Unfortunately, I was unable to obtain permission from the photographer to publish the photo that I wanted to share with you, so instead I will use the proverbial thousand of these one dimensional little things to describe it.
It was snapped during the recent President World Cup Endurance race in Abu Dhabi, and the person who sent it to me sent it with the subject line ‘spot the horse’. The photo could also have been titled ‘where’s Waldo’ – if Waldo were a horse.
See, the horses are not the most prominent feature in this shot of the endurance race. The cars are. Roughly 100 cars, pick-ups, SUVs and those silly little Japanoid van/pick-ups are crowded so thickly along the white racetrack fencing that keeps them off the track that you can barely see that there are actually horses in the frame. Also obscuring a clear view of the horses is a pink haze caused by a combination of churned up sand and exhaust from what are surely hundreds of vehicles – if we make the reasonable assumption that all the cars chasing the race did not miraculously squeeze into this one photo. If you didn’t notice the horses you would think it was a traffic jam in the desert.
The race appears to be arriving at a vet gate, though I can’t be sure of that. It looks as though the horses at the front (and most distant in the image) are commingling with people on the ground and a number of the aforementioned motorized conveyances. The white racetrack fence looks entirely appropriate, since the terrain is board flat; though the presence of so many particulates in the air must be turning what is clearly a flat race into the cardiovascular equivalent of a Snowy River run.
This was an FEI event. The FEI has rules specifically against vehicles on or near the course when their presence could cause physical and mental stress (beyond the stress already created by being forced to travel at 30 km/h for 120 km, that is). And as one of my colleagues pointed out regarding the absence of a sound track to the video from a couple of weeks ago, if there had been sound we would probably have heard nothing but the cacophony of horns honking.
This is what I think the photo (and video) illustrates: that even the most basic rules of horse welfare are so far from being enforced at middle eastern endurance races that they are a complete farce, an absolute joke, and an insult to the principles that supposedly govern the FEI.
This isn’t new – some of us are just paying more attention than we ever did before. What has almost certainly been the norm ever since cars replaced horses as the primary means of human transportation is now receiving some unwanted attention. Or is it unwanted? Do the people who participate – the riders, trainers, officials (including FEI vets), spectators – care at all that we are swallowing our tongues in dismay? I’m not so sure.
A couple of days ago a fascinating news item made its way onto my Google Alert: Meydan is the latest sponsor to pony up with dough for WEG in Normandy. Yes, that’s right. The company owned by Sheikh Mohammed, the most-implicated man in the world of horse doping (take your pick, Endurance or Thoroughbred racing – he’s well diversified), is now a sponsor of the FEI’s flagship event. And of course Endurance is set to reap the greatest benefit. The 2014 WEG Endurance race will now be known as the Meydan Endurance race with the names Alltech and WEG following obediently behind. In the news story, which was scooped in the Gulf News, the Vice-something or other of Meydan refers to the “love of the horse and equestrian sport” as the inspiration behind the sponsorship. “The event provides Meydan with an excellent means to communicate our role in equine sports and highlights our exciting commercial ventures here in Dubai,” he says. Does this sound like the behaviour of someone who is ashamed of anything?
I know Andrew Finding is doing everything he can. I have great respect for the members of the FEI’s latest solution-by-committee, the Endurance Strategic Planning Group (except for Saeed Al Tayer, who couldn’t be bothered to heave himself aboard a private jet to attend either the FEI GA or the ESPG presentation in February). Unfortunately, the evidence flowing out of the middle east and assaulting our outraged eyes is overwhelmingly against the faintest hope that the ESPG’s approach is going to work. Andrew Finding said that if some countries don’t want to play by the FEI’s rules, they should leave. That’s an excellent idea. Trouble is, at the same time that Andrew (and others) are suggesting that middle eastern-style Endurance racing has no place in the FEI, the FEI is signing sponsorship deals with those very same entities.
The FEI hasn’t issued its own press release yet, so we’ll just have to wait and see what magic the spin doctors will work on what is essentially this: that the FEI has committed whole heartedly to tightening its already cosy relationship with the power brokers of middle eastern Endurance racing, at a time when it is impossible to ignore mounting evidence that Endurance races in that region don’t even attempt to hide their flagrant disregard for horse welfare.
My thousand words are almost all used up, so I’ll just add this final thought. Remember when you were in fifth grade and a kid did something bad, like land a spit bomb onto the teacher’s forehead or put gum on her chair (yes, I admit to having committed one of these crimes)? If the perpetrator didn’t confess, the teacher would punish the entire class. Well guess what. As the world is learning more and more about what goes on in Endurance, the likelihood that all equestrian sports are going to suffer in the court of public opinion increases exponentially. Because you can bet your lucky horse shoe that the bad egg in this classroom isn’t going to ‘fess up.
