Denny Emerson has now weighed in on the Pentathlon situation… he seems to be in alignment with @JER …
“ Pentathlon woes
I’ve had maybe a dozen people ask me to say something about how bad the episode was at the Olympic pentathlon, as though I am somehow the go-to person to be critical about all things that smack of horse abuse.
Look—The world is FULL of horses in bad situations. Right this second, somewhere near YOU there are horses without clean water, horses standing in hot fields, covered with flies, no sheds, no trees, no feed, probably skinny and wormy. It is a HUGE list of horse abuse situations, and each one of us needs to do what we can.
But back to the Pentathlon. Sure, bad temper, bad riding, bad behavior—But the thing that gets me is that a couple of days earlier a horse died in eventing, adding to so many horses that have died in eventing over the last few years, and not a peep. Not a murmur. No “Maybe we ought to think of ways to make serious injuries and deaths not be almost “business as usual” in eventing—.”
But yank a horse or slap a horse, and the heavens erupt with indignation----Like where is all that indignation when REAL harm gets done?
I’m not condoning the lousy horsemanship at the Pentathlon, but I would suggest the enraged community should put it into perspective, and not focus on something in a tiny piece of a tiny splinter sport, while managing to ignore the elephant sitting in the corner, the fact that crashing falls are far from rare in ANOTHER and much bigger jumping sport that affects many more horses.
Think about that—?“
