The horses will be housed in a “biosphere”? At the airport?
I thought they were going to stay at the military base.
I guess the biosphere is plan B. 
and The Wall Street Journal:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/brazil-fights-another-epidemic-before-olympics-1469482459
Well, you’re the only subject matter expert I have access to. Would you send Touch of Class into this situation?
Also, my husband wants to know who gets the medal, the house or the rider? I comes, I’m a little curious too!
They won’t be housed in a biosphere at the airport, according to the Wall St. Journal article: Competing horses arriving at Rio’s international airport will effectively enter a protective biosphere, screened extensively for diseases and parasites beforehand, whisked to the Olympic venue upon arrival and quarantined there for the duration.
AXL - its a “team” effort between horse and rider, but the rider is the one who stands on the podium and gets the prize. The bigger question is who KEEPS the medal if the horse owner and rider are two different people, as is often the case…
There was a report about this prior to the test event. The article doesnt say when those horses were euthanized or if they’d been housed at the facility this whole time. I believe the article before the test event stayed that horses who’d been stabled at the facility were then euthanized months later for glanders after leaving the facility.
Looks like there has been a 6 month quarantine of the facilit .
http://www.horseandhound.co.uk/news/glanders-scare-rio-olympic-park-504746
Yes, that was my question: who keeps it? I suspect it’s the rider, or mutually decided upon selection to the team.
Might be similar to the Oscars where all involved parties receive their own award.
There hasn’t been a horse on the grounds since April. Do better research.
While precautions are certainly warranted, there seems to be a lot of partially informed fear mongering going on.
OP has mentioned JF got the medal. Most of those horses are and have been owned by partnerships or LLCs anyway.
The horses coming in for the Olympics will be STRICTLY quarantined at the venue after they are screened on arrival (basically, they stay in quarantine that begins even before their departure). They are monitored by both agricultural authorities and FEI stewards (these are on duty 24/7 in droves for all disciplines).
There are diseases that are endemic in certain areas of the world (glanders has been reported on a fairly regular basis in the Mid East recently). The protocols that have been developed to protect sport horses that travel around the globe for competition purposes are strictly adhered to by everyone as doing otherwise would endanger not only the elite equine athletes but also equine populations in their home countries whenever they return.
The two most recent horses put down were well away from any of the locations pertaining to the competition horses.
Wasn’t on board w/Sandron when ToC went to the Olympics in '84, but I began working shortly thereafter and so have been aware of the procedures from '86-the present (husband is an FEI steward and international judge, and I’m also a Lic. Official; I monitor the quarantine for international horses at the WIHS). Protocols are exceptionally tight, and while I would guess that confidence in the overall Olympics might be questionable, the individual work of the sport federations is what will govern the level of safety and success at each venue. Not that anything is fail safe, but the FEI is on it for sure. The top stewards from each discipline are already at the venue, and on the job.
I think the majority of concern is with the underlying infrastructure of the host country, not the Herculean efforts of each sports federation competing.
The 2 horses that were euthanized were in early 2015.
As others have said the grounds have been without horses for far more than 6 months.
Paulick Report took a few liberties (read assumptions) with the Wall Street Journal article and made it sensational.
Here’s an accurate article
Emily
Pictures of the horse accomodation; http://twitter.com/TeamGBR/status/758345311907614720/photo/1
http://twitter.com/TeamIRLEq/status/758807050268749824/photo/1
[QUOTE=Xctrygirl;8769812]
The 2 horses that were euthanized were in early 2015.
As others have said the grounds have been without horses for far more than 6 months.
Paulick Report took a few liberties (read assumptions) with the Wall Street Journal article and made it sensational.
Here’s an accurate article
Emily[/QUOTE]
Ok yes, I read it this way as well and was wondering why this is being treated like it’s new? Although, I did see at the bottom of the article that it had been recently edited to add the dates of the two euthanized horses, so perhaps when this article first came out, it sounded like it was breaking news if they omitted this occured in 2015.
The info coming out about the competitions to be held in open water is seriously GROSS
[QUOTE=chunky munky;8768963]
There hasn’t been a horse on the grounds since April. Do better research.[/QUOTE]
I found 2 acceptable sites (The Blood Horse and the NYT) which corroborated each other and whose stories were posted within the last 2 weeks. I linked to both of them.
It seems that details have now been changed to reflect the time period being discussed. But that was not the case when I posted.
[QUOTE=findeight;8769802]
I think the majority of concern is with the underlying infrastructure of the host country, not the Herculean efforts of each sports federation competing.[/QUOTE]
That and labor strife due to the recession. You can take all the precautions in the world against disease, but it won’t do you much good when a “peaceful” protest becomes a violent mob. Think Sochi with a healthy dose of liberation theology thrown in.
[QUOTE=carolprudm;8770966]
The info coming out about the competitions to be held in open water is seriously GROSS[/QUOTE]
Yes, but unfortunately this isn’t new info. They’ve been reporting for over a year now that the water there has been making people physically ill after simply coming in contact with it. I’m a big supporter of the Olympics, but it it’s hard to reconcile the idea that this much money has been spent on structures that will have little use after the Games themselves, especially when the country has such poor infrastructure and is in such bad shape economically.
While I do not doubt that the water is absolutely appalling, I do wonder if the problems with housing, etc. are being exaggerated a bit.
I’ve seen a lot of complaints that they “can’t even flush toilet paper.” But that is very common in many countries and really not that big of a deal. The toilets still handle human waste just fine.
One team (Australia maybe) took it upon themselves to “stress test” the plumbing, turning on every sink and shower they could while flushing all the toilets. Come on… That is not a realistic representation of normal usage.
I do not doubt that there are very real issues, but some of the complaints seem a little “drama queen” status to me to make interesting news.
Now the health and safety issues are no doubt very real. That is not what I’m referring to.
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