 |
Re: [RC] [RC] different sports? They are if you decide that they are. Long - Maryanne GabbaniI find this really funny. If you all decide that endurance riding with its emphasis on the team participation of a horse and rider, the rewarding of lifetime achievements of distance and time, the cooperative nature of participation by riders...including the aspect of the ridecamp itself... is the same as FEI endurance racing where the riders are jockeys who usually don't own their horses and may only have ridden them a few times before the race, where participants are staying in hotels rather than near their horses, where the contestants are fighting over large cash purses, where the only thing that matters is your win that day and no one cares where the horse is tomorrow....are the same thing, well, I suppose that you can.It just seems to me that something is what everyone decides it is, and if everyone were to decide that FEI endurance racing and AERC/BHS/AERA/whatever endurance riding are different sports based on the above aspects, well then, they bloody well are. You are all worried about being tarred with the UAE brush when (and it isn't if...it is when) there is a massive crash over abuse, doping or just plain stupid riding/organisation. So get out there and start pointing out the differences and letting other people do so too. I have another difference for you that may be a bit subtle, but is probably very important. AERC officers and board members are elected by the membership and as far as I recall (I'm sure the reknowned Dr. Q can correct me if I'm wrong) do not get paid for their time and headaches. They do this out of the goodness of their hearts, their concern for the welfare of horses and riders, their love for a sport that is still amateur in the purest sense of the word, and possibly out of some weird masochistic tendencies. I'd be willing to bet dollars to donuts that FEI board members are paid and I'd be willing to bet that the salaries are enough to keep my donkeys in carrots for a lifetime. Any takers on that? Since we know where the funds for the FEI are coming, we know who is paying them. There is a pretty big difference there as well. I daresay that AERA and BHS are in similar rowboats. Any group of riding fools can get together on a Saturday morning for a weekly horse race followed by a pancake breakfast seasoned with laughs and boasting. Does that make them involved in the same sport as Thoroughbred racing, Arab racing or Quarterhorse racing? I don't think so. It just makes them a bunch of yahoos who like to race their horses and eat pancakes. When I moved to Egypt I was warned to wear something blue to avert the evil eye. The evil eye is the eye of someone who sees what you have, envies it, and wishes you ill because they don't have it. My initial response to this was "Yeah...right. What a lot of hoo hah." After a while, I realised that it really didn't matter that I believed in the evil eye because everyone around me definitely did. I do not stir without my blue, Paddi makes all my tack in a lovely clear turquoise, and so far so good. Even my business cards now are turquoise. My front doors are guarded by a brass hand of Fatima with a blue ball and there's even a Feng Shui mirror over the front door of my house to keep the ghosts out. Am I superstitious? You could say that I am, but I just believe that when enough people believe in an idea, that idea gains strength. Not long after I moved to Egypt, Eastern Europe decided that they were no longer part of the Communist Bloc. In fact they decided that there was no Communist Bloc. They didn't rise up with pitchforks and rifles for the most part. They just stopped and said "This isn't working. We are not going to play anymore." And basically there was little that the governments could do with entire populations that simply believed that the idea was wrong and they weren't going to believe in it anymore. I was stunned and entranced by the change. Watching the citizens of Berlin dismantle the Wall over Christmas was the most inspiring thing of my life. It was the largest, remarkably peaceful change in governmental philosophy I'd ever seen and it was basically because a group of people simply decided to believe something new. Now you may all say that my examples are irrelevant...if that's the world you want to live in, then you will. But if the world you want to live in does not recognise FEI endurance racing with the glitz, speed, and money as the same sport as endurance riding with the campfires, smoke and burned hot dogs...then they are not the same sport and it's that simple. So maybe you have to go out and convince a bunch of people who don't know the difference, but you have lists of differences in front of you if you choose to use them. What do the people you want to convince know? Nothing. So get to work. The world really is what you make it. Maryanne On Thu, Feb 14, 2008 at 5:05 AM, Sisu West Ranch <ranch@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: "...I keep hearing people talk about FEI Endurance and AERC/AERA/etc as -- Maryanne Stroud Gabbani msgabbani@xxxxxxxxx Egypt Face to Face www.alsorat.com Weblogs: Living In Egypt miloflamingo.blogspot.com Cairo/Giza Daily Photo cairogizadailyphoto.blogspot.com Turn Right At The Sarcophagus haramlik.blogspot.com Photos of Egypt: http://www.flickr.com/photos/livinginegypt/
|