years, didn’t even want to go back to greece…)???
as much as i acknowledge the equestrian background of asian cultures - dschingis kahn and mongolian ponies. and they did serve their merits!
but PLEASE!
now we are talking sports, no myths…
the infrastructure in athens was a nightmare, no matter where you came from, you needed to plan in a lot of surplus time only to get to the stadium. at least if you are used to spend some 20 min surplus time to get where you want WHENEVER you want… not to speak of the costs as such. is it really necessary to spend double digit million figures simply to provide for a 6km eventing course anywhere in the world just because some 60 horses are going to do the cross at one single day and after that it can be FORGOTTEN???
not to mention the waste of costly water it takes to make sure the grass ground works the way it needs to…
and we are not even talking the different warm up areas for jumping and dressage grounds…
i have seen at least six or seven 20 x 60plus permanent riding grounds at the aachen stadium - and i am sure any local riding club in that area would consider themselves heavenly lucky if only they owned one half of such ground…
but these are selfunderstood in aachen and well be taken care of in the future as they have natural use for it many times a year.
a friend of mine complained about having to pay 200 euros for a simple hotel room in aachen as those were heavily overpriced for the games. oh yes, it did make me think of the expenses i had in athens… but fact is: 200 euros and 20 surplus minutes are nothing. (he had a shuttle bus right from his hotel room and it took him less than ten minutes to get to the stadium) and if you were willing to spend your overnights in the netherlands or outside viscinities you could easily reduce your costs and still be able to make it within an hour or two INCL those nasty 20 surplus minutes for p&r…
hong kong?
of course all those sheiks could sponsor these amounts easily but is that within the sense of the spirits of the games?
sponsored by oil?
warmblood?
and here we are back to mentality, idealism and tradition: i am sure within the next couple of hundreds of years each and everyone of us will be able to travel the moon for whatever reason. and maybe we even set up our own population up there. and i will surely applaud to the first 100-meter-record being broken without any astronaut equipment to be carried… but is that a reason to shoot horses up there and provide for equestrian events simply because it CAN be done???
i am a great supporter of the olympic idea and may the games take place all over the world - but there are certain limits that do come with the simple nature of equestrian sport as such and olympic spirit to me also includes visitors from all over the world and natural environment for those horses.
simple things.
it starts with the simple availability of straw to bed them propperly in their stables. i remember my sheer disbelief when i watched a documentation of sport horses being imported by the japanese to tokio - they don’t have straw (a natural supplement that is available at least in europe for less than what you pay for the movie theater on saturday nights… and that very amount pays you a monthly stock of straw for your horse).
in tokio it has to be imported with the horses from (ideally) europe - which makes it incredibly expensive. which is the reason they turn out the dirty straw from the stall, “clean” it as good as they can and let it dry in the sun - to re-use it again and again. apart from the fact that this procedure is of harm to the health of the horses as germs in the straw are being kept alive and horses - as their nature has it - love nibbling their straw, it is just redicolous.
as a horse is a horse is a horse.
and so are equestrian sports.
may the games begin - but in order to make them games for each and everyone, maybe europe (or any other naturally equipped country) is a better place than HK.
which I have prepared.