These are the first Cavalia videos that I have come across, so I wanted to share them… to be in Denver in September, and San Francisco later in year. As I’ve said before, this extravaganza is the most amazing thing I have ever seen done with horses. I seriously want to see it again– and HorseGal can’t wait!
in Charlotte NC last May
Florida in March
It certainly appears that many folks have been sneaking in their cameras into performances! (When I went in 2005 in Boston it was not allowed.)
promo for American tour, apparently Atlanta in Oct. 2009.
Elko, NV (July 8, 2010)— Over 1,400 federally-protected wild mustangs are to be rounded up beginning July 9, in the Tuscarora area of Elko County Nevada during the hottest month of the year. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is violating their own set-protocol for waiting six weeks after the main foaling season, defined as March 1-June 30, so that young foals can escape the inherent danger of a high-heat summer roundup. BLM will dispatch privately contracted choppers to run the Tuscarora mustangs over miles of rugged terrain in a taxpayer-funded roundup expected to last three weeks and result in the removal of some 1,100 mustangs. Only last month, Oregon BLM wild horse managers postponed a planned roundup that would have started the day after foaling season—opting to begin instead in mid-August for the horses’ safety.
“If allowed to go forward this will be a massacre,” states Anne-Marie Pinter who rode the Pony Express Race through the area on her Spanish Mustang and saw small foals. “It is covered with razor-sharp, volcanic rock that will rip up the feet of these poor foals. Before riding the area, our event veterinarian strongly recommended that we put thick rubber boots over the metal shoes of our horses—the rocks are that treacherous. We experienced triple digit temperatures and had to constantly work at keeping our horses hydrated. I can’t even imagine the toll on terrified small foals and even the adult animals at the hottest time of the year. This amounts to horrible animal cruelty and no one will know what is going on because BLM has closed the area, even the roads.”
Last winter, during the deadliest BLM roundup in memory in the Calico Mountains of Northwestern Nevada, at least two 6-9 month foals suffered a horrible death. Their hooves literally separated from their leg bones after running over similar terrain. Yet, BLM justified the dead-of-winter roundup by stating in their Environment Assessment: “Fall and winter time-frames are much less stressful to foals than summer gathers. Not only are young foals in summer months more prone to dehydration and complications from heat stress, the handling, sorting and transport is a stress to the young animals and increases the chance for them to be rejected by their mothers. By gathering wild horses during the winter, stress associated with summer gathers can be avoided.”
“Let’s be honest. What is driving these roundups has very little to do with concern for vulnerable foals and everything to do with contractor availability and using up taxpayer money before the end of fiscal year 2010,” states Cloud Foundation Director, Ginger Kathrens, who has spent over 16 years documenting the lives of wild horse families. “With only two helicopter contractors available to round up the horses, scheduling becomes tricky, especially when the goal is the removal of 6,000 wild horses before the end of September. So, the rush to rid the land of mustangs trumps humane treatment. Disgusting.”
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Read more at theCloudFoundation.org
Gunstock Nordic Association is proud to have Nina Gavrylyuk, 3-time Olympic gold medalist, as coach for cross-country ski training here in Gilford. We are pleased to be host-housing a young man from the Keene area who is in (very intense) training with Nina this summer.
You may ask, as I did, how does one train in the heat of summer for cross-country skiing? Well, I get tired just hearing about it! Ski-walking (hiking with XC poles), roller-skiing (roller-blading on our local roads with XC poles), strength training, and cart-pulling are just a few exercises in their training regimen. These kids are truly dedicated; our current guest trainee came very close to qualifying for Junior Olympics just last year, and he is only 16!
Nina Gavrylyuk, 3-time gold medalist and 10-time World Champion as a member of the Russian National Team. See Overview of Gunstock Nordic Association, with Bio of Nina and Igor on GNA website.
Per GunstockNordic.com website–
GNA’s internationally-renowned coaches train athletes of all levels and abilities, helping skiers to reach their goals. Cross-country ski coach, Nina Gavrylyuk, is originally from St. Petersburg, Russia, where she graduated from the P.F. Lesgaft State Institute of Physical Culture as a qualified ski coach. As a member of the Russian National Team, her accomplishments include 3 Olympic gold medals, 5 individual World Cup victories, and 10 World Championships. Her 15 years on the World Cup Circuit bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to GNA. Her husband, Igor Badamshin, also a past Olympian and many time Russian National Champion, assists her. He brings energy and enthusiasm with his past coaching experience to us from the Russian National team.
Nina Gavrylyuk (right) pulled ahead early in Jan. 2010 U.S. Master’s XC race in Craftsbury Vermont, to finish first in Women’s division and 16th overall against men and women. [Reported by New England Nordic Ski Association]
To educate equestrians on the basic facts of wearing a helmet, to promote the helmet wearing campaign on a National level by involving leading equestrians in various disciplines that hopefully encourage an increased use of helmets, and, to provide important links/resources to enable riders to become further educated on the importance of wearing a helmet.
By spreading the word of the campaign to all of your equestrian contacts. If you have a website, blog, Facebook Page, use Twitter or other Social Media avenues, please share the link to this website with your followers. You do NOT have to be associated with SUCCEED® in order to support the campaign. We welcome any rider to participate in promotion of the campaign that has the capability to raise awareness on a National level.
Reactions to my own and Hubby’s “Vibram FiveFingers” shoes (if you can call them that!) are either genuine interest (from the outdoorsy types) or “Oh, your shoes are CUTE” from the dubious types, usually said with a raised eyebrow or half-smile. Then comes either “I’ve seen those… where did you get them?” or “Uh, what ARE they?”
I tell folks these Vibram FiveFingers- Flow are my chimpanzee feet! To me, they are like barefoot boots for unshod or de-shod horses… an extra protection which helps enable natural foot function. I would definitely NOT RECOMMEND wearing them around horses though– for obvious reasons!
In short, FiveFingers are barefoot shoes for outdoor uses, and they also happen to make a statement. They stimulate and exercise your toes, feet and legs in a natural way, while you walk or trek or jog or run or climb or do water sports, while protecting your feet from damage by sharp and rough objects. They are a way to simulate being barefooted when you either don’t have– or while you are trying to develop– tough soles. They DO all have TOES!
Hubby and I have both acquired Vibram FiveFingers “FLOW” style, made of warmth-retaining neoprene and providing traction on slippery rocks in cold water; this style is suitable to cooler climates like NH, where they will keep our feet warmer for more months of the year. We have not yet tried them in the winter. These “Flows” can be pretty hot to wear in the south as strictly walking shoes, with the sun beating on them for long spells of time. However, many other styles and colors are available, most having mesh fabric uppers which make them breathable and cooler.
FiveFingers soles are made of molded Vibram material, tough, flexible, yet just rigid enough to give a little arch support. Hubby, who suffers from something undiagnosed– probably a bone spur– on the ball of one foot, has had no pain when wearing his Flows.
Two articles below give some interesting insight into the appeal of wearing barefoot shoes, and also into the challenge of keeping them from becoming overly smelly! Ours were difficult to find but we managed to order them online… even though sold by many outdoor stores and directly by Vibram, they are often out of stock. Find some Retailer links at end of post… Good luck!
THANKS to our friend Faye for letting me try out one of her own pairs of FiveFingers!
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Bare Necessity
By ROB WALKER New York times Magazine June 1, 2010
The sneaker seems like a dumbed-down version of the athletic shoe. As casual wear suitable for use in the yard, a nightclub or the office, sneakers compete (ferociously) on the basis of style and signaling power. Picking an athletic shoe, in contrast, has less to do with, say, drooling over stylish designs than with translating exuberant jargon. The Asics GEL-Kinsei 3 draws on “pure running science,” which evidently involves Spacemaster mesh containing “a nanoscale metal film” that reacts to weather — not to mention its new Propulsion Trusstic. Adidas’ adiSTAR Salvation W, meanwhile, offers ForMotion, which I don’t understand but is trademarked, as well as an Extended Torsion System, surely better than a Stunted Torsion System. Reebok’s ZigTech shoes promise to disburse a “wave of energy” along the strange-looking sole, reducing “wear and tear” on leg muscles by “up to 20” percent. Just figuring out which model to study on Nike’s Web site involves a multistep process concerning running surfaces, the shape of your foot and the specifics of your stride.
But when such rationalist techno-complexity piles up, it inevitably attracts a naturalist and human-centric reaction. In this case: What if the athletic shoe is a dumbed-up version of the human foot? How about, in other words, running with no shoes at all?
The practice has had its advocates throughout the rise of the shoe-industrial complex. But it’s been goosed by the popular book “Born to Run,” in which the journalist (and runner) Christopher McDougall tells the remarkable story of Mexico’s Tarahumara Indians, who run 100 miles or more at a stretch, sans fancy athletic footwear. McDougall does not shy away from the conclusion that the supposed advances in athletic footwear signify not just a mumbo-jumbo-driven ruse but also one that can actually be bad for runners’ feet. This kicked up a fuss that may or may not slow the march of baroque shoe engineering.
But it has certainly been good for minimalist shoe engineering. It turns out that the barefoot idea, appealing as it may be, does bring to mind cold ground, hot pavement and the pointy little objects, man-made and natural, that might clutter the runner’s path. Vibram FiveFingers footwear responds to such thoughts in the form of a kind of glove for the foot: a slim rubber sole, articulated toe slots and just enough fabric to keep the things on. The goal, in other words: almost barefootness.
Like many products devised with a highly specific goal, the shoes look quite striking — that is, they look pretty weird. The word “simian” comes to mind. Which may explain the puzzled tone of a note I received recently from a reader in Seattle. My correspondent “had to do a double take” when first seeing runners and walkers sporting the odd footwear but has lately seen them with increasing frequency. “Just yesterday,” the note continued, “a woman on my bus was wearing a pair while in full business attire.” It concluded with a hint of mild alarm: “These could quite possibly be the new Crocs.”
Scoff if you like, but when Vibram asked its Facebook fans to name “the most unique place or . . . most unique activity where you’ve worn FiveFingers,” it received more than 450 responses. Many involved outdoorsy or athletic activity, but others involved grocery shopping, a wedding, performing stand-up comedy, business meetings, church, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and visiting the Sistine Chapel. The word “everywhere” recurred, often capitalized or followed by an exclamation point. In other words, it could happen here.
Apart from the hey-they’re-comfy mantra invoked by Crocs enthusiasts, wearers of the FiveFingers almost-shoes can cite practical reasons for sporting monkey-suggestive gear in settings others find inappropriate: you’re supposed to ease into the switch from elaborately engineered athletic shoes, so tooling about the mall in performance footwear makes total sense.
Even better, FiveFingers signals an ideology, a defiant embrace of a naked message to, and about, Big Footwear: the emperor has shoes, but I refuse to buy them. It borders on a product-enabled subversive critique of a multibillion-dollar industry’s innovations. But that critique has its own critics, and it’s fair to at least wonder about the dissonance involved in the slogan “Run Barefoot, Wear FiveFingers.” What does it mean when even going “barefoot” requires a $100 object? And one whose naturalness evidently relies in part on technological innovation to boot? As the company’s Web site puts it, the idea is “the exhilarating joy of going barefoot with the protection and sure-footed grip of a Vibram® sole.” The soles are also, in some cases, “razor-siped,” whatever that means.
All of that is niggling and of import only on the question of FiveFingers’ potential to cross over from cross-training to crosstown commutes. In the sphere of athletics, serious people will sort their choices on the basis of serious research. But if FiveFingers shoes come to embody casual comfort, a lifestyle statement, an antifashion identity marker, then they will have escaped the narrow confines of athletic footwear. They will become, in a word, sneakers.?
Lucky Glen and Gilford (or maybe they wouldn’t think so…!) We have a new friend in Gilford, Iuliia from the Ukraine, who has offered to come ride and exercise them approximately weekly. She has come twice so far, and she is an experienced rider.
Iuliia on Gilford
She is getting used to him, and he to her
and she is getting used to riding again after not getting to for a while!
Iuliia (sort of pronounced like Julia) has ridden jumpers, dressage, and exercised race horses before. She has told me that in Ukraine people can ride at government-sponsored stables for free, thus she has ridden since age 7!!! Can you IMAGINE!
Glen was pretty greener in some ways than what she has known before…
but she got the hang of him!
Not a bad afternoon’s work! Do you think she enjoyed it?
Iuliia is in town for the summer working at our local farm stand.
