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[RC] Endurance riding/racing growing pains - Steph Teeter

Truman is right, Ridecamp has been a bit morose these past days. Here's a post from Denny Emerson who is a fairly new participant in Endurance (I belive Denny was a previous 3-Day Eventing Olympian? please correct me if I'm wrong).
 
I asked Denny if he would share his observations with Ridecamp after we exchanged a few private posts on the state of Endurance around the world. I find his perspective as a top performer in a different International Equestrian sport enlightening.
 
Steph
-----Original Message-----
From: Denny Emerson [mailto:e3horse@xxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Thursday, February 27, 2003 6:03 AM
To: steph@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: FEI,etc.

Hi Steph,
 Sure, use any of this as you see fit.
 There`s an interesting parallel going on currently at the FEI level between endurance and eventing. In eventing, the big European warmblood horse breeding nations, Germany, Holland,Belgium, etc.are pushing to turn eventing into a sport that no longer will have speed and endurance as the heart of the test at the top levels. Already the roads and tracks have been eliminated for next time  at the Olympics.I would say that the English speaking nations, USA, Canada, England, Ireland, N..Z., and Australia mostly favor the "old" endurance format, but the FEI seems to be controlled not by these countries.
 If the "Arabian" countries get control, through the influence of oil money,of the endurance component of the FEI, then we can see that real, quite literal cross country endurance, as we Americans think of it, with our enormous cowboy, Indian, pioneer, and US cavalry heritage, will be replaced by flat track desert racing.
 We can either do what people like Jerry Fruth advocate, and simply say to hell with the FEI, or we can try to ally ourselves with like-thinking countries, and fight for a more balanced international sport.
 So it will be interesting to see what these two quite "honorable" sports will look like, internationally, some years down the road. Will "old fashioned" horses, horses which are sound,  tough, and possessed of enormous stamina and endurance, still have a place in modern sport, or will they have been driven into irrelevancy by changing fashion?
 Denny Emerson