Literary Review

This is my literary review - I'm not sure that it's entirely correct or accurate, but here goes!

I originally checked out "The Performance Mare" as a pleasure reading book, but after reading into the jumping section, I realized its valure to my project. The section titled 'The Show Mare,' is the only portion of this book that I will be using. This section gives an overview of the number of mares [percentages] that participate in high level equestrian sports. It then breaks down into jumping, dressage, and combined training to give more specific data. In the jumping section, it goes on to describe two of the most famous mares of the 2oth century, and then gives a description of the ideal jumping mare, later countering this by saying that both top mares were built completely 'wrong.' In other parts of the section it tells the reader that the eye of the judge passes over mares, to land more favorably on stallions and geldings. Knowing this, and the statistic that less than 20% of top show-jumping mounts are mares, one can begin to realize a giganitic pitfall of today's show-jumping community - possibly even of today's horse industry in general. Mares are viewed as the weaker, and thus less valued sex.

One of the most important points in the section was the 20% - a number that has almost quadrupled since the 1980's, giving rise to the [correct] assumption that mares are coming into popularity. This book also makes another important point in saying that mares, in general, do not jump as well as geldings and stallions, due primarily to muscleclature. The courses at today's most prestigeous events were made for the modern showjumper, said to be an incredibly powerful, [well-muscled] animal.

A point not acknowledged by this book is the effect of this sexual discrimintation on the show-jumping community. I believe that this low percentage of mares might actually show a bigger problem in the equestrian world. If more mare owners feel less compelled to compete due to judge bias, the whole world looses a potential equine superstar, the next Halla, or Touch of Class. And the show-jumping community looses a talented team, as well as fans, potential sponsors, etc. Could this sexual bias be a factor in the lack of unity of that seems to plague the U.S. show-jumping community?

I'd like to find out!