Wrestling has been dropped from the program in the 2020 Olympic Games. While I appreciate the desire to drop a sport and replace it with something modern, I do not agree with this decision. Wrestling is something that requires an athlete's skill and physical conditioning to do well. Admittedly, I didn't watch wrestling, but if something needs to be dropped, it should be a different sport that I don't watch. Let's get rid of the equestrian events.
This isn't due to a hatred of horses, the animals are fine. I can even accept the argument that the events are enjoyable to watch and require great skill in order to have success. You not only need to ride a horse, but have your horse properly trained and able to respond to your commands. Your horse must be in tip-top physical condition if you want to have a medal. Notice how often I said "your horse" in that previous paragraph? The horse is the most important part in an equestrian event. While the human might need to know what they're doing, if they don't have a good horse underneath them they're not going to accomplish very much. If anything, the horses should be getting the medals for the event, because they're doing most of the running and jumping, all of the hard work.
So what's the problem? While many Olympic events require specialized equipment, it is supposed to be a measure of human achievement. Michael Phelps' swimming trunks didn't win him his millions of medals, he did, by swimming really fast. If I was wearing his trunks, I wouldn't challenge for a medal, and I'd probably be incredibly uncomfortable. While well designed equipment can give an athlete a competitive advantage, it can also be purchased by other athletes, and it's easy to regulate equipment so everyone's on a level playing field.
But how do you regulate a horse? Mind you, I probably wouldn't win a medal on Charlotte Dujardin's horse, mostly because I don't know how horses work, but it's much more theoretically possible than any other event. Someone who has a baseline of horse knowledge could probably challenge for gold if they had her animal. A good horse is expensive, requires extensive training, lots of money for upkeep, and is much more an individual than, for example, an Olympic archer's bow. A horse is an athlete in its own right, but the horse isn't listed as the winner for any equestrian event.
Of course, many people reading this don't know who Charlotte Dujardin actually is. She's the gold medalist in dressage at last year's games. If you don't know that, don't feel bad, because not that many people actually do. It's not a sport that's particularly popular, and while it's possibly the only sport in the games that requires a full tux for competition it is curiously absent from most broadcasts. Wrestling, however, could be found on many screens if someone tuned in at the right time. People watch wrestling, it's a sport which involves the people who are the best at grappling with each other. Equestrian events don't really fit in the games, because nobody is willing to get rid of them.
I don't hate horses, I just think that the Olympics should be about the humans. If we need equestrian events, make a horse Olympics.
