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RE: [RC] Paris International Endurance meeting, from Tony Benedetti - Bob MorrisTony: Appreciated your timely report and the fact it held all pertinent details of the meeting. I did become quite upset with your comments regarding the description of competition as "In the US, we have always held to the wild west approach where you can ride any distance if you have a horse to enter. Maybe it is time for us to look very hard at rider qualifications." Yes, it is different here than in Europe. We do have the freedom of choice and the most lowly of people in the US can compete if they have a horse. That is the essence of AERC competition. I like to believe that we are not an elitist congregation of horse people. I like to believe that the least of us can compete with the best of us and, if capable, beat the beat of us. Seignorie has no place in the United States. Why is it that if you come from the US you must apologize for the way we make decisions. I believe that the AERC methodology is the fairest and best system in the world. Bar none. While we do not have the financial backing of the emirates or the crassness of some of the Europeans, we have very fair, well controlled competition unequalled in the world. Our records are non-pareil, as bad as they are, compared to any other country. Let's have an up-beat opinion of our selves from here on in. Bob Bob Morris Morris Endurance Enterprises Boise, ID -----Original Message----- From: ridecamp-owner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ridecamp-owner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Steph Teeter Sent: Monday, February 17, 2003 5:21 PM To: ridecamp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [RC] Paris International Endurance meeting, from Tony Benedetti From: Tony Benedetti [mailto:tony@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] The FEI Endurance Form was held in Paris on February 7 & 8 and there was a pre meeting of the "Toulouse Group" on the 6th. The purpose of this forum was to discuss issues regarding horse welfare and FEI competition. Nancy Elliot, Art Priesz, and Tony Benedetti were appointed by the USA Equestrian, our National Federation, as official representatives of the United States. The ideas presented by the United States were based on many meetings and conference calls by USAE, USET, and AERC International. At the Toulouse Group meeting, many countries including the US, Australia, New Zealand, Belgium, Spain, France, Portugal, Germany, UK among others came together and discussed many issues. Agreed upon points were presented at the FEI Forum. Eight countries, including the United States, were able to make half hour presentations about endurance. While all of the presentations contained horse welfare points, the US theme was loud and clear - "the horse comes first". Following the presentations by the countries, Dane Frazier made a presentation and then there was open discussion. The next day there was a Technical Delegates course and the following day a veterinary seminar. A report on all of the meetings including the US presentation will be sent to Endurance News and/or Ridecamp. I was happy to see much discussion regarding horse welfare on Ridecamp recently. There was much discussion about horse welfare in Paris and we had the opportunity to hear how other countries deal with the problem. Many use a system of graduation requiring the completion of one distance successfully without any pulls in a certain number of rides before stepping up to a greater distance. In the US, we have always held to the wild west approach where you can ride any distance if you have a horse to enter. Maybe it is time for us to look very hard at rider qualifications. I know Tevis is implementing minimal rider qualifications for the first time to protect the horse and the rider from him/herself. I suspect that stricter qualifications will follow in future years at Tevis. I would need to study it further and maybe it would need to be changed for use in the US, but maybe we need to consider implementing the Australian system where riders are required to drop to shorter distance rides when they have pulls at longer distance rides. Maybe a suspension should be implemented when riders are negligent. I know there are all kinds of legal issues involved but maybe it is time we address these issues. After flying to Europe to discuss horse welfare, I was very disappointed at what I saw the very next weekend at a ride in the US. As I was riding along, a rider cantered past me stopped and when I caught the rider, the rider blurted out that his horse was very tired because this was only the horses second 50. The rider was in third place at the time. I asked the rider why he was riding so fast if his horse was tired. The rider said that the horse wanted to go on. I told the rider that he had reins for a reason. The rider pushed on only to be pulled at the next vet check when the horse did not recover in 30 minutes. This rider had no understanding of endurance riding nor empathy for his horse. We need to deal with these issues, we need to be more critical of poor horsemanship, and there needs to be penalties so that people will educate themselves. It has been said many times that it is sad that people will ride their horse too hard for a stupid t-shirt. What is sadder, is that as a sport we have allowed this to occur. Tony Benedetti =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- =-=-=-=-= Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net. 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