Dinner at Five Guys took longer than I expected
As much as I love democracy, I absolutely hate the last few days before an election. We are five days away from mid-term elections here in the US and that means that our televisions, mailboxes, and radio stations have been taken over by absurd political hate mongering. According to political ads here in central Virginia, voters can choose between the vampire form of a reincarnate Saddam Hussein or the werewolf who likes to arm mentally unstable senior citizens and then eat them for dinner. When I think about what could happen if both parties halted attack ads and donated the money to charity instead, it makes my head spin. Talk about wishful thinking…
The FEI presidential election is on November 5th at the FEI general assmbly in Chinese Taipei. Nancy Jaffer has written an article for EquiSearch in which she interviews David O’Connor about his decision to endorse Henk Rottinghuis and run as Henk’s second VP. The article points out that this is the first time a standing FEI president has been challenged for reelection, and that the FEI presidency has been held by royalty for over 50 years–sounds like time for a change. Two big catalysts for opposition to Princess Haya are the NSAID’s voting, approval, then retraction mess and the McLain Ward and Sapphire disaster. When Nancy asked David if the US would be hurt if Henk loses because David supported the opposition, David responded by saying “it’s hard to speculate.” I take that to mean: get ready for mandatory Arabic dressage letters.
Elsewhere on the inter-web, Horsetalk has published a more general overview of the FEI election. In that article, the other challenger to Princess Haya, Sven Holmberg of Sweden says that he considered David for his position of 1st VP, but said that both of his VP candidates “must be without even the smallest possible conflict of interest at any time.” Obviously, there is a lot of political maneuvering going on behind closed doors. But, if HoImberg is elected, he says that David will represent North America on Holmberg’s Executive Board.
My knowledge of the FEI is mostly limited to my personal experience. I could write about FEI stewards blatantly refusing to answer simple questions about rules or the FEI press office not returning emails about procedural questions, but instead I’ll just make the point that I support anything to change the culture of arrogance that seems to drive every decision made by the FEI in the past 12 months. As I understand it, each one of the 133 FEI member nations has one vote in the presidential election so the entire election will probably come down to how a group of tiny countries with about 140 horses total between them decide to vote. That’s all I can write about politics for at least 24 hours.
—-
Let’s look at some other news and notes from around Eventing Nation:
As we mentioned in the Wednesday night live blog, Oliver Townend will be the keynote speaker at the USEA convention in Arizona this December. Oliver is an unquestionably brilliant rider, but he has shocked me in the past with his horsemanship decisions, such as running Carousel Quest at three four-stars in less than 5 months, and I think there were many better choices. That said, there’s nothing that female US eventers seem to get excited about more than talented, handsome, and self entitled European riders. As is tradition on EN, we link to a certain absurd video every time we mention Oliver Townend.
Speaking of the live blog, it was brilliant fun and thanks to everyone who joined us. Lainey unexpedtedly sent me a message that she was viewing the live blog and so we brought her in as a spontaneous guest. Lainey handled questions from readers with poise and it was nice to have her join us on what must have been a very disappointing day for her. She mentioend that FEI rules against steroids had prevented a traditional injection of Al, which meant that the vets had to use the slower acting and ultimately too slow acting IRAP. Also, so far I have only received one angry email from a high ranking, fun-killing, eventing executive for revealing too much information in the live blog, which we will just say is below average.
The Kentucky Horse Park is offering free gelding surgery on December 4th
In news filed under the category of “people going straight to hell,” a sick horse in England was stolen just days before it was due to be put down
David Epstein wrote an excellent article on concussions for Sports Illustrated that points out that even minor head trauma can have serious long term consequences. I have fallen off a horse so many times and hit my head that…what was I saying?
At the time of posting this, Eventing Nation has 1,999 Facebook fans. Someone please go to our fanpage and suggest that your friends like EN so we can break the 2,000 mark. The link is in the sidebar. Yes, I am that neurotic if you didn’t already know.
I have no idea how to introduce this video, but for some reason it reminds me a lot of my prom night:
