To think horses do not belong in the Olympics

[StunningCunt]

They've got this horse prancing sideways with a toff in a top hat on the top, and they are devoting hours of TV coverage because we might get a gold medal in this nonsense?

Why don't they just have a dog show there and be done with it?

Competitive sheep herding?

Motor racing?

Oh for Gods sake

Just seen this thread and can't be arsed to read it

If you have never done something, have no idea what is involved in it or how difficult it is in terms of skills, strenght and physical ability, perhaps you are not best placed to comment on it.

I watched the 3 members of winning dressage team this morning being interviewed and they all came from different backgrounds but 2 of the three had a modest background & a real passion for riding and pursued against the odds, starting at the bottom & having their genuine talents spotted. They then worked bloody hard to get to the top.

To me that sounds quite similar to most sports.

Worth bearing in mind (I'm sure someone already made the point, sorry if so) that must of the horses are not owned by the rider.

I'm not going to even bother to argue about whether it's physically hard work or not; if you've ridden you'll know the answer to that & if not, how can you make a genuine judgement?

CakeBump - yes, incredible.

I don't know whether you read the article, but one of the horses liked to dive in by himself!

actually i dont think boxing should be played at all. it is a terrible sport. thumping someone!

surely being an Olympic 'athlete' is about YOU getting sweaty and showing YOUR physical skill?

Again - if this is your level of ignorance about a subject, my advice would be, "don't comment".

You have a go...............you owuld be pouring with sweat within 5 minutes and you wouldn't last 20 minutes.

It is nothing like training a dog. That is done by rewarding a dog for doing certain actions. Dressage involves using the muscles of the rider to get the horse to take an action. It is knackering. It requires an enourmous amount of strength, fitness and skill

As someone else said though it is like arguing about English grammar with people who don't speak English

Just can't believe people wold be happy to comment on things they have absolutley no knowledge of. Makes them look so very ignorant.

Thanks Butkin but £4,500? Is that cheap?

I would imagine that the bicycles cost more than that, yes, but you can practise cycling on fairly standard bicycles till you get really good at it and then if you belong to a club, perhaps you can get sponsorship for it?

Is this the case with horses or do you need your own?

I also wonder why the winners and riders (Mary king for example) are all so old and experienced, and have been doing it for many years - if the sport is so widespread why is there not much young blood? Why are we relying on 50 something year olds to compete in the Olympics?

That makes me think perhaps it's to do with their pedigree rather than just talent iyswim. Again no idea if this is correct.

Emile - my DD has just started horse riding - we were a bit about her starting because we are skint most of the time (err, all of the time). So she goes every other week, has forfeitted one of her other after school activities, its £15 for half an hour, but my DD has not stopped yapping on about it the whole time, its the only thing she has done that really gets her excited. Frankly, im not sure how much "how many more days til my next horse riding" every day, i can take! But my point is, at low level, just for fun, its perfectly accessable. We will never be able to buy her a horse or pay for anything other than half an hour a fortnight. However, maybe when she is older if she is realy into it then she will work at a stables "for rides" lots of young kids do this. So that means less lay out for mum and dad! Yes she will never be competing at any level, because we coudlnt afford it, just as we wudlnt be able to afford the training if she wanted to compete at athletics or swimming at any significant level.

Really hate all this inverse snobbery around horses. I know loads of horsey people, they are just normal people, many of them rough as fuck and some gypsies - no elitism there, i promise you.

You can buy a horse for a lot less than £4.5k. You can get them for around £1k (although they all cost pretty much the same to keep)

Riding lessons are no more expensive than music lessons etc

You do not need to own your own horse to start learning (or even competing in) dressage / jumping or eventing.

People always say riding is elitist. It doesnt have to be although I am not going to deny owning horses is expensive.

Emilie I will try to answer your questions.

It tests skill in training the horse and the ability of the rider. You train in all sports, and competition tests how effective that training is, along with various other skills. Its a particularly ancient sport, closely tied to the development and history of the human race. Horses and humans have long worked together, and that is the origin of the equestrian sports we now have.

Riding lessons are relatively cheap. I had them from age 5, and my parents were neither rich or horsy.

Some families in the equestrian world are very rich, but if you think thats not the case in other sports, you are wrong! A lot of it is dependent on family connections - 2 Scottish Olympic runners are the daughters of Olympic athletes - Eilish McColgan and Linsday Sharp. And tbh a very high proportion of British medal winners have been "hothoused", had lots of funding and specialist selection and training, which is why the UK is doing so well compared to a lot of countries.

I think the "toff" image comes more from the way that the urban UK has become divorced from anything properly rural. And what people don't understand, they tend to denigrate.

What riders do who don't come from rich horsy families (and there are many), is do what gold medallists Carl Hester, Charlotte Dujardin, Nick Skelton, Ben Maher and Peter Charles did (thats more than half of them) and go to work with horses and learn their trade. One arguement for the Brits suddenly doing so well in showjumping is that they have all spent years riding cheap, not very good horses, and when by luck, planning and coincidence they had good horses, they were able to capitalise on it.

Nick Skelton and Ben Maher for example went to work for the same showjumping yard as grooms/riders and made their way up through getting good results.

I have to put in a vote in favour of dressage. It's incredibly skilled- and equestrian events are not only one of the very few (the only?) in which men and women compete equally; they are also independent, largely, of the age of the rider- they need to be fit, but they don't go on the scrapheap at 30 so their skills and knowledge and years of experience can carry on for many years.

Equestrian sports at the top level are expensive so there is a financial gradient that makes it harder for people with no money to progress up the levels, so you end up with a higher proportion of wealthy people at the top of the sport. But you DO also have plenty of determined, dedicated people who work up from the bottom and get sponsorship to ride. I don't think Nick Skelton was very privileged, Mary King is the daughter of a vicar IIRC and had to learn to ride by volunteering at a local stables or some such thing.

And I have nothing but admiration for the likes of Anne and Zara and the Danish princess who could have had an easy life of showing off their clothes and opening supermarkets, but they chose to spend their lives pursuing this discipline and hard work and stress out of love for the sport. Good on them.

Quite agree Catgirl.

I haven't ridden in a few years, but I grew up with having ponies - farmer's daughter, not especially privileged. In fact my father once swapped a cow for a horse I had....a horse I ended up being pretty successful with at a regional level. I worked with horses for a few years, I competed on other people's horses for them. It is expensive, keeping a horse. But most of the people I know who ride make huge sacrifices in other areas of their lives in order to support their hobby.

Team GB have come a huge way in so many sports, especially cycling and equestrianism. I remember when the dressage world/European championships/Olympics were dominated by Germany. How great that our riders and horses have made such progress that now they are the most successful team. Surely that is something to be proud of not derided

Thankyou all for answering my dim questions.

Geegee, I do think the fact that athletes are coming from families where a parent was also an athlete is acceptable - it's not about money. And being selected and hothoused is about talent - that's fine with me.

I think a lot of the prejudice about horse-related sports is from people seeing Zara Phillips in the Olympics, tbh.

I can't be arsed with this thread anymore, it just boils down to complete ignorance and total snobbery.

I feel bad for both the OP & Beanie for being so utterly ignorant.

(And I'm a coalminer's daughter, BTW, not a 'toff')

Emilie your question re the age of some of the competitors. It tests strengths and skills in the rider which do not generally denigrate too much with age and which are supplemented by greater skill. Athletics for example really needs young joints and muscles, though plenty of people continue slightly slower into their fifties, its just that most of them give up and I'm sure part of the reason for that is society's perception that sport is only for young people (in actual fact, at the last Olympics, there was a 52 year old Israeli marathon runner who was not disgraced).

Also, equestrian sports recieve little or no funding and there is little "hothousing" of promising young talent; as in for example, cycling, athletics and triathlon. So yes, I guess if you poured masses of money into a national scheme, measured the physical attributes that would make up the perfect rider, picked promising juniors and coached them purely for competition success, it might work. But part of the skill with horses is being able to select a horse with talent yourself and train it, so it might not work anyway. Of course, you could simply buy your national squad riders top horses trained by other riders, but this is notoriously uncertain, as it doesn't always work that one horse will go for another rider.

Well firstly, all the riders aren't old. Some are. Ben Maher, Scott Brash, Zara Phillips, the young lass who scored top in the dressage, are all young!
Secondly, in reply to the Toffs comment, most of the youngsters will have started at the bottom, as apprentices. Worked long and hard, shovelling shit, and scivvying for top names until they got their break!
As for prancing about on horseback, you are talking about a discipline which is centuries old, and based on warfare. All the titting about stems back to when horses were used as weapons in battle, and a rider needed hairpin control.
Keeping a horse cantering on the spot, demands total containment of half a tonne of raw power. Those riders are like swans. Sitting still, whilst using every muscle to keep that power in check! It takes years of training. More skill than most people could even contemplate.
Where does that merit any less respect, or a place in the Olympics than wind surfing? Or titting about on a crash may with a ribbon or a hoop?

Stinky, I hope that's not aimed at my ignorance...I am grateful to those who are taking the time to reply to me, as yes I am ignorant about it but fully prepared to have that ignorance sorted by those who know this stuff.

how am I supposed to become anything other than ignorant if all I have is hearsay and first impressions gleaned from watching telly to go on?

How is anyone? Unless you are saying that those who don't have the required knowledge already shouldn't be educated about these things.

Zara Phillips is in no way extremely wealthy compared to some others in the sport. She could have chosen a life of extreme frivolity or a by into an easy job for a PR firm, as seems the norm for children of the wealthy. She has also brought on two top class horses from youngsters, ie she bought them young and untrained and taught them the skils necessary to compete at the Olympics. She didn't use her position or funds to buy ready-made horses which had succeeded with other riders. So she must be pretty good, because thats hard enough to do with one horse, never mind two.

Geegee, thanks again.

I wonder why there is not much funding for equestrian sports.

Perhaps she is not wealthy...I don't know. She is part of the royal family though - surely that brings with it plenty of privileges and connections, that other children might not have access to - this is something people will assume, even if it isn't true.

Argh!! Emiliefloge but Zara doesn't own High Kingdom!
"She has ridden the 11 year-old, provided by Grand National-winning owner Trevor Hemmings, throughout his career.?

Very few of the riders own the horses they ride, they do it for someone else.

The whole Zara thing pisses me off too. She got onto the team because she is clearly a hugely talented rider. Same as her mother (who rode in the 1976 Olympics) also because she was hugely talented!.

People have such a bee in their bonnet about the royals and those they consider to be 'posh' just ridiculous IMO.

But is it not true that the royal family is given a lot of advantage in many ways when compared to other people?

Obviously the Queen and her immediate family is massively privileged but what about the others? Are you saying it is a completely level playing field?

The majority of the Olympic equestrian team are normal people like you or I! There are many Big names, who are missing from the team. The entire Whittaker family, [equestrian royalty] are missing.
If Zara is in, she is in on her own merit. Yes, her family status probably did give her a few breaks, but just because she had royal riding lessons, doesn't mean she was necessarily any good! I've met plenty of people who have pots of money, who can't ride for peanuts!

EmilieFloge "Perhaps she is not wealthy...I don't know. She is part of the royal family though - surely that brings with it plenty of privileges and connections, that other children might not have access to"

But this is true in almost every sport. I feel so sorry for children who are keen to do a sport, but don't have pushy parents. And sometimes those are the ones that do the best as senior athletes, because they are the most determined.

Sport is full of talented people who must have missed out because they didn't get the opportunities/weren't in the right place at the right time to appeal to the coaches, etc..

I think Zara Phillips is a bit of a red herring. If you want to talk about money in sport, Laura Bechtolsheimer's family have far more money.

and didnt zara philips father win gold in 1972 olympics?