Sending the horses to the Olympics

[BIWI]

Back in 2008 there was a very funny thread about how people imagined the horses got transported to China. But AS doesn't show anything up.

There was a link to it in one thread I found ( where MN were asking for nominations to classics but the link didn't work.

I have a feeling this must mean it was in chat, but thought I'd check with @MNHQ (and the rest of Mumsnet!)

Does anyone happen to have a stashed copy of it? Is it in the vaults at MNHQ?!

Pentathletes are assigned a random horse half an hour before they compete! It’s such a lottery that the horse may or may not even be Chinese.

Race horses are back and forth to Dubai, Ireland Hong Kong all the time. USA for the Breeders Cup, Australia for the Melbourne Cup. Frequent Flyer membership.
The horses don't mind at all. If they were grumpy about it they wouldn't be in peak condition to race.

I don't understand the comment about Iceland.

@markmichelle

Race horses are back and forth to Dubai, Ireland Hong Kong all the time. USA for the Breeders Cup, Australia for the Melbourne Cup. Frequent Flyer membership. The horses don't mind at all. If they were grumpy about it they wouldn't be in peak condition to race. I don't understand the comment about Iceland.

If you take a horse outside of Iceland it can’t return. But they don’t race and don’t compete in mainstream competition. They only take horses out to compete at the same time as selling them.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=9U0wZi-XRAA

This YouTube video shows you how they are transported.

@AtillatheHun

Pentathletes are assigned a random horse half an hour before they compete! It’s such a lottery that the horse may or may not even be Chinese.

You're gonna need to explain the significance of the horse being Chinese, unless I'm missing something totally obvious or a joke

I have a friend out in Tokyo at the the moment with the Equestrian team, they are flown from Stansted as the runway is longer and they don't react well to a steep ascent.

They fly on Airhorse1 😊

@Megan2018
Thank you, was getting confused by the idea of racing Icelandic horses. Duh!
Maybe I should work or read MN, then concentrate better.

I would imagine Icelandic horses do race with their unique gait, against other Icelandic horses.

@tiredvommachine

They fly on Airhorse1 😊

Pentathletes are assigned a random horse half an hour before they compete! It’s such a lottery that the horse may or may not even be Chinese.

You're gonna need to explain the significance of the horse being Chinese, unless I'm missing something totally obvious or a joke

I think she ment the horses are from European stock. As most competition horses are "Warmbloods "

Just to mix things up a bit! 😉

You're gonna need to explain the significance of the horse being Chinese, unless I'm missing something totally obvious or a joke

I think it was in response to the post on the that people thought they were given a random Chinese horse at the Beijing olympics.

And for the modern pentathalon the horses are sourced there, they don't take their own.

I remember the commentators at London saying how the English horses were much higher quality and that they thought some of the Chinese ones looked like mules!

I should probably say horses sourced for London/Beijing from Britain/China, because a lot will have been imported at some point.

(Do you import a horse? It sounds weird but I can't think of a better word!)

Yes you do import horses and I imagine some
of the pentathlon horses will also be imported from other countries rather than all sourced from China. I don't actually know anything about pentathlon. What riding discipline do they do?

Jumping.

The GB ones are usually pretty good, because a lot of them come from the Pony Club tetrathalon. Some of the other countries are... not so good.

Sounds like something I'd like to watch 😆

I have been on a passenger flight that also had horses on it, going to America. You could hear them making horsey noises during the flight. It was strange!

@Ylvamoon

Pentathletes are assigned a random horse half an hour before they compete! It’s such a lottery that the horse may or may not even be Chinese.

You're gonna need to explain the significance of the horse being Chinese, unless I'm missing something totally obvious or a joke

I think she ment the horses are from European stock. As most competition horses are "Warmbloods "

Just to mix things up a bit! 😉

But the way it's written implies that being Chinese is a good thing and what you would expect. Subsequent posts imply that a Chinese horse would be inferior

It's designed to show that you'd be a good cavalry soldier, so you have to run, swim, shoot, fence and ride an unknown horse.

(Sorry for going off-topic, but it's keeping the thread bumped!)

Why would you give up your horse for an international rider to ride? Surely they could ride it too hard and cause problems?

No sign of MNHQ back, do you think they got wedged behind the cabinet? Or maybe found other juicy threads down there and got distracted?

They need to send DawnMumsnet down to the archives, she found me an old thread at 11 o'clock on a Sunday night (and it had had a name change and moved topic). I was very impressed!

Chinese horses were relevant to the original question re: the Beijing Olympics. The Tokyo pentathlon horses may be plain old Japanese or possibly imported from somewhere else. That’s how very random allocations are. No aspersions being cast over any nationality of horse. But god it must be hard finding enough high quality horses available for loan at the same time (where DO they get them from???)

Oh I’m so going to watch the pentathlon now.

I too know about horse transportation thanks to Jilly Cooper 🤣

@PolkadotsAndMoonbeams the US team horses really are flown on a plane called Air Horse One, @tiredvommachine wasn't joking