Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

At 10:33 AM 7/20/2004, Ed & Wendy Hauser wrote:
> There will still be an oversupply of horses holding the price down.

With all due respect, that's the problem - we shouldn't care how many 
horses there are in the world, when we're talking endurance, we should only 
be considering how many endurance horses there are in the world.  We should 
not be looking at the admitted oversupply of horses of all kinds as the 
pool from which we choose our equine athletes, we should be looking at a 
smaller pool of horses bred to have the properties of top notch endurance 
horses.

I believe there is an *undersupply* of endurance horses.  If people were 
able to choose from a large group of horses well suited for the sport 
wouldn't we be seeing fewer veterinary problems?  Wouldn't we be seeing a 
significant overall *bettering* of times, and vet check conditions, and 
more competition for that top ten position?  I don't think we are seeing 
those things, and to me that indicates that the horses chosen for the sport 
are not 100% suited for it.

Yeah, I could be wrong, but I think there's something to this point of view.

I think we really don't have much of a choice in true endurance horses to 
choose from yet.  I think that as long as so many believe any old horse 
will do for endurance, then the quality of endurance competition will 
reflect that any old horses are participating.

I personally think we haven't even begun to see what endurance riding could 
be like when all the horses involved were bred for the sport.  At that 
point, the price of endurance horses would go up, because if you wanted to 
be even a little competitive, you'd have to have the best.


________________________________
   Lif Strand      fasterhorses.com
           Quemado NM USA