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RE: Re: New FEI standards



"And, Maryanne, I see being in the Olympics as being a good thing. Can
you imagine all eyes on Endurance--- don't you think a little more
thought will be given to making a good showing and insuring that no one
could accuse the Committee of putting on an event where there is cruelty
to horses! What a great safeguard it would be--- TV cameras pointed at
the course. Now jumps have always been dicey, so it would not mean that
the challenge would be taken away, just tempered so that a reasonable
number would survive! That would make me happy! Am I being naive or
could the international publicity actually remedy the situation?"


Sorry Bette, but I do think that you are being naive. It's one thing to
broadcast a show jumping contest which takes place in a small arena and
quite another to broadcast an endurance ride that takes place over
lord-knows-how-many square miles. We had helicopters out shooting footage
for our May race. They shot mostly the first loop. All the other coverage
took place at the base or from automobiles that were following one or two
(mostly Maktoum's) horses for part of the time. Despite that I had some
fairly reliable reports of horses without riders being led from cars, horses
getting medication, and (one that had us stumped for a while) horses being
given oxygen. All of this was taking place in areas where there was
insufficient supervision, they were too far away to check numbers, and some
of this was seen by some drivers who got lost going to lookout points. No
one is going to try to film all of an endurance race, it's too expensive.
I'm not saying that all the riders were cheating or being cruel, but even
with the videocameras rolling, HE did not remove his spurs. If you want it
supervised completely it would end up being like one long racetrack. That
would be endurance of one sort, like who could endure the boredom. The only
way is to either have helicopters overhead and numbers on tops of the
riders, like watching ants from a building, or the track has to be 100%
accessible to cars. They race that way in the Emirates, tossing bottles of
water constantly to riders on the gallop....that's also forbidden by FEI
rules, BTW.

"HE does treat his horses worse than bicycles, has no respect for them as
animals, no love--but some people here do
(Sheikh Ahmed Al Nuami is one of the few)."

I met Adnan Al Nuami here in May and quite liked him. He was about the only
UAE rider who bothered to introduce himself to the ride management. Egypt is
still in the 1800's as far as equines are concerned. They are working
animals and many people are amazed that I maintain a 25 yr old mare and even
more amazed that she looks about 10. We have our share of what we call
"motorcycle" horsemen and we have good ones. The Emirates are no different,
just richer.

Maryanne Stroud Gabbani
Cairo, Egypt
gabbani@starnet.com.eg



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