Is Urico ok this morning?

[Across_Sicily]

[QUOTE=shea’smom;5146709]
some of you people floor me. I guess if you get to represent the US at an International competition, you subject yourself to being torn apart on a BB? I am not referring to the remarks worrying about Unico. I also hope he is ok, but some of these other comments, how about put up or shut up?[/QUOTE]

Not wanting to sound like a jerk here, but yeah, when you put yourself out in the spotlight, you put yourself out there for EVERYONE… the people that love you AND the people that hate you.

Celebrities (music, sports, actors/actresses) are ragged on ALL the time. (and also told how wonderful they are) Once you step out there, you better be prepared to hear the good and the bad, and have people discuss every piece of your decision making process - particularly when it comes to the wellness of the horse.

[Madeline]

@shea'smom;5146709

some of you people floor me. I guess if you get to represent the US at an International competition, you subject yourself to being torn apart on a BB? I am not referring to the remarks worrying about Unico. I also hope he is ok, but some of these other comments, how about put up or shut up?

Suspect that a lot of the critics would be more than willing to put up or shut up if WEG had a 3’ hunter division.

[Auburn]

Actually, Meredith Michaels Beerbaum (sp?) had a bad day yesterday. She chose to retire, instead of push her horse to finish. Before she started her ride, she was in contention for an Individual medal, too.

For me, that is an example of good horsemanship. Everyone is entitled to their opinion and this is mine.

If Urico was so sound following his hind legs lying flat on the ground, then why did Mario have to go to his stick over the rest of the fences?

I am happy to hear that the horse is all right. :yes:

[onthebit]

@Auburn;5147308

Actually, Meredith Michaels Beerbaum (sp?) had a bad day yesterday. She chose to retire, instead of push her horse to finish. Before she started her ride, she was in contention for an Individual medal, too.

For me, that is an example of good horsemanship. Everyone is entitled to their opinion and this is mine.

If Urico was so sound following his hind legs lying flat on the ground, then why did Mario have to go to his stick over the rest of the fences?

I am happy to hear that the horse is all right. :yes:

MMB chose to withdraw when the ride wasn’t going her way in the INDIVIDUAL round. Although I am not MMB I am pretty darn sure that had that been during a team round she would have kept going and put a team score on the board. It might have been a bad score, but as you saw from our team sometimes you need a bad score on the board vs. none at all. It is different when you are riding for the team vs. riding for an individual medal.

[Madeline]

@Auburn;5147308

Actually, Meredith Michaels Beerbaum (sp?) had a bad day yesterday. She chose to retire, instead of push her horse to finish. Before she started her ride, she was in contention for an Individual medal, too.

Not really. With 8 faults (a rail and a stop) added to her 9.79, she was no longer in contention for an individual medal. She would have been in 20th place, more than 3 rails behind the leader after yesterday’s first round.

[imajacres]

[QUOTE=T-storm chick;5144556]
I was a little bit miffed he switched from riding for Canada to riding for the U.S.A.–but after that, you guys can have him!:lol:[/QUOTE]

I have no time for him, not now, not before, (not even that he switched countries, -you can have him), but having been around him and his riding for too many years.
Even though he hasnt been around here full time for quite a while, he hasnt been forgotten.

I have dealt with several horses that have been “tested” by him, and shown not to have the necessary goods, and after that experience they dont have much else either- either broken, or scared, or both.

[Coyoteco]

So, reading through this thread is pretty interesting and a little unsettling to me.

In a team competition, what takes prececence, the welfare of the horse or the welfare of the team?

The answer to the above question is pretty clear to me - perhaps the specific details are unclear, but that’s not exactly what I’m talking about.

I’m pretty surprised that someone could ride that and not know the kind of fall his horse had taken. It was very offputting to see how they blamed the horse for every little thing, too. Really, seriously poor form to hold the horse accountable for rider error. The person who did the write up that is reproduced earlier in this thread is really out of his element.

eta - oh, it was the rider’s own words - not his fault, the horse did it. Very bad form…

[MHM]

@Across Sicily;5145037

Found this picture, it illustrates what happened with the horse’s back end pretty darn well. http://oi51.tinypic.com/dqmb8n.jpg

Holy. Cow!

That’s an amazing picture of a very bad moment.

[Coyoteco]

[QUOTE=Glimmerglass;5144301]
Alas they have the Urico spill as part of a WEG compilation at this page: youtube.com - Universal Sports “team horse jumping crashes”. (That is their title - not mine)

It will be the first clip.

I haven’t seen any comments from Jane regarding Urico or Mario’s ride.

From the USEF press release -[/QUOTE]

Oh, it was the rider himself - wow.

[Roxy_SM]

[QUOTE=Auburn;5147308]

If Urico was so sound following his hind legs lying flat on the ground, then why did Mario have to go to his stick over the rest of the fences?

. :yes:[/QUOTE]

Mario did not use the stick over “the rest” of the fences. He used it at the last fence - a very wide oxer - to encourage the horse to jump across the back rail so that he wouldn’t have a repeat of the triple bar and have the horse get scared further.

[NorthFaceFarm]

I don’t think Mario could feel in that quick second exactly how scary the horse looked. Cant blame him for that. If you’re laying on the neck trying not to fall yourself, you probably can’t figure out exactly what is happening with the horse’s back end. The horse felt ok to him after a few steps and so he continued. Not a big deal. Im sure if he knew exactly what happened, he would have more strongly considered retiring.

Second, what is this nonsense about using the stick? Do the rest of you only use a crop when your horse is not fit to jump? Just because he needed the crop to encourage the horse doesnt mean there was anything physically wrong with the animal or that it’s unfit. You have just a few moments to school a horse after an incident like that…whether you’re correcting a discipline or response problem, or schooling for confidence. Rider did what he needed to.

[AOGP]

I went back and forth about whether to comment here but here it goes.

1. MD has trouble seeing the triple bar. Seen him bowl for dollars at the triple bar many times before. His “my distance was fine” comment (I hope he knows that isn’t all there is to it) and George’s “green, but of course not too green” comment do a disservice to the horse. MD needs to start a 12 step program (1st step…admit you have a problem with the triple bar).
2. So Cedric doesn’t pass the vet check for the “top 30” individual round. I am sure I am not the only one who saw he didn’t look 100% in the second nations cup round. Jeez, if I can see it from row “V”?! I know we ‘needed’ a good score, but at that point we were already out of contention so why did he go Wednesday night? Somebody? (Anybody?)
3. Back to Urico… So, a dressage horse bites the tip of his tongue in the GP, bell is rung, Game(s) over. If they had rung the bell on Urico and said that was “fall of horse or rider” I would have thought “yeah that’s pretty much what it looked like”. I wouldn’t want to be on a horse that wouldn’t want to get back on his feet if he possibly could (self preservation is a good instinct), but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t pretty much a fall. Seems inconsistent is all I’m saying.
4. I don’t know MD real well personally, but if they didn’t ring him out and the horse really seemed OK to him (he knows what the horse normally feels like), he wasn’t being a dimwit thinking he could improve on Lauren’s 12 faults. After all, he only finished with 13 faults. SO there, I could say something nice.

[Foxtrot_s]

The descriptions of Mario are not the fellow we knew years ago. As usual a whole lot of armchair quarterbacks have to jump on the COTH bandwagon and slam a rider’s reputation. Personal remarks should have no place on a board like this. Questions, photos (yikes!), etc. and comentary on what happened are fair game if accurate.

[Madeline]

@AOGP;5147709

2. So Cedric doesn’t pass the vet check for the “top 30” individual round. I am sure I am not the only one who saw he didn’t look 100% in the second nations cup round. Jeez, if I can see it from row “V”?! I know we ‘needed’ a good score, but at that point we were already out of contention so why did he go Wednesday night? Somebody? (Anybody?)

This is the first I’ve even heard that there was a vet check, not to mention that Cedric didn’t pass it…

I’m glad that you were able to see from row V that he wasn’t himself while he jumped that horribly painful clear in the second Nation’s cup round…

[Secret_Dove]

[QUOTE=AOGP;5147709]
I went back and forth about whether to comment here but here it goes.

1. MD has trouble seeing the triple bar. Seen him bowl for dollars at the triple bar many times before. His “my distance was fine” comment (I hope he knows that isn’t all there is to it) and George’s “green, but of course not too green” comment do a disservice to the horse. MD needs to start a 12 step program (1st step…admit you have a problem with the triple bar).
2. So Cedric doesn’t pass the vet check for the “top 30” individual round. I am sure I am not the only one who saw he didn’t look 100% in the second nations cup round. Jeez, if I can see it from row “V”?! I know we ‘needed’ a good score, but at that point we were already out of contention so why did he go Wednesday night? Somebody? (Anybody?)
3. Back to Urico… So, a dressage horse bites the tip of his tongue in the GP, bell is rung, Game(s) over. If they had rung the bell on Urico and said that was “fall of horse or rider” I would have thought “yeah that’s pretty much what it looked like”. I wouldn’t want to be on a horse that wouldn’t want to get back on his feet if he possibly could (self preservation is a good instinct), but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t pretty much a fall. Seems inconsistent is all I’m saying.
4. I don’t know MD real well personally, but if they didn’t ring him out and the horse really seemed OK to him (he knows what the horse normally feels like), he wasn’t being a dimwit thinking he could improve on Lauren’s 12 faults. After all, he only finished with 13 faults. SO there, I could say something nice.[/QUOTE]
   Cedric didn’t do the vet check. Laura decided to withdraw him from the semi finals.

“U.S. show jumper Laura Kraut did not present Cedric for the jog this morning, withdrawing him from the final individual qualifying round of the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games. Cedric is not injured, but Kraut felt she was out of the running to qualify for the final four jumping for individual medals, so she chose not to jump again. Kraut was in 19th individually after the speed leg and two rounds of Nations Cup competition. Belgian rider Judy-Ann Melchior, who sat 25th, also opted to withdraw her mount Cha Cha Z for the same reason.”

And please don’t say that Laura jumped Cedric unsound. I know for a fact that Laura would NEVER jump a horse unsound, she always puts the horse first!

[PNWjumper]

[QUOTE=NorthFaceFarm;5147659]

Second, what is this nonsense about using the stick? Do the rest of you only use a crop when your horse is not fit to jump? Just because he needed the crop to encourage the horse doesnt mean there was anything physically wrong with the animal or that it’s unfit. You have just a few moments to school a horse after an incident like that…whether you’re correcting a discipline or response problem, or schooling for confidence. Rider did what he needed to.[/QUOTE]

I have to admit that I laughed pretty hard at Madeline’s comment:

@Madeline;5147659

Suspect that a lot of the critics would be more than willing to put up or shut up if WEG had a 3’ hunter division.

You ought to read back through the responses and note who made what comments. While admittedly, I can’t say who’s coming out against MD for the most part, I do know that most of the people posting in support of Mario are folks who have ridden at that level (meaning in the GP level/big jumpers, not necessarily World Cup level). You certainly may not need to use a crop to get a horse over a 3’ oxer in competition, but boy, I can’t think of a horse I haven’t used a crop-off-of-the-ground at a crucial moment over 1.40+m fences. Sometimes it’s a needed tool to get the necessary impulsion to prevent the horse coming down too early over a big square oxer.

And boy, I can’t stand the attitude that comes out against our Grand Prix riders so often in posts like these. These horses wouldn’t be jumping for these folks, let alone be in a qualified spot to represent our country, if the riders didn’t do right by their horses. You try to repeatedly jump a sore horse and the one thing you can be sure of is that it will quit performing at that level.

I’m not going to debate whether Mario did right or wrong in that split second decision on course because it’s totally and completely irrelevant and unfair to make that call after the fact. But I can say that in the same spot I likely would have made the same decision.

And for those horrified by the picture, have you ever seen pictures of a horse upon landing off of a big jump? Not saying that the photo wasn’t awful, but so are various parts of a horse jumping in single frame. Just because it looked bad doesn’t mean that it did any great damage to the horse. And if he was sound the following day I think it’s fair to say that it was one of those incidents that looked a heck of a lot worse than it actually was.

[Peggy]

IIRC a fall of the horse is defined as having the shoulder and hip touch the ground at the same time, at least per USEF rules. IF that’s the case the photo linked in this thread would not comprise a fall of the horse.

[AOGP]

If that is the definition (glad I never had to know that) then clearly not technically a fall. As I noted, MD knows how the horse feels normally, so clearly he thought he was OK to go on. Despite all, he almost succeeded in improving the overall team score.
It was certainly a great decision to save Cedric for another day and not go Friday. I absolutely do not think Laura would compete a lame horse. There’s a big difference between “lame” which I did not say, and “didn’t look 100%”, which I stand by. All the best athletes and certainly the best horses can have a little soreness, especially in this kind of situation, and still perform. He and Laura were certainly the bright spot for the USA on Wednesday night with a beautiful clear.

[Liberty]

I didn’t see Urico’s run (& video in link earlier posted has been removed from YouTube), but this incident reminded me of a wonderful video I saw yesterday from the x-country competition. Peter Atkins handled a mishap (very slight in this case) in the way I wish all riders would (sorry for the terrible grammar in that sentence).

Here’s the link, but note the comments below before viewing, although the entire video is quite amazing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frbETD7Eh74

From the Comments:

polomarey:
Very Cool! Can somebody please tell me what happened at 10:52? Did he go over the wrong jump? (Wondering why he appeared to turn around). Forgive me, I am new to XC and just trying to learn how it works!

patkins1:
At 26A he jumped up great and stalled on top, I’m not sure why. We slipped off the far side, I checked to make sure he was OK, trotted around the corner and jumped the option.

[magnolia73]

The rider did not have the benefit of photos and video to judge what may have happened with the horse’s hind end. It looked like Urico cantered off fine and then went onto jump OK. If there was serious injury the horse would have been showing some sign, surely. It’s not like he was beating every step out of a lame horse.

Granted, had I jumped a jump that poorly, I would have pulled up, probably in tears. That’s why I jump crossrails and am not named to International teams. I think your international riders are much more confident and able to regroup and go on and leave a bad jump behind. I assume Mario has an excellent feel and felt the horse canter off without limping and felt the horse not suck back to the next jump and felt certain it was OK to go on.