08-07-2021, 09:17 AM
I haven't seen the horse-hitting footage, so my comments are perhaps naive.
I believe there is a random draw from a pool of horses for each rider. So I don't think she chose the horse. I base this on a news article about the event.
More importantly, I wonder how this pool of horses was chosen. Obviously these are horses trained to jump over obstacles. And I suspect the training involved a whole lot of hitting. So is this an event only made possible by hitting a bunch of horses, but for the actual event it isn't permitted due to the optics?
Got up for the 4:40 am 1500 m final, BTW, but all they covered was USA vs France in basketball's final. Later I saw an unsatisfactory recap on youtube. Bummer coverage.
I believe there is a random draw from a pool of horses for each rider. So I don't think she chose the horse. I base this on a news article about the event.
More importantly, I wonder how this pool of horses was chosen. Obviously these are horses trained to jump over obstacles. And I suspect the training involved a whole lot of hitting. So is this an event only made possible by hitting a bunch of horses, but for the actual event it isn't permitted due to the optics?
Got up for the 4:40 am 1500 m final, BTW, but all they covered was USA vs France in basketball's final. Later I saw an unsatisfactory recap on youtube. Bummer coverage.
I'm nobody's pony.