Why aren't we proud?!

Billy the kid

Billy the kid

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Not the 'Horsey society' but non horsey people!?

I made a quizz for work this week, and i put ONE horsey question in it.....'What sport is Scott Brash famous in?'

AND THEY TOOK IT OUT!!!!! :mad:

As a country we seem to be so fast to slate sportsmen/ women when they fail; yet we have some of the best Equines and riders in the world right now and so many people dont acknowledge them for the great sportsmen they are!

I even heard a radio1 DJ saying dressage isnt a sport, its 'Just prancing around to music!' .... hello... we are the best in the world at this right now!!!

Does anyone else's blood boil with this sort of reaction from non horsey people to our sport or is it just me?


(sorry if my spelling is poor) :(
 
Maybe they thought it would be seen as too difficult a question?

I actually hadn't heard of him until this week, but I pretty much live under a rock where normal social/celebrity knowledge is concerned...
 
Arizahn said:
Maybe they thought it would be seen as too difficult a question?

I actually hadn't heard of him until this week, but I pretty much live under a rock where normal social/celebrity knowledge is concerned...
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This is possible; but most the questions where hard tbh, and this is the only one they took out. If it was a football question it would have stayed.

I just think its a real shame its not acknowledged more in this country.
 
Billy the kid said:
This is possible; but most the questions where hard tbh, and this is the only one they took out. If it was a football question it would have stayed.

I just think its a real shame its not acknowledged more in this country.
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Next time make all of the questions horse related, but not in a direct way. If you can somehow also connect them to football, so much the better! Mwa-ha-ha! :D
 
I agree horses as a sport doesn't seem as important as anything else..

I remember a few years ago seeing on someone's fb that a horse rider had won a sports award over a football player. The comments where along the lines of 'why should they win awards anyone can ride a horse and jump over a hedge'... I would have loved to have seen them try what they preached!

It's a shame it's a sport we are actually very good at...
 
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risky business said:
I agree horses as a sport doesn't seem as important as anything else..

I remember a few years ago seeing on someone's fb that a horse rider had won a sports award over a football player. The comments where along the lines of 'why should they win awards anyone can ride a horse and jump over a hedge'... I would have loved to have seen them try what they preached!

It's a shame it's a sport we are actually very good at...
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Question One:

Why were people annoyed that Rider X was placed above Football Player Y, in the following award, given in Year Z?
 
Only the mainstream sports get much coverage. I know girl who has been World Champion in two different cycling sports, but is barely mentioned. Yet cycling is BIG and has lots of competitors and supporters.
 
This attitude drives me up the wall!! Particularly when people start trying to tell you that the the riders shouldn't be recognised because it's the horse doingall the work!
 
To be fair, dressage does look quite impenetrable and elitist from the outside and horse-riding is one of the less accessible sports. The Olympics has done a lot to improve the image with Charlotte Dujardin being so down to earth and likeable and legacies from the Olympics have gone into making horseriding available to more people but it's still out of the reach of many. Let's face it, whilst lots of people do what they can with regular jobs to be able to afford a horse, competing is very expensive and not possible for many.
 
I'll be honest... I dont know that the 'general public' would have a clue who Scott Brash is, he hasnt had anywhere near the kind of media coverage as say Charlotte D-J - so i can understand why it was taken out... had you put a question about AP McCoy or Frankle or Black Caviar etc you may have found your question stayed in... horse racing is far more in the public eye and awareness...
 
I even heard a radio1 DJ saying dressage isnt a sport, its 'Just prancing around to music!' .... hello... we are the best in the world at this right now!!!

It really annoys me when people say that. Until you acturally do something you can't say it's easy. People always say that 'you just sit on the horse and it takes you round'. Not at all!
 
IAmCrazyForHorses said:
I even heard a radio1 DJ saying dressage isnt a sport, its 'Just prancing around to music!' .... hello... we are the best in the world at this right now!!!

It really annoys me when people say that. Until you acturally do something you can't say it's easy. People always say that 'you just sit on the horse and it takes you round'. Not at all!
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But most people have never even seen a horse and have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA of what it takes to ride one, or even handle one. You really can't blame them for not paying attention to what is, let's face it, a very small segment of the sporting world.
 
TT55 said:
This attitude drives me up the wall!! Particularly when people start trying to tell you that the the riders shouldn't be recognised because it's the horse doingall the work!
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But horse sports are just not that well understood by the non horsey population, and you can't really blame them. The showjumping world does appear to have a wealth of balding, later aged males who do not physically look in the shape to be an athlete. I'm not slating them - they are evidently world class riders and as a horsey person I understand how much talent you need to have to be successful at that level - but to someone who has absolutely no understanding of the sport, I would look at Nick S and question his fitness.
 
I'm a horse person and I've never heard of Scott Brash. The only sporting people whose names I know are the very famous, usually the ones who make it onto the tv news and the ones that people talk about loads. It's got nothing to do with not being proud, I just don't follow sport that's all. I'm not surprised the question got taken out if its a general knowledge quiz.
 
FireFly29 said:
Its not just equestrian sport, we are good at quite a few sports that never get mentioned!
I do feel that women's sport especially seems to get overlooked.
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Very true. I doubt many people could name 5 British rowers or sailors, both sports we've had enormous success in. There's lots of GB rowers based around where I lived and they wander round anonymously.
 
FireFly29 said:
Its not just equestrian sport, we are good at quite a few sports that never get mentioned!
I do feel that women's sport especially seems to get overlooked.
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Concur! And the only main-stream equestrian sport is racing, the only one that is overwhelmingly male.

On a related note it pisses me off when people undermine Zara Philips' achievements on the grounds she has the best horses money can buy. Leaving aside from the average price tag for an Olympic eventer, she still has to go out there and hurl herself over those huge, solid fences. Most people don't have the confidence, no matter how much their horse cost.
 
Unfortunately anything to do with horses is seen by a lot of the general public as elitist and there's the assumption that if you own a horse you must be rich. Actually the truth is for most people keeping horses means they are poor. In the 60s and 70s (yes I'm that old) SJ was really popular tv, everyone (horsey or not) watched it and knew the names of the top riders (Ted Edgar, David Broome, marion Mold, Pat Smythe etc) now for someone who is "horsey" not to know the name of Scott Brash just shows how things have changed. I watched quite a lot of Olympia on the red button with my non horsey OH and he really enjoyed the SJ but dressage (my discipline) is, to quote him, like watching paint dry.
 
In the 70s showjumping was seen a lot on TV & watched by a great many non horsey people, it was mainstream so equetrian sport is not unpopular because people don't know horses or about them in real life . Its all down to enthusiastic TV coverage with riders & horses being well known to the public, particularly the characters. Like the Olympia Puissance winner 2013. The likes of Harvey Smith, David Broome etc , horses like Ryans Son & Stroller were well known by the general public & enjoyed.
 
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