<\/p>\n
In a few weeks Riyadh in Saudi Arabia will host the Dressage World Cup Final, but you won\u2019t be reading about it on our website. This is not a decision made lightly, I find the whole cancel culture hysteria offensive. The attitude that if an individual offends, then all mention of them is banned even if what they have written is helpful, wise, and nothing to do with their offence. If it turns out Shakespeare beat his wife, we ban the plays and the sonnets!<\/p>\n
But this case is different. The sole reason the Saudis have spent billions of dollars\u00a0 buying complicit sports, is to try and improve their reputation on the world stage \u2013 forget about the political prisoners, the repression of women and the LBGT community, the murder of a courageous journalist in a Saudi Embassy on the orders of their head of state, even forget about the shameful treatment of animals and the appalling record of drug infringements found in their Endurance races \u2013 let\u2019s just sit back in front of the television and enjoy the exciting sport. And revel in all that prizemoney and the hefty fee for the FEI\u2026<\/p>\n
So if we cover the Finals we are directly assisting the Saudis in their sports-washing exercise. No way. I am sure there will be reams of gormless gush spewing out from the FEI publicity department telling you how wonderful the dressage is (no nasty tongues, or swishing tails or throttled necks), how magnificent the facilities and what a great time was had by all. Yeah, well they can answer to their own conscience, if they can find it.<\/p>\n
The Horse Magazine will not be covering the World Cup Dressage Final in Saudi Arabia – we explain why…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":67812,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,4],"tags":[2464,2463],"class_list":["post-67810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-dressage","tag-final-in-saudi-arabia","tag-world-cup-dresage"],"acf":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67810"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67810\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67814,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67810\/revisions\/67814"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}