Fair enough… I can appreciate where you are coming from. Maybe it was an error in judgement on my part to have quoted his posts.
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Oof. I don’t even want to think about what goes on in the warm up ring. 
But yes, obviously it should also be regulated.
Plus the changes that would make the sport safer would also provide incentive for the athletes to improve their riding skills in order to stay competitive.
“Gee, if I will be eliminated the first time I fall off, maybe I should try to learn how to stay on the horse.” 
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Ditto
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I don’t think yo have anything to apologize for. Denny Emerson’s post made some reasonable points. But he doesn’t seem to understand just how badly the TV coverage of riders crashing right and left in the Women’s Pentathlon damages ALL jumping sports in the eyes of the public. Courtesy of that TV coverage, Modern Pentathlon’s equestrian problem has also become our problem, like it or not.
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Thank you, thank you for saying that.
I got what he was saying and it certainly gave me a lot to think about but what I came around to was a similar conclusion.
Eventing’s not my discipline and I only follow it casually through COTH and Rol-scuse me- LRK3DE but, but, that sport at least shows a willingness to address safety issues and evolve. It’s how I learned the word “frangible.”
This situation with Pentathlon, OTOH, is blowing up in part because there are years and years and Olympic cycles of sh*t shows to refer back to without any sort of progress. I keep referring people to a 2016 Eventing Nation article about it but, here we still are. And without the pentathlon horses getting the same considerations as the FEI ones when it comes to managing the heat and weather conditions and the footing? Come on, man. (on one hand, where and when I came up, a rugby field might be concerned a fine, fine grass arena 
) but, now I’d be seriously worried with the rodeo’ing going on and scary spots, especially if it rained)
So yes, the rotational falls, etc are bad but the heavily publicized pentathlon debacle may be the straw that the AR folks really light their torches with.
Lastly, a thousand times this: “It’s possible to be concerned with two problems at once.” Love that.
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Yes, exactly.
As I said earlier in the thread, the videos I saw from the London Olympics almost a decade ago look pretty similar, except maybe that time, there was not one rider who had an extremely visible public meltdown in the middle of the ring. Or if there was, that person did not get plastered all over the news and social media all around the world.
With eventing, maybe they have not done enough to improve the safety of the cross country, but at least there have been some tangible (frangible) changes made in that direction.
If there have been any similar changes in pentathlon, they are not at all visible to the casual observer who watches the Olympic videos from 10 years ago and the Olympic videos from last week. The train wrecks look about the same.
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I think the thing that irks me about Denny’s post (other than him trying desperately to stay relevant and loving the sound of his own voice, per usual…) is that it implies the rotational fall given the comments about how dangerous eventing is and the horse death. But didn’t Jet Set pull up lame? Was that the direct result of a rotational, or partial rotational fall? I watched that section of the XC, but I don’t remember that horse falling. I am not sure I see his point as much if the horse’s injury wasn’t a direct result of a fall. What would Denny tell us to do in that instance? Not make the ethical decision to put the horse down? Not have XC because a horse might blow a tendon? Where is the constructive guidance in that post? Nevermind that I’m sure a horse or two suffered soft tissue injuries his his heyday.
There are bad people doing bad things, and even well-meaning but ignorant people doing bad things, in all aspects of horse sport and ownership. These things all need to be fixed. The whole horse community needs to do better looking out. But if anything this MP outrage has shown us, the well-meaning, good doing horse owners that public perception of horse sport is getting to be very fragile, and we all have to be transparent and do better.
The issue is that it seems that given the UIPM’s lack of changes or improvements, lack of response to expert help, asinine PR responses to the Tokyo incident, etc, it paints MP as having no or little regard for horse welfare, and that the athletes treat horses like mere equipment to be discarded after a round. I am sure not all MPers are like that, but that’s the perception now thanks to the behavior at the Olympic level.
Us horse people hate it because now the layman assumes ALL horse sports are like this. There is a lot of public backlash, perpetuated by social media, thanks to this, which can and WILL affect all of us. It doesn’t seem like Denny appreciates that message at all, as others have mentioned. That’s why I think he’s missing the point.
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Here it is, women’s pentathlon in full
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I concur again.
Really, someone could put together a crash compilation from the actual show jumping portion of the Olympics last week. But it would not include one person sobbing and shrieking and hitting the horse for an extended period of time before crashing through several jumps.
Most members of the general public can probably understand that people fall off of horses occasionally, and accidents can happen. But that horrendous display provided way too much grist for the mill for PETA and the like.
And Denny Emerson, at his age (~80?) and stage of life, might not realize the degree to which social media and news coverage can change the world in a hurry these days.
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Points or not the man is an abuser so let’s not share his name in the sake of the vicitms.
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Yes and according to the Hold Box podcast, the horse was euthanized immediately because the leg was not repairable. Nothing to do with a fall at all.
I saw multiple falls at the Pan Ams in warm up and horses slamming on the brakes, including a rotational fall. That horse was removed but the horse replacing it caused a few rider falls and it was still used.
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As much as he uses FB to rant and preach, I’m sure he understands social media influence just fine. If it were someone else with no social media presence I would agree, but he can’t have it both ways.
Concur with everything else you said.
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I get the impression he views his Facebook page more as his own personal back porch, where he can rant and preach all he likes, and people can take it or leave it as they see fit. Or he can just kick them off his porch if they disagree too much to suit him.
I don’t know if he really grasps the snowball effect it can have when something really catches fire like this incident.
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In addition to the frangible pins IMHO the most significant safety measure was to require that after a fall the rider could not continue but had to walk the horse back to the barn on foot.
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Look. “your” sport is under fire here, because at the top level you had a big group of people crashing around, using innocent animals as the vehicles.
If those “in the know” of this sport took off their blinders and saw this ahead of time, see the rules as unfair and dangerous, and make CHANGES, you wouldn’t be here.
But since the governing bodies drug their feet on making any changes at all, combined with an Olympic competitor sobbing around the ring like a petulant child while beating a horse around a 4’ course, now you’re here. In the light. For everyone, those experienced with the sport or not, to see and comment on.
It would serve you to tuck your tail, at least a little bit.
Is arrogance and lack of self reflection a requirement to compete? Seems like it.
So, on behalf of the REAL olympic equestrians, “thanks a lot” Modern Pentathalon for shining the worst possible light on the sport, so that a bunch of novices who can’t see the difference between SJing and this drivel you call riding in MP can judge all jumping sports with the same brush, via the court of public opinion.
Meanwhile, god forbid you make any changes to the sport that just made asses out of all of us.
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I appreciate some of your sentiment, but I think you’re targeting the wrong person. From what I can see, JER has been an advocate for change and improvement within Pentathlon.
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I don’t think she’s targeting anyone but the organizing body.
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My dear friend, if you’ve been reading my posts, you’d see that I’ve been advocating for changes in the sport from within the sport for YEARS.
If you’ve seen my instagram, you’ll notice that I was posting videos about the UIPM and the rules in May as a way of issuing a warning about Tokyo.
But please keep insulting me. It reminds me of old times here on this board and I’m digging the nostalgia.
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I finally found his post with the intention of scrolling though the comments. Holly molly there’s some serious aßß kissing with the likes of “you’re a hero” going on there… Those people have obviously no independent thought process and/or principles of their own.
There are luckily some ppl who tried to gently argue that “it’s not a zero sum” or “we can be bothered by both issues simultaneously” but the majority comments resemble a cult mentality.
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My dear friend, if you’ve been reading my posts, you’d see that I’ve been advocating for changes in the sport from within the sport for YEARS.
And unfortunately it seems that you’ve been shouting into the void all that time. The problem clearly lies with the governing body for the sport, and sadly I think it’s going to take a very public tragedy before they wake up (if they ever do).
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