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History of Equestrian Olympic Games

History of Equestrian Olympic Games:

As with many sports, competition wasn't international until the invent of the Olympics in the year 1896. Equestrian events did not appear in the Olympics until 1912 in Stockholm,Sweden. It was in 1906 that Count Clarence von Rosen, who was a well traveled and adept horseman and “Master of the Horse” in service to the King of Sweden, here he saw an Olympic equestrian competition as a well rounded way to share and promote horsemanship to a worldwide audience.

In a proper proposal sent to the International Olympic Committee or (IOC) in 1907. Rosen here explained his theories and formally requested that equestrian events be included in the Olympiads. He in fact wanted the equestrian events to begin in the next Olympics that would be taking place in London,England in the 1908 Olympics. Luckily for the sport and Rosen's persistence, The IOC agreed these events would be very welcome indeed to the Olympics. Great news was a happening, Equestrian event were forth coming and announcements sent. To the dismay, enthusiasm was not correctly estimated from the Committees standpoint. The IOC only considered around 25 to 30 horses. The actual amount of entrants ended up being 88 horses from eight different global locations, This was a storm upon the IOC. Such an eager response was not anticipated, There was no place to stable and exercise that many horses.

Another problem would be found in the judging issues, Each nation had separate ideas on how the competition events should be judged. With to much for the IOC to handle, the committee had no choice but to cancel the equestrian competition.

Despite the fact that seemed to be useless for the horses that traveled the long trip, Count von Rosen saw his vision of spectators and competitors alike wanting these equestrian events. The Count immediately went to planning a equestrian competition to be included in the upcoming 1912 Olympics. It was in 1909 that Count von Rosen formed an International Committee to select equestrian events. Prince Carl of Sweden, an important member of the committee, also an avid horseman and host to be of the upcoming games. With Prince Carl's help, Count von Rosen was successful with his committee and finally his equestrian events made there long awaited debut at the 1912 games in Stockholm,Sweden.

International competition in itself was still in baby stages, and the high cost of transport prohibited much of Europe from competition in the 1932 in Los Angeles. World War II again disrupted the games, For years this appeared to dismay Count von Rosen's efforts as failing. However after WWII, Olympic games resumed with much renewed interest. Ever since the 1948 Olympic Games in London, the equestrian events have grown into today with great anticipation, participation and vigor with each Olympiad. Most entry's in the beginning were military cavalry, of course today these have been replaced by highly talented civilian riders of all types. There was also a period of years, that only mean rode. This however changed in the 1952 Olympic games, Marjorie B. Haynes became the first female to ride and compete with the United States Equestrian Team. She represented the US at the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki, Finland. Today we see that men and women ride as teammates, They also compete against each other as equals.

Todays modern equestrian competition consists of three judging points:

1. Dressage

2. Three-Day Eventing

3. Show Jumping

In each of these, medals are given and awarded for both individual and team achievement. Though there have been changes in formats over the years, these are exactly the same disciplines first selected by Count von Rosen in 1912.

If its only to read and study about the history and love of things Equestrian.

It still holds a lot of information and learning potential for your mind to develop on something new.

See the potential and learn about things that are Equestrian today.

About the Author

To learn more about the love of horses and the influence of all things Equestrian

http://www.equestrian.articlesmymoney.com

Why is NBC changing the Olympic Medal Count order?

For all history the medal count order has always been in that the country with the most gold medals, after all the real winner is only the gold medalist.

Now here comes the real mystery, since the 2004 Olympics, NBC has changed this to displaying the order for the overall count instead of the gold order. Why?

Someone said that American media has always ranked total medals but this is wrong, I have newspapers from Barcelona and Atlanta and taped coverage of Atlanta, Sydney and Athens. In Barcelona and Atlanta they have gold medal order, I don't have anything on Sydney but I think they also ranked by gold but since 2004 they changed order to total medals.

Also, back in 1992 they even had the "Unified Team" which was the former Soviet Union being represented as one entity beat the U.S. and NBC presented the medal table by the gold ranking.

This question has been asked a lot. A lot of people have said other countries do it by total medal count. They do not and have never done so. See the BBC link from 2000 below. A lot of people have said the the US media have always done it this way. That's only half true. Some have and some haven't.

Why do most of the US media do it this way? I don't know, but there is no logic to it and no-one else in the world does it this way. Certainly not the IOC. They are the governing body. It's not up to anyone else to determine what medals mean. The system used by the US media means that 15 Bronze medals are worth more than than 10 Gold and 4 Silver which is clearly nonsense. A gold is clearly worth more than a bronze.

You could perhaps award a number of points for each type of medal, but such a system could be weighted in so many different ways that there could never be any agreement. There may be a precedent for this if you look at the New York Times article from 1912 it says that the USA won the Olympics with the most points. However AFAIK this seems to be an invention of the New York Times or some other body not associated with the IOC.

The IOC do not award points per medal and they do not award an overall prize for "winning the Olympics" - this is an invention of the media.

Without any agreement about a gold been worth 3 bronzes or whatever the only sensible way to rank it is the way the IOC and the rest of the world do it. In this scheme a gold is worth an infinite number of silvers and bronzes. I would have thought that this would equate with the US sporting mentality where winning is everything and coming second is nothing. I'm not belittling silver and bronze medals, The thing about winning is everything is an American invention - see the Wikipedia link. This is in contrast to the Olympic ideal where its the taking part that counts (and perhaps traditional British fair play).

The US has historically submitted a large, if not the largest, team to each Olympics and consequently have more chance of winning a larger number of overall medals. Perhaps, aware of this, the US media realise that ranking competing nations using the total medal count is more likely make it look like the US are doing well, or perhaps its just another example of the US doing something different to the rest of the world, because that's what they do. If its the latter, then as stated above it makes no logical sense and I don't know why they persist with it, other than "that's the way they've always done it" - although the New York Times article and other sources suggests otherwise.

100day count down for beijing olympics (lion dance)

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This entry was posted on Sunday, June 28th, 2009 at 10:53 am and is filed under bedding. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.