FEI Selection and Equus Viewpoint

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

K S SWIGART   katswig@earthlink.net

Steve Shaw said:

> I happen to be out-of-town and away from my materials. Does anyone have
> Equus and want to reprint the article/Editorial about FEI selection
> criteria for eventing to ridecamp or to Steph Teeter?

I can't copy the article (and doing so is of dubious legality :))
but I can give you the gist of it.

Denny Emerson (long time, world class eventing competitor, 
as in 20+ years) wrote a view point piece stating, in essence,
that this year's Olympic 3-day event team did not include the
US's best event horses because many of them becane injured 
during the selection process (and you can see some evidence of
this problem if you look at the way that the Eventing team
played musical horses running up to actually competing in the
Olympics--both before and after having travelled to Sydney).  

Because...get this...years ago they switched from a subjective
selection process to an "objective" points based system, where
the horses/riders have to compete and prove themselves by
competing directly against other prospective candidates.  He was
lamenting the old days when the selctors could choose what they
considered to be the best team "taking all things into account."

> I seem to recall that a number of the people running for election as
> zone reps for AERC International mentioned in their candidate statements
> that they were for working on a new selection process. Hopefully NOT a
> head to head competition for WECs. This would cost everybody too
> much....huh?

Personally, I think that the system used to select the team for 
competing in world class events depends on what the goal is.

If you want to field the best team, then setting up an "objective"
system that includes "head to head" competition and earning
"points" for how the competitors fare is nothing short of 
moronic.

However, if you want to set up a "game" with established rules
in advance, that all the participants play by; thereby making
it so that the "team" that gets selected are those horses/riders
who most successfully "played" the selection "game" over the 
specified time period that the game was played and therefore
"won" the "right" to play in the finals, then you MUST set up 
the rules in advance and apply them strictly.

I have absolutely no preference how the FEI selection process
is done, since I have no interest in competing in endurance at
the FEI level (if I did, I would prefer a game with set rules),
and I couldn't care less how well or poorly the US team fares in
international competition (if I did, I would prefer a subjective
selection process with competent people appointed to select
what they considered to be the best team).

However, FEI level endurance people in the US might want to talk
seriously with the eventing people about what they have done and
where they have gone in selecting their selection process,
because it would appear that the current one they use (according
to Denny Emerson) leads to the national landscape being littered
with the injured bodies of the best eventing horses.  He asserts
that the unpleasantness of the politics that inevitably follow
from a subjective process is nowhere near as unpleasant as the
best horses being sidelined before the important competition has
even begun.

kat
Orange County, Calif.