Muy buenos dias! I come to you today from the loving bosom of Central America, where I have spent the last five days working with some lovely horses and their delightful riders in Guatemala and Costa Rica, making sure they have their awesomest dancing shoes on for the freestyles at this year’s Central American Games. Why all the fuss now, more than a year before the Pan Am Games, you ask? Because Toronto 2015 will be the first Pan Ams to have a quota (ie. upper limit) to the number of horses that are eligible to compete.
In the finest Camel=horse-designed-by-a-committee style, the folks who determined the quotas for each discipline came up with numbers that – to my dim mind – make absolutely no sense. The number of dressage horses allowed to go to Toronto is 45. That’s all of two fewer than were in Guadalajara. In Jumping, the quota is exactly the same as the number of horses at the last Pan Ams, and Eventing makes still less sense, with a quota of one horse MORE than there were in 2011.
If we add up all three disciplines, the new quota’s net result is that there will be exactly one less horse allowed in Toronto compared to Guadalajara. If we add up all the money that nations from the Americas have had to spend to get to these new qualifiers with full teams (South American and Central American Games as well as regional championships for Eventing), I can guarantee it far, far exceeds what Toronto will save on one stall’s worth of bedding next year.
I’d be willing to wager that the consequence of these quotas will be lower numbers of horses and nations in Toronto compared to Guadalajara. No one seems to have taken into account the fact that Guadalajara was a fairly easy place to get to from just about anywhere, and that the numbers there were probably exceptionally high because of that one factor.
Now, for those nations that do manage to qualify for the Pan Ams, they have a big carrot dangling in front of them: a million dollars set aside in the TO2015 coffers to pay for the shipping of all the foreign horses to Toronto. Considering that no one paid Canada to haul its horses all the way to places like Rio in past Pan Ams, and considering the fact that the Canadian Equestrian Team is in a perpetual struggle to pay for its own expenses – such as WEG this summer – this million dollar travel fund to bring the competition to us seems just a bit misguided. And the general public isn’t too happy about it either, as is spelled out in this news story from the very town hosting the horses next summer.
Before I head off to find some toucans (they really do look exactly like the Froot Loops box), I’d like to add a bit to my post of last week regarding the sorry state of the Canadian Eventing union. It would seem that my post, as well as a number of social media comments from riders and from EC’s next-to-last CEO, garnered the interest of the on line news site that should be winning Canadian Eventing media of the year award, Eventing Nation. Where I was not at liberty to divulge Graeme’s reason for resigning as team chef and HP chair, EN managed to get both the goods and the permission to share them.
In the style with which we’ve become all too well acquainted, the EC media machine eventually ground out an official statement this week, but not before committing another shining example of grand competence by accidentally sending out the corrected team announcement of July 2 for a second time, instead of the Graeme release, which limped out the door a few hours later. In the meantime I was treated to some chastisement for my post of last week by a member of the Eventing Team selection committee. Accused of ‘slagging’ the selection committee, I was invited to get ‘the other side of the story’ before shooting off at the mouth about incompetence. My reply to that person was to point out that I believed it was reasonable to make the assumption that an official EC announcement represented said other side.
Just one more thing before I get lost in the Costa Rican jungle: a commenter that calls itself ‘skydy’ was wondering why I hadn’t made any comments on the dismissal of Pierre Arnould from the FEI Eventing Committee. skydy also wanted to know what had happened to Horse Sport International and my blog on that site, Low-Down.
Regarding Pierre’s invitation to vacate his seat on the FEI committee and FEI Endurance matters in general: no, I’m not shying away because I’ve suddenly begun fearing for my life if I’m outspoken regarding Middle Eastern endurance shenanigans. It’s far too late for that, don’t you think, skydy? It’s just that I’m Canadian, and the upheaval in Canadian Eventing has been a pretty absorbing topic for me this past week or so. But don’t worry skydy. I’ll turn my jaundiced eye over toward that topic again soon – and don’t forget that Pippa Cuckson will soon have her very own blog here on Horse-Canada.com.
As for Horse Sport International and my other blog, I’m sorry to say the magazine is no more. However, all the posts I’ve written on Low-Down over the past two years have been absorbed into the archives of this blog in chronological order. On the upside, you will now need to go to only one place to find all my rants, Canadian and international. You have my word that I will continue to cover the same range of topics as previously covered by the two blogs. Scout’s honour.
Okay, gotta go. Paradise awaits me.
The view from my room in Costa Rica. The little lemon coloured Fiat Panda in the background is my chariot for this adventure.
