We live in an era of eventing where the welfare of horses in increasingly being sacrificed for the pride and financial gain of their riders and national federations. The number of stories that I hear that lead me to believe horsemanship has been entirely abandoned by many of today’s top riders is astounding. I have always thought of Irish eventers as great horsemen, which is why today’s story really surprises me.
Ireland’s Geoff Curran and The Jump Jet have been placed on the Irish WEG squad despite having just completed Burghley last weekend. Geoff and The Jump Jet were on the Irish reserve list and were moved up after team member Mike Ryan withdrew Ballylynch Adventure and first reserve Jayne Doherty withdrew The Only One, both due to injury. Those withdraws left Geoff as the only remaining member of the Irish reserves. I liked watching Geoff compete in his military uniform at Rolex this year, and I have heard good things about his personality, and I have a ton of respect for Irish eventing, but this is a ridiculous and blatant disregard for horse welfare. The cross-country at the World Equestrian Games is 27 days after Burghley and no one can convince me that the best thing for The Jump Jet to run at the two largest four-stars in the World in under a month.
It’s unfortunate that Ireland has run out of listed reserve riders, but just because Ireland has bought six spots on an airplane headed for Kentucky doesn’t mean they have to put six horses on that plane. I understand how much is at stake for Geoff and Ireland, and I can sympathize with the idea that you need to take advantage of a good four-star horse when you have such a horse, but where are we supposed to draw the line? What about running four-stars three weeks apart, or two?
The shift in our sport to the short format has led to less and less rest time for horses and a willingness to compete at more three-days closer together. I for one do not want to wait until a horse breaks down after competing two four-stars close together to start getting serious about not running horses off their legs. The simple fact is that no one knows for sure yet what is a good amount of rest time between short format four-stars. But, a policy that says “pushing the envelope hasn’t ended in disaster yet so let’s push it a bit farther” will only end with disaster.
The Horse and Hound makes the point that Ireland’s Mark Kyle competed at the Olympics and then Burghley in 2004 which were 17 days apart, but just because something has been tried before doesn’t make it acceptable. The word around the upper echelons of eventing is that our sport absolutely needs the WEGs to be safe and incident free and I can’t help but worry that decisions like this put our entire sport at risk. Go eventing.
