That's a pretty bad analogy considering it's possible to control a car quite adequately without having any knowledge at all about how it was made, or indeed how it actually works.

Jon

Thinking you understand how the horse feels because you can ride one is the equivalent of being able to adequately drive a car and therefore thinking you know how it was made.

Well yes, but that's irrelevant. Whether you think you know what's going on under the bonnet doesn't actually matter, simply that you understand how the controls work and can use them adequately and safely.

Now, obviously, a living creature is not the same as a car. Horses aren't machines and are therefore to some degree unpredictable and being able to understand the feedback it's giving you is a skill any good rider should cultivate, much like a good driver should be able to read the traffic around them - most experienced drivers will (for example) be able to tell you someone in front of them is going to change lanes before they actually do.

However, the idea you can't be a decent rider unless you're some kind of horse whisperer is bunk, and snobbery to boot.

Speaking as someone who rode in various disciplines including breaking, drag-hunting and dressage for 15 years in an earlier life, I can quite categorically state that you wouldn't get anywhere near the Olympics if your idea of adequately guiding an animal as stubborn and wilful as a horse was:

I don't know why people are so idiotic about bits, yes they are quite often metal (rarely antiquated), but also rubber and in some cases leather, they sit in a part of the mouth where the horse has no teeth and the skin there is quite tough, pressure on the bit is carried out by squeezing the rein without moving your hand and if the horse had that much of a problem with it, they are quite capable of taking it between their teeth and yanking the reins out of the riders hands with no problem at all.

Dressage is about a partnership between animal and rider, it's a show of the capabilities of both and quite a graceful demonstration of the trust and companionship built up during the training and execution for both participants. In the wild, horses do all of the things they are asked to do in dressage (watch 4 or more horses playing in a field in spring after they've been turned out after winter if you don't believe me) and no rider worth their salt would do anything that would hurt or traumatise an animal that costs them several thousand pounds a year to buy and keep. Gaining the trust of an animal like a horse is a hard-won prize and they are unforgiving if you get it wrong.

Really? You don't see how this could be a problem for people?

Mark

Ahh, I was wondering about this.

Mark

Gaining the trust of a young horse is actually piss easy and can be done in a matter of hours. Your experience of "unforgiving" horses is a result of "ignorant" trainers and riders.

Ignorant of the body language of a horse, bits cause distress and agitation, and they are unnecessary. But I guess it's only idiots who can see that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypAeLCKkgGM&feature=plcp

http://www.bitlessbridle.com/SpartacusJonesBlog.pdf

What a [LIFTED] idiot, eh? Misguided fool, doesn't he know they're made from leather too?

You spend the first two paragraphs explaining my point back to me, because you missed it the first time.
The last paragraph is just nonsense, you say you want to understand a horse, that's the aim of horsemanship, but then you say that understanding a horse is snobbery, whatever, get your message consistent please, or do you think horse whispering is magic?.

No, I don't think it's 'magic'. I think its people giving a name to something to make it sound complicated and unusual, when in reality it isn't. But I see we're not going to get to any common consensus here and we're way,way off topic, so I'm going to give it a rest.

Jon

That's a poor analogy, partly because it doesn't work, but mostly because you didn't need it to make your point. So what you did there was cling stubbornly to a losing argument over a pointless side issue until Jon got bored and stopped.

I wish I knew how to use English like you.

He made his point. You got that. Jon got that. I got that. Others likely got that too.
What you just did was obnoxiously belittle someone for not having the same point of view as you.
Bad analogy or not, it got the point across.

Mark

It's the media that do that, not Monty himself. It works. If you'd see it for yourself, you'd realise just how fundamentally wrong our approach to "training" horses is. Why train a dumb animal, when you can talk to an intelligent one? And of course not all dressage is bad, but I don't trust that community to weed out the people only interested in a gold medal. What price to a horse, for such an arbitrary and subjective goal of "gracefulness".

Back on topic, Mo Farah has just won a second gold medal in the 5000 metres. He should get a gong of some sort but as a naturalized Britain I suspect he'll lose out. It's between him and Wiggins for the SPotY though.

Why not Ms Ennis? I'd argue being excellent in six disciplines is just as pertinent to SPotY as being excellent in one.

In fact, why not the whole of Team GB?