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RE: [RC] Ride vs Race - David LeBlanc

Keith said:


Perhaps we could  change the word "race" to "compete". To finish is to 

win? Absolutely true. If you want it to be is it also a race?
You bet  your bippy it is, that is why they have a clock and placings at 
the end.

I don't think changing a word fixes the problem. By any realistic definition
of the word 'race', that's what we do. A rose by any other name would smell
as sweet. Assigning placing to one distance or another doesn't change
things, either. The only ride I've ever attended in the NW that didn't
assign placings to the LD ride ended in a race and someone almost messed up
the RM's car (which wasn't moving), and maybe their horse, but fortunately
it was a miss. Maybe it made it more of a race as they didn't care when they
pulsed down, since they weren't getting timed or placings. When I'm
finishing a LD ride (up front or not), I'm off my horse 1/8th mile out.

Some days, I set out to ride, others I might decide to race, and a fair bit
of the time, I make the call about 5 miles out when I see what my horse
would like to do that day. I enjoy both. Some days I'm up front, or running
hard to be 1st HW, and most days I just complete.

The problem, which can't be legislated away, is that people get competitive
and don't think straight. For the most part, we do what we can to take care
of the horses, and I think it works pretty well overall. Finish line crashes
tend to be pretty rare, and the only thing I can think of that helps with
that is for AERC to give better guidance on how to create a safe finish. The
experienced RM's seem to have this nailed down - funnel you into a trail,
have the finish a reasonable distance from camp, etc. A less experienced RM
might not know all this.

The only other thing I can think of that would help fix finish line crashes
is to make all the distances pulse down to finish, but that would change the
character of the sport. I wouldn't mind, but I think there's almost no
chance of it happening.

Some rider education might be in order, too - we do allow ties, and maybe
more people need to be told that. Amazingly enough, I found myself in 1st
place a couple of weeks ago, and we negotiated what to do on the last loop -
neither of us had ever won, so we agreed to tie. We'd been riding as a team
all day anyway. A slight rule change that could help is to say that if 2
horses cross the line within some number of seconds of each other, it's a
tie. Then if it's you and someone else, there's no sense trying to nose the
other out.

Just some thoughts.




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