The Value Of Competitive Horse Riding

Essay- competing on horses Horses are great creatures with amazing talent. There are many topics that i 'm going to cover, the history of horses,the competitive pressure that is put on horses, the danger of horse riding and the cost of competitive horse riding. I am a horse rider that is generally concerned about the danger of competing on horses and the price people are having to pay to even start horses riding let alone to compete on them.

History on horses Horses are animals that have been used throughout human history. Around about 20,000 years ago people started to ride horses. As www.equitours.com stated that horses were first traditionally used to plough fields and then started to be used as transport for emporiors. The

www.nzherarld.co.nz repoerts that taxpayers pay over $11 million dollars in ACC claimes. Also taxpayers have had to pay nearly $55 million from 2007 to 2013. Most of these claims have been from competitive horse riding, the disciplines with the most calimes are hobby horse racing, eventing and racing. The amount of injuries and deaths associated with horse riding has increased rapidly. In 2011 there was about 700 falls and accidents to do with horses in New Zealand and in 2013 it had rapidly jumped up 6747 accidents and falls to do with horses. Cross country is a very dangerous discipline amongst this sport, there is a high incidence of rotational falls. A rotational fall is when a horse miscalculates its striding or is going to fast and ends up flipping over the jump, the result of this is normally not good. The most likely outcome for the rider is to break or fracture a few bones, the best outcome for a rider is serious bruising, the worst outcome for the rider is when the horse flips over the jump and ends up landing on top of the rider and crushing them to death. The outcome for the horse is quite similar, in the sense that the best outcome for the horse is slight muscle strain, the most likely outcome is serious muscle strain and cuts with bruising and the worst outcome is that when the horse has a rotational fall it breaks its neck and has to be put down. Rotational falls only happen over cross country fences. Rotational falls normally happen at international level when the jumps get bigger are wider and the time gets tighter and the course gets more technical. As the website www.horsetalk.co.nz points out that in 2008 11 of the 16 deaths on cross country were caused by rotational falls. I personally think that horse riding is becoming too dangerous and if this continues the sport might get banned entirely. I personally love cross country it 's my favorite disciplines