Dressage - What's the point?

Why not Darts, we're brill at that!

 

I'm not sure who decides what is an Olympic "sport" and what isn't, I've got no problem with Dressage being included.
Am I right in thinking the sail boarding is being dropped after this one,

One thing that does get up my nose is all the fuss about a 100mtr champion.

Compare his event with many of the others and that 10sec run is fairly insignificant.

 

I've a problem with all subjective 'sports' being in the Olympics.
I don't want opinions,I want clearly definitive results.
That said,getting several hundred pounds of dog food to dance is pretty impressive.
My understanding is that dressage originates from cavalrymen training their horses to sidestep in order to avoid,or parry,an attack.

 

Hang your heads in shame ladies! :P

Have a read of the origins of Dressage, have a go yourself and when it doesn't work out for you have a crack at running quickly, jumping high and long or paddling around the local boating lake. I guarantee you you'll be in awe of those on horseback!

Then ask yourself how many people run or swim or row or ride horses on a regular basis in the UK and answer your own questions as you realise which is the common denominator.

Oh, and
Charlotte Dujardin went to a comp.

 

With respect, the point has been missed again. Nobody has said (at least I haven't) that it doesn't take great skill and lots of discipline and training etc. I know the riders have to be incredibly skilled, and physically fit.

I once had the pure good luck of turning up at a village when on holiday in Spain one time, not knowing in advance that a local festival was on. I saw their riders doing their stuff (and they were infinitely more impressive than anything I saw on telly recently). I fully appreciate its impressive, and that most of us couldn't do it.

The point is, does that make it an olympic sport? I cant see how it does. For one thing, how do you measure it? If person X runs faster than person Y, then simple, person X won. They will go down in history as having won, and historians who doubt it can check records to see if they really won or not. The audience can see who won, or if it was close then at least they'll have a good idea of who won. If someone rides a dancing horse, who decides which horse and rider did the best dance? How do we know that the rider is fitter, stronger and tougher than his rivals? Maybe his horse is better than the others?

 

A group of expert mark it. Same as Diving, Gymnastics, Boxing ...

 

I wonder if the reason that Dressage is included in the Olympics is that it is part of sport "3-day-eventing"? - so that discipline requires competing in a horse race (cross country), getting horses to jump over things (show jumping) and getting horses to do a John Cleese funny-walk (dressage). Then they have separate events for each discipline as well as the combination event - thus you get the Dressage Event.

I have no idea what makes a sport worthy for inclusion in the Olympics (there are guidlines about it being an internationally popular sport, and having a governing body etc, but there are loads of such things, so whats-in and whats-not must be subjective at the end of the day).

Cyclists were complaining that because GB had become "rather good" lots of the cycling disciplines had been dropped from the Olympics and replaced by others ... as a medal-reduction-strategy that didn't work, did it?!!

Maybe there is also a need to balance the disciplines so that it is economic to build venues and sell tickets. So if you want to build a massive swimming pool then you need to hold more than one race in it. Maybe dressage is justified because it is a way to use one of the venues more fully than it otherwise would be.

But I agree with your point about what makes it more, or less, of a sport than running fast, chucking heavy things, leaping over things, or a long way, propelling a ball around a fixed area, or knocking nine-bells out of another competitor.

Blinking difficult to control a horse "effortlessly" in my experience, particularly on the second half of a pub-ride!

Here's some pictures I took at the Olypmics which I think captures the British spirit of the really competitive nature of the games:



and if you didn't go you should have done. Absolutely amazing; us Brits put on an outstanding show. "Sios nobnol" was 100% fandabidozi.

 

I think it's just all about one thing,To get us to spend money and have a good time

 

That's two things

 

I must be bad at counting as well