Well that is an interesting perspective 
According to Manni, that is one possibility. The Russian rider was awful, and fried the horse so much, that it was unfair for the German rider.
Never mind that many of the other horses who went twice had BAD first rounds… it apparently was uniquely bad in this one situation.
Her other explanation is that Saint Boy is a problem horse in general. Never mind that he has a record at 1.4 m, is 15 (likely a bit of a schoolmaster), and that he went around with a pro previously and passed all the test ride requirements… he’s just a bad horse, because the German rider couldn’t ride him.
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I assume he finally got his 4 refusals together…… which made him unsuitable for further usage….
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Don’t even try to explain what I think . You will fail for sure . I am not absent like the German rider I am here to participate
And the horse should have retired after the first round…. I guess I am the only one who think that refusing to go close to any jumps kind of classifies as the fourth refusal….
But who am I to have an opinion…… me who only takes side of a person because she is German……
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I so wish you would do proper research before putting words in somebody’s mouth they didn’t say…. Isabel Werth has exactly the same opinion as I do
Für Isabell Werth war dieser Vorfall kein bisschen überraschend. “Die Fünfkampf-Pferde werden kurz vor der Entscheidung mit einem Transporter ins Stadion gekarrt, kein Reiter hat sie vorher gesehen”, sagte die Mannschafts-Olympiasiegerin von Tokio: “Es ist keine gewachsene Beziehung, wie sie in diesem Sport mit diesen sensiblen Lebewesen nötig ist. Die Pferde sind hier nur Mittel zum Zweck.”
Maybe I’ve been totally unfair, and this isn’t a matter of you having a blind spot due to shared nationality and an understandable measure of sympathy/loyalty/national pride in terms of the demonstrable degree of German skill when it comes to equestrian sport on the world stage.
Maybe you just truly don’t care if someone rides a frazzled horse that roughly and poorly, and uses the whip excessively. Maybe that sort of horsemanship is ok in your opinion.
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Unclear. It’s just one of the theories on why Saint Boy was melting down … basically the rider before used up all his good will.
I don’t exactly buy it - I mean, yeah, the Russian was painful to watch (I will never feel guilty about my form over jumps again) but we also don’t know how much of the warmup fed into Saint Boy’s behavior in the ring. Without video, for all we know, he gave her a good start and she buried him/ran him through a few jumps in the warm up too.
Whether he was fried before she got on or not, he was definitely fried by they time they tried to enter the arena. And she could have been the media darling of the whole mess if she’d just had the sense to hop off, pat his nose, and cry for the camera saying “the horse comes first, I had to scratch”. Instead, she did the opposite and she’s reaping the opposite reaction from the public.
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Let’s put the horse out of the equation for a moment @Manni01…. How do you feel about the German rider’s response? Her horsemanship? Her loss of self control?
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Again dont even try to explain what I think… maybe go back in this thread and reread what I wrote…
I have another question for @JER if she doesn’t mind!
For most of these competitions, have most of the horses been ridden in MP or a similar setup (like IEA/IHSA) before? Or if so, how often do they do it?
The only reason I’m asking if because I know in IHSA/ IEA there’s tons of great horses but not all of them play nice in that setting. Usually if it’s a horse’s first time doing IEA/IHSA they’ll just maybe do one or two classes in the higher divisions and then as they get more and more shows under their belt, if they’re proven to be a good sport with a sense of humor, they’ll be bumped down into the lower divisions. Or if it’s apparent they do not have a sense of humor then IEA/IHSA shows just aren’t for them and that’s ok too.
Usually by the end of the season at the regional/ national level horse shows all of the horses you can draw from are all established veterans. I could see a problem if you’re taking a large group of horses that haven’t done this setup before though…
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That’s a totally smart take… if she had done that, she 100% WOULD have been a media darling. Deservedly so. Good horsemanship is always a good look.
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Building on this theme…I’ve never done Pentathlon, but I have competed successfully and for an extended period of time in both riding (hunter jumper) and running.
Each sport has its own ethos. And as noted, a big part of the equestrian ethos is that you never blame the horse - it’s always up to you.
Running does NOT have that ethos. Far from it. And so it’s very easy for me to see how someone who picked up riding as their second/third/whatever sport might not pick up that aspect so easily, even with a coach’s urging.
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Oh now we are finally coming to the point 
. You all are simply picking one number of the equation and neglect the others… sure that makes it easy… I would never dispute that the situation was horrible for the horse and I think it’s weird that you want to take the horse out of the equation:pensive:
… sure makes it easier to attack the rider….
Irish Pentathlon coach John Ledingham chimes in with an article in The Irish Times.
While he begins by calling this whole thing a “self-inflicted wound,” he has two other themes. The horses were “clearly not fit to compete,” “so obviously unsuitable for competition” and he “would seriously question the mental suitability of some of these horses for competition”; and the female riders were “sportswomen who gave it their all but were denied, after five years of meticulous preparation, the opportunity to perform on what should have been the most level playing field in the world.”
Keep digging, you’re bound to hit rock bottom sooner or later.
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What??? I’m taking the horse out of the equation because as riders it’s up to us to deal with the horse we sit on every given day. You make no sense. Are you excusing her behavior because you think it’s an appropriate reaction to riding a fried horse ?
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PS. I am quite sure if you’ve ridden long enough you’ve had the day when you sat on a horse who for whatever reason did not want to play that day. Did you smack and spur it? Did you weep uncontrollably?
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What a jerk . He dares to have my opinion…. Bad article….
As I said before the orgnizer did not follow their own rules regarding the selection of the horses…. Which BTW made the horses suffer
So true. I’m also a runner and you’re right the culture is totally different. For runners I feel like the most important thing is finishing whereas equestrians, the most important thing is the horse. I could see maybe that “I’m getting the job done no matter what” attitude translating over to riding.
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Am I excusing her behavior??? I would recommend that you read my posts in this thread as well…
Manni - why don’t you humor us and articulate your position once again so we don’t have to wade back through the thread.
Or don’t. It’s your call. But the thread is already up to 700 posts - it’s hard to dig back through the whole discussion 
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