Just rewatched it, they showed very little as Tim Price and Boyd were riding after her, and Harry Mead just before she didn’t get much air time.
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Actually, officials are allowed to stop any rider deemed to be riding dangerously, regardless. I have seen them pull up riders for tired horses.
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Eee.
Some riders might, some riders might not.
I’d rather have it spelled out in the rules somewhere that there is a required vet check on the horse’s condition before it can continue under similar circumstances.
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The yellow card for CB was fair. I do wish they would be more proactive about pulling up riders that are having sketchy rounds.
That said, it wouldn’t shock me if social media spells the end of equestrian sports within a decade or two. It has the perfect combination of bad moments being more highly publicized than good because they drive engagement, and in doing so bringing those moments to people with no knowledge and no interest in keeping horse sports alive and those that are already convinced that any use of animals in human recreation is morally wrong, along with holding the opinions of those people to have equal weight if not more than those who have spent their lives in the horse world and even depend on it for their livelihood.
One of the first things I saw on social media this morning was that stupid Facebook post claiming that high withers mean “topline atrophy” and indicate an abused and unsound horse, which is totally ridiculous… and yet the comments were full of people eating it up because it confirms their preconceived opinion that eventing and upper level horse sports are bad.
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I just went back and pulled up the 5* replay and they actually end up showing a decent amount of her round. At least to me, the mare doesn’t look super noticeably tired until you see them hit the 8:30 mark. At that point, Ema begins to actively spur her up the hill and the mare starts to labor, to the point Sinead even says something about it. Coming to the last complex (the moguls I think?), Ema hits her behind her leg once, then a few strides later hits her another three times. At that point, she was already more than a minute over optimum. That’s the last you see of her round.
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I saw them blaming photographers and the event for not providing side views of the horses that they need for this hateful drivel.
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This is all just my opinion.
Eventing started off to show off cavalry officers riding cavalry horses (supposedly) over a possible replica of a war-time cross-country scouting ride that must be completed quickly.
Horse cavalry in battle became passe with the introduction of the machine-gun. This happened in the Bedouin desert nomad horse culture as well as with most modern armies. The ability to get important information on the sly, reported with greater speed than human runners usually perform, the ability to do exact riding in the ring/riding hall, and the ability to jump any obstacle that appeared on the way. However modern aircraft (including drones) and often reliable telephone or radio networks outperform the old cavalry for scouting nowadays.
Even though horse cavalry is passe this does not excuse eventing from its roots, the testing of cavalry force horses against the horses of foreign cavalries with the cross-country portion being a replica of a scouting mission, going over whatever type of country and whatever types of obstacles to get needed information about the enemy’s forces.
I remember reading in one of Littauer’s early books, “More About Modern Riding” about the cross-country phase of the 3-Day Event in the Olympic games in Berlin in 1936. He walked from one to the other for 35 obstacles, all different, over 8 kilometers. They had some fences that were even more difficult than today’s courses (usually).
At least one horse broke a leg doing that cross-country competition that day, an American horse called Slippery Jim. Since it was in 1936 I presume the horse was destroyed.
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Meh.
Modern day eventing does not have any more to do with the cavalry traditions than modern day show hunters have to do with the first fox hunters who only started to jump when people began to put fences around their property lines a couple of hundred years ago.
It’s a sport with arbitrary rules that people do with their horses for the entertainment of the humans involved. Like most other horse activities these days unless you’re actually riding horses to work cattle on a ranch somewhere. Nothing more, nothing less.
Which is fine. But let’s not kid ourselves.
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I had a whole post written up but MHM summed it up well - let’s not kid ourselves either, though, back in the day horse knowledge and horse care wasn’t better, it was just different. And we know better now, we know how a fall can cause an injury, we know how we don’t need to actually hit our head to get a concussion. We know more about soft tissue issue and that behavior can be related to pain.
Also, NONE of these horses are gearing up to head to war or to defend anything. We ride because we like to, we WANT to, not because we HAVE to (as MHM said, ranch work aside).
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Reminds me of the video referenced for the reason the rule changed from a successful navigation of an obstacle being “between the flags” to " between the flags and over the jump". I’ll have to find it…
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I would be interested to see that.
I did not see the video, but I read an account from somebody who said the reason that they now have flags on both the front and back standard of oxers in show jumping is because one day Rodney Jenkins was really taking a slice on a turn in the air, and the horse responded so well that he actually landed inside the back rail of the oxer and continued on his way.
And there was no rule on the books at the time that said he couldn’t do it! So they changed that pretty quickly. Lol.
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I so would, but I am old.
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There’s also a very entertaining video they show at the jumper judge clinic to demonstrate all the wacky things that can happen.
A jump getting knocked down by the horse’s lost shoe flying through the air instead of the horse’s actual foot, etc., etc.
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She was jumped totally out of the tack and used a pulley rein once in order to prevent herself from falling off at speed (which HURTS). I don’t see anything I would describe as “spurring” - or at least not intentional spurring - happening in that video. I see her trying to prevent a fall, and a possible injury, which is a natural human reaction. It’s a far cry from those videos of old school eventers who are scrambling all over a stock still horse, trying to get back in the saddle to avoid elimination (not saying that’s bad, but there the OBVIOUS motivation is to stay on to continue, not to avoid a hard fall).
Things are going to get very tough for the sport indeed if we criticize riders who are less than graceful as they try to avoid a fall!
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You know that, and I know that, but the average Joe doesn’t know that. We can’t talk about “this is what will kill eventing” without taking into consideration what outsiders to the sport will see. And that, my friend, is the point I’m trying to make.
Personally, I think the sport as a whole will get more tough when we start to criticize riders who are trying to do best by their horse.
Calvin has been with this horse for a long ass time, this horse was clearly thoroughly vetted, that the FEI only chose today, two and a half days after, to “warn him” shows more of a subservience to the court of public opinion than a true ruling of a federation.
If FEI really gave a shit about horse welfare, than riders like Marilyn Little would never be allowed to compete due to the heinous ways they get their horse around a course.
You’re absolutely right, Hamel was doing her best – we know that. Calvin, too, was doing his best with a horse that, in his mind at the time, was clearly prepared to keep going.
If we want this sport to live on, we can’t cherry-pick what we care about; as I mentioned before, we have to trust that most riders know their horses.
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Wasn’t that Phillip Dutton at the Pan Am games?
I remember a picture of a horse deciding the easiest path across a trakehner was under the relatively narrow log and through the generous ditch, with the rider scraping under the log as well.
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I still get a shudder down my spine whenever that picture pops up. And I also wish there was a video to see how it actually played out.
Ditto for the picture of the horse over a stadium jump with the saddle so far back that the girth looks like a bucking strap.
Here’s your original criticm of her:
I find it quite fascinating that Hamel is getting nothing but praise for staying on her horse, who she spurred several times in the haunches and groin and yanked quite aggressively on his mouth.
That DOESN’T reflect a knowledge of horse sports and a difference between a rider exercising self-preservation and a rider making a craven decision driven by a desire to win/compete at all cost. It also does not reflect your sentiment that “we have to trust riders to know their horses” - this rider (who I do not know at all) probably knew that she needed one good sharp pull on the reins to avoid getting hoof prints on her back. If we’re going to criticize riders - by name, on the Internet, where things live forever and will come up in every Google search for them - for awkward riding when they’re trying to avoid a fall, then that’s a tough standard for the sport to follow. My own riding certainly does not meet this very high standard - that I’ve never caught my mare in the mouth, jostled around in the saddle, or inadvertently kicked her when trying to avoid a fall (though she’s pretty athletic so she mostly just launches me clean off). If your riding and the riding of the people you know IRL does meet that standard, then more power to you!
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