This Sport as a Sport

["guest@endurance.net" <guest@endurance.net>]

K S SWIGART   katswig@earthlink.net


Tom Ivers said:

> And, if you're actually serious about this sport as a sport, and not 
> as an opportunity for a picnic in the woods, 

When I read a statement like this it reminds me of William Devane's 
last words in the Mel Gibson movie Payback, which, since it is an R 
rated movie, I will not repeat them here.  If you are really curious 
you can rent the movie.

However, if I look up the word "sport" in the dictionary, I find:

Main Entry: sport 
Pronunciation: 'spOrt, 'sport 
Function: verb 
Etymology: Middle English, to divert, disport, short for disporten 
Date: 15th century 
intransitive senses 
1 a : to amuse oneself :

Function: noun
1 a : a source of diversion: RECREATION b : sexual play c (1) : 
physical activity engaged in for pleasure (2) : a particular activity 
(as an athletic game) so engaged in

To do something for sport is to engage in the activity purely for its 
entertainment value.  If you do it for the money, or for the glory, or 
to win, or to prove yourself better than others and not just for the 
fun of it, it ceases to be sport.  (So yes, "professional sports" is an 
oxymoron).  Tom, apparently, is choosing to use the word differently 
and defines sport as a contest where the some winner takes all.

I mention this not just to quibble about the semantics of words 
(although, if we are going to communicate using words, we do have to 
agree what they mean for the communication to be effective), but rather 
as an attempt to explain why some people are expressing displeasure 
about the trends they are observing in endurance riding.  They are 
concerned, because it is moving in the direction of ceasing to be sport 
(as has happened to many Olympic events).  If you provide huge 
incentives for people to win, you will attract people who are 
interested in it for what they can win...and in my experience, such 
people are no fun to play with.

As an example, there is sword play that is engaged in for sport, and 
there is sword fighting which is deadly serious.  So if I go fencing 
with intention of engaging in sword play and the person I am fencing 
with is engaged in a sword fight, it is unlikely that I am going to 
have much fun.  It is true, that if you really want to determine who is 
the best swordsman the activity must be engaged in as a fight and not 
merely play.  But since outcome of sword play is entertaining physical 
exercise and the outcome of a sword fight is injury or death, I am 
going to do my best to keep people who are serious about sword fighting 
from coming to play with me because those people will take all the fun 
out of it...and if they DO come, I'M gonna leave.

Or, as a more modern example of how you can change the game by changing 
the stakes, one need only look at poker.  Poker for no money is a dumb 
game (and one which I don't play).  Poker for nickels and dimes is the 
game I play with my friends.  But when it comes to high stakes poker, I 
will trot off to Vegas and only play with strangers (or people I don't 
care to count among my friends).  

By changing the stakes, you change the psychological profile of all the 
participants--and poker being nothing more than a mind game (don't let 
anybody fool you into thinking it is a card game, the cards are just a 
prop that help you to mess with your opponents' minds), by altering the 
mindset of the people in the game, you completely change the game.  So, 
while I am perfectly willing to engage in low stakes poker with my 
friends in a weekly Sunday night poker game, I will not play high 
stakes poker with them.  The way to win at high stakes poker is to 
really screw around with your opponents' minds (and the higher stakes 
the easier this is)--but screwing around with your friends' minds is 
not the way to keep them as friends.

It is possible to play cut throat poker and really screw around with 
people's minds in a friendly, low stakes game (but it is "unsporting" 
and such people don't get invited back).  It is impossible not to in a 
high stakes game.

So, with endurance riding, if people think they can raise the stakes 
without taking the sport out of it, I think they are wrong.  And if 
they think they can make rules to try to force people behave like 
sportsmen in something that isn't a sport, well...I think they are 
wrong about that too.  "Hopelessly naïve" is the actual expression that 
comes to mind.  More than three decades and eight published books has 
not, by Tom's own admission, offered him success in teaching most of 
the people in horse racing.  And there is little to indicate to me that 
the FEI will be any more successful with endurance than it has been 
with the other FEI disciplines.

The origins of sport come from long ago when people engaged in war 
games for sport as well as a way of practicing for the real thing.  The 
idea being that you can hone your physical skills without actually 
beating yourself up and injuring yourself in the process.  So when one 
engages in fencing for sport, one does not go all out, but rather 
"pulls one's punches."  "Professional sports" today have more the look 
of ancient sports of the past like bear baiting and gladiator contests.  
Events where it was sport for the spectators while at the same time 
being deadly serious for the participants.

Being one of the people who truly is interested in this sport 
(endurance riding) as (nothing more than) a sport (i.e. a source of 
diversion), one of my overriding motivations IS an opportunity for a 
picnic in the woods (not the only one).  I can still remember going to 
my first ride (the LD at the Eastern High Sierra Classic) and people 
asking me why I had come so far for my first ride (~ 10 hrs drive).  My 
response was, "It was an excuse to have a weekend in the Sierras."  
More than 4,000 miles of competition later, I still go to rides for the 
same reason. And if going to the ride won't be a nice picnic (i.e. a 
pleasant diversion), I won't go.

I don't have a clue what my horse's VO2 Max is (in fact, I don't even 
know how it is measured), nor do I care, except, perhaps as nothing 
more than academic inquisitiveness, intellectual entertainment, if you 
will.  I don't need to know that in order to take my horse out for a 
picnic in the woods.  I know how to tell when my horses are overtired, 
and I have spent enough time working with my horses not to push them to 
that point.  

If you say that people who do know their horses' VO2 Max would beat me 
in a "contest" of seeing who can get their horses to the finish line 
first in a 50-100 mile sprint, you may be right.  If you say that such 
people will reap all the glory while I will have to make due with some 
"mediocre performance," well...that's fine with me; I am uninterested 
in glory.  If you say that such people are better sportsmen than I, you 
are wrong.

There is a great deal of truth to the sportsman's mantra, "It doesn't 
matter if you win or lose, it's how you play the game."  Please note 
that that doesn't mean that one has to lose in order to be a good 
sportsman.  The key words here are "it doesn't matter."  When winning 
or losing actually matters, it ain't sport.  

Playing well in endurance includes preparing you and your horse 
properly for the demands you make, not asking more of your horse and 
yourself than what you and it are capable, treating the other 
participants with respect, and not cheating.  You can do these things 
and cross the finish line first, last, or not at all.  And if you 
enjoyed yourself in the process, you succeeded at your sport.

There are some people out there (at least one :)) that engage in 
endurance riding for the sport of it (and from my experience at most of 
the endurance rides that I have gone to, if I had to guess, there are 
actually lots and lots, but I won't presume to speak for everybody 
else).  And so far, they can do so at all levels.  But if you create an 
event that appeals to people who aren't there for the sport of it, they 
will come.  And if there gets to be too many of them, they take all the 
fun out of it (if for no other reason than that you have to come up 
with dumb rules, like "Spurs are prohibited" to try to govern them).

kat
Orange County, Calif.

p.s. As an aside note: if you notice that other people are having fun 
with sex and tender an offer of money in hopes of getting some for 
yourself, it is not reasonable to be surprised if the people who take 
you up on your offer are whores.