To think that equestrian events are ridiculous

[BFrazzled]

In the Olympics.

Poor horses. This ridiculous dancing in dressage, who the hell thought of that?

There was one winner of the dressage contest who supposedly also won in the nineties. No mention of the horse, guess it was with a different one then

@CarlottaValdez

Interesting thread.

I don’t know much about dressage but I’m (tangentially) professionally involved with horse racing. To say you can’t coerce a horse to do something is really stupid. Have you ever watched a jockey race? They have whips.

Look up AP McCoy on Deano's Beeno, or Mad Moose in some of his races, and come back to me about how even a jockey's (air cushioned) whip can make a horse go if it doesn't want to.

OP, do you know the name of Mark Todd's horse, Charisma, on which he won two Olympic Golds? Paddock name, Podge. Very short little horse, and full of guts and character. What you perhaps don't understand, not liking the sport, and wishing to shape the narrative to suit your opinion, is that most (not all) riders, and certainly afficiandos of the sport, very, very much, give full credit to the participation of the horse, and revere and idolise the horses - far more than the riders, actually!

Also, I'm guessing that you've never ridden a horse that doesn't want to jump? It won't jump. It will run out, it will refuse, it will neatly dispose of its rider. I can tell you this, because I have, including one that refused to so much as entertain the notion of going over a trotting pole laid flat on the ground. These horses are athletes, as are their riders. They are a team. It's very obvious to a rider, particularly an advanced one (I'm not), when they are not working as a team - there's a million and one little signs of resistance and conflict, and they will not do as well as if they were in sync'.

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow

The Olympics is just boring.

Why is sport the be all and end all?

Why not have a sewing Olympics or a car mechanics one. Why does sport rule everything?

I would agree with you if you were talking about football, darts, snooker, cricket and rugby - these sports (particularly football) are on every week, every weekend, with some competition or other every summer so we don't even get a break from the blessed game. However, the Olympics is only on every 4 years - for me it's good that I get to see some of the sports which never seem to be covered in the UK, such as diving, rowing, canoeing, gymnastics, even weightlifting! Even if you don't have any interest in the sport itself, surely you can admire the dedication and effort these people have put into training for their sport. My particular favourites are the men who do gymnastics on the rings - their strength and stamina is fantastic to see.

I think people being encouraged to knock each other out and risk injury is far odder to be honest . Or chasing a bag of wind for the amusement of Russian oligarchs ( far better off than any equestrian I know ) . Or throwing yourself off a perfectly good plank of wood , to screw your self into all sorts of odd shapes and get wet , just to get out again. Not all of us are rich , or old . I work a shitload of overtime as a police officer to fund my daughters dressage habit and have done since she was 11

@BFrazzled

Look, you live in a bubble.

Like 99,999.... percent of people watching the olympics would never have an idea cross their minds that they could "ask for a pony".

So of course they are jealous in the sense that for them it is completely unattainable, but I think this is a valid reason why this sport isn't popular with many.

Don't be silly. At primary school, very ordinary village state school, almost every little girl in my classes wanted a pony. They used to love coming up to the field to ride mine. And they all wanted their own most little girls do. To pretend otherwise is daft.

As for it not being popular, maybe you should look at the viewing figures to see how wrong you are.

Inverted snobbery is always ugly.

@Ifailed

some of the sneering on here does little to challenge the idea that horsey people are rich & entitled.

Very few people in the UK are in the fortunate position to afford a horse and have any experience of dressage, it is presented by the media (and the sport itself in some cases) as dancing horses, so it's hardly surprising that many will see it as such.

Most of us will have ridden a bike, swum, run, jumped etc. so have some idea of how difficult these would be at an Olympian level; horse riding , and probably sailing, are not something that the majority will have experienced.

Fwiw I earn 9k a year as a single parent and I make sure my dc are able to ride as it's what they want to do. It takes a significant effort on my part but It's not impossible. People all have their own priorities.

Sorry, but this doesn't make any sense to me. If you are vegan how can you put up with exploitation of the horses essentially "for fun"? This is completely opposed to philosophy of any vegan person I know.

The current Director of Policy at the RSPCA is a vegan who owns a horse and rides, so it's obviously not completely antithetical for all.

I can't get over OP being surprised that someone who rode in the 1990' has a different horse in the 2020s...

OP you do realise that a horse of top level competition age in the nineties (so about ten years at the earliest) would have passed away peacefully of old age about ten years ago?

@CoalCraft

I can't get over OP being surprised that someone who rode in the 1990' has a different horse in the 2020s...

OP you do realise that a horse of top level competition age in the nineties (so about ten years at the earliest) would have passed away peacefully of old age about ten years ago?

Let’s hope so. Do they really let those horses die of old age?

I find it really sad that just because people don’t enjoy a sport they refuse to acknowledge the hard work and effort that goes into it. Take archery for example. I don’t watch it, don’t enjoy it, but can appreciate that to do it at Olympic level requires hard work, dedication, time, sacrifice etc

@j712adrian

.........walking horses sideways and having them jump in the air for the amusement of rich people all over the world and Austrians.

What's possibly odd about that?

Very precise. Also Germans…

Horses due to their size and structure, they are quite a poor design really, tend to develop conditions in later life that mean they tend to be pts when it affects their quality of life rather than actually dying of old age. The horse used in the 90's will indeed be dead, but the one used in London will be living a charmed life somewhere

Do they really let those horses die of old age?

Yes. Mark Todd’s Charisma lived to 30. John Whittaker’s Milton lived out his retirement on their farm, as did Ginny Lang’s Priceless.

Just because you don't understand something doesn't make it ridiculous.

Exactly.
It's such a narrow minded attitude

@rantymcrantface66

With all due respect there is no way you live on 9k a year with children period, leave alone fund horse riding. You must have housing taken care off (by either state or someone else), and probably other things.

I said I EARN 9k a year. Yes I get a tax credit top up like many working parents. My rent isn't taken care of, I get a contribution. I pay around 2/3. I pay full council tax minus the single person discount that any sole adult gets regardless of income. I don't qualify for anything else like FSM or uniform grants as I earn just over the cut off. My dc ride approx 3 times a week. I'm not making it up:

Do they really let those horses die of old age?

I can't speak for every country but in the UK, Olympic dressage horses retire from top level competition once they start to find the movements too hard work. At that point, there are a number of routes they may go: if they're a mare or stallion, they will be retired to stud and have foals. If they're a gelding, they may stop competing but carry on being ridden by up-and-coming riders who want to learn how certain movements should feel on a horse trained to the highest level, so they can in turn train their own horses. Sometimes they just become pleasure horses who are hacked around the lanes occasionally. Or they may retire completely to the field and never be ridden again.

It does most horses good to be kept in some form of light work for as long as they're physically and mentally capable of it, just as we do better for carrying on some form of exercise into later life. But if and when the time comes, when they're too stiff or old or ill or suffer an injury they can't recover from and are no longer enjoying life, they will be put to sleep.

A couple of examples: Charlotte Dujardin's triple gold medalling winning horse Valegro (known as Blueberry at home) retired a couple of years ago. He still lives on her yard, is hacked out to keep him supple and fit, and is occasionally used for lessons for other riders. There was a lovely clip on social media just before Covid hit of a young girl who visited the yard and got to ride him as a special treat, and he behaved impeccably with her.

Example 2: the horse Carl Hester rode at the 2004 Olympics, Escapado, went to a younger rider in the Netherlands a year or so later to teach him the ropes. When he was retired from competition altogether in 2011, he came home to Carl and lived a happy retirement. He was eventually PTS peacefully in 2019, aged 26.

[quote BFrazzled]@1990s
Well what happens is that when you look at any sport entirely as an outsider and are not preconditioned to accept it as something normal you are prone to see strange things about it with a fresh eye so to say.

For me the strange thing is that the horse is at least as active a participant as the rider but one: is clearly exploited and two: the rider somehow gets all the credit. Of course it would also be ridiculous to credit the horse with things it didn’t want to do to begin with…[/quote]
This is the thing, you keep on saying that the horse is exploited and uncredited, but both these remarks are patently untrue and can be evidenced as such.

I don’t ride (in fact I’m the child who constantly badgered for a pony and never got one) although I love horses and thoroughly enjoy watching competitors like Charlotte Dujardin and Carl Hester and their horses. I can see how much the horses are adored and how happy and well cared for they are. I can, despite being a non-rider, see that the horses movements are linked to their natural paces and also the astounding level of skill involved from the riders, as well as the trusting relationship between them both.

There have been practices, and there have been riders, who deserved criticism and everyone should be open to discussing welfare issues and concerns. But to continually bang on about happy, healthy, much loved horses being “exploited” is not going to receive a positive response as such concerns in this case are groundless.

@Ekofisk

Do they really let those horses die of old age?

Yes. Mark Todd’s Charisma lived to 30. John Whittaker’s Milton lived out his retirement on their farm, as did Ginny Lang’s Priceless.

So many posters of Milton on my wall when I was little

I'm sure Milton was still competing til a ripe old age too. It takes a lot of care to have a horse able to still perform to the best of their ability in their more senior years and they'd have to still enjoy it. A horse will soon let you know if they have had enough.

There are some awful practices and training techniques in equine sport, including dressage but these are abhorred by riders such as Charlotte, Carl and other top riders and it's good to see these are the riders and horses that are winning the medals.

@BFrazzled

In the Olympics.

Poor horses. This ridiculous dancing in dressage, who the hell thought of that?

There was one winner of the dressage contest who supposedly also won in the nineties. No mention of the horse, guess it was with a different one then

The horse's name was Kibah TikTok, and he was a legend. He died of old age a few years ago.

It seems a tad unfair that the competitors aren't using the same 'equipment', ie the horse.
Bruce Springsteen has spent gazillions supplying his showjumping daughter with the best horses money can buy.

@Teflondreams

It’s interesting that ‘horsey people’ are largely deriding people who don’t agree that horses should be travelled to the other side of the world to compete in high heat, high stress environments. When actually it is more the none horsey people, who acting on the instinct, that are probably more correct and show a better understanding for what is good and not good for horses!

‘Horsey people’ can easily become numb to the ill treatment of ‘much beloved’ equines. Spurs, whips, tight nosebands, wicked bits can all be very abusive and harmful and yet no one bats an eyelid. Keeping horses with no or very limited / solo turnout is terribly cruel for animals which are designed to live in herds and walk miles a day. Just recently an international competitor stated she never let her horses have any turnout .
High stress environments with lots of change and travel causing high amounts of stomach ulcers in horses that compete.

It’s sad many elements of the ‘horsey community’ are too busy getting on their ‘high horse’ and dismissing others for having lack of knowledge than acknowledging the real issues in equine sports.

I am very concerned about all this, as are many people I know. We turn our horses put all day every day in a 10 acre field with their mates, keep our horses barefoot, ride bitless when possible, feed low sugar feeds, never over stress them and do as much as possible to give them as natural a life as we can. It breaks my heart to see how some horses are kept but it's not exclusive to the equine community and animal abuse is everywhere.

The horse's name was Kibah TikTok, and he was a legend. He died of old age a few years ago.

He died in 2014 at the ripe old age of 36.

@Loubiemoo

Horses love music and will often ‘dance’ in time to it of their own free will. Dressage combines this and their natural movements together.

This is just quite simply not true.