TV coverage is, in my opinion, a really irrelevant aspect
of this; there are many sports that are far too long to show to TV viewers in
their entirety, including triathlons. For the most part, only endurance
riders would be interested in watching the entire event from start to
finish.
It is part of the conversation because the Olympics are
televised and they must decide how to deal with that, but they are not required
to change the format of the sport to fit the TV world. The FEI has a very
difficult task of figuring out how to create a format that every
country will agree to support. As Steph mentioned, we can be part of
that conversation and mold it more to our liking, or be victims and whine about
how it turned out. Ridecamp is providing a great forum for voicing such
thoughts, and hopefully, more of us will share those thoughts with our
organizing body here in the US to help mold their direction.
There are many riders in the US who are not interested
in riding competitively either AERC or FEI style; the FEI rules will never
affect them, so I'm wondering why they're complaining so loudly. It feels
like there's this knee-jerk reaction of "don't touch my candy", and certainly,
"don't change my sport", event though the AERC has been continuously remodeling
itself since its founding days.
We don't have to change because someone has asked us
to. But certainly, as rational humans (versus unpredictable horses), we
can choose to step around a falling leaf in the trail, rather than jumping into
the next county. We can choose to agree or disagree and put forth
suggestions that might move the conversation forward instead of balking at the
muddy creek at our feet just because we don't like the color of
mud.
Mike Sofen
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of beth glover
Sent: Tuesday, April 02, 2002 7:11 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [RC] FEI/DUAL sanction concerns
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of beth glover
Sent: Tuesday, April 02, 2002 7:11 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [RC] FEI/DUAL sanction concerns
Hi Ridecampers; I've been
following this thread with interest. It sounds incredibly political, and hugely
insane for some guy (okay I'm ignorant and not impressed by celebrity) to
come in and re-arrange the whole sport in order to accommodate TV viewers,
friends in the sport, whoever. What are we, in Alice and Wonderland? I am not
that familiar with FEI, (not sure I want to be), and this whole thing sounds
very very odd to me.
