I'm still perplexed by the pushback thoughtful people are giving to the idea that horses are athletes. Since they're thoughtful people I may be wrong in my own conclusions, but I will continue to try and be persuasive anyway. Is the problem the rational thought angle? Human athletes are thinking beings while horses are harried around a track by a person with a whip? If true, that would indeed be damning. But as anyone who has watched a horse race knows, it's hard to get much out of a horse when it doesn't want to follow your instructions. It may not say to itself 'the cost benefit of going through that gap is too great' or 'I don't feel my body will hold up at this pace' but, crucially, neither do human athletes during competition. It's mostly a matter of instinct. In fact, I would argue that many human athletes use their own instincts less than horses and their rational faculties less than non-athletes while in competition, in that people understand that various consequences will follow if they screw up or disobey orders. Thus they do nothing but what their coaches tell them. Very few quarterbacks are Peyton Manning. Instead they memorize the plays and are informed by the offensive coordinator which one to use in a given situation, and they rarely deviate from that. In terms of motivation, the difference between Pat and Geno screaming bloody murder and a jockey using the stick is one of degree, not kind. I don't like either of them and don't think they're good tools most of the time. To be clear, I'm not one of those who think horses are equivalent to people in all ways. I get annoyed, for instance, when horses are described as 'courageous.' Horses can be forebearing, that is, they can hold up well under painful or difficult circumstances. But in able to have courage you need to be able to form a concrete idea of future risk and set it aside. Horses can't do that as far as I know. But that is not relevant to whether they compete as sentient beings in an athletic arena. A horse race is not the puppy bowl, in which participants mill around and nip at each other. They know what they're doing and they work at it. Zenyatta running the Breeder's Cup was one of the most electrifying athletic performances of the year. Secretariat and Seabiscuit make lists of greatest athletes all the time. Just because something is counterintuitive to some people doesn't make it false. It certainly hasn't been counterintuitive to the AP sportswriters over the years. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

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robm

"Zenyatta running the Breeder's Cup was one of the most electrifying athletic performances of the year."

Indeed it was. Not only that, her win inspired many in this community because they understood that it prefigures a more balanced future in human athletics: where intergender competition is unexceptional.

All well made points, though. If they have in the past recognized male horses, I say why not Zenyatta too?

Monday, January 4, 2010 at 11:39am EST