
Palio di Siena: The World’s Wildest Horse Race (2015) - tomhoward
http://www.cntraveller.com/recommended/culture/palio-di-siena-horse-race-italy
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qubex
My partner and I are Italians and she is a natural horsemanship/Parelli
trainer and absolutely abhors the _Palio_ because she can point to multiple
instances of cruelty to the animals and coercion. I myself am very wary of
horses (bad fall when I was six, thirty years later I still refuse to get back
in the saddle) but even I can now appreciate the difference between a relaxed,
non-threatened horse and these poor creatures.

I'm not an animal rights activist by any measure, but just as many people now
question the _corrida_ , I'm coming to the conclusion that is time to revise
some traditions, such as this one.

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riffraff
interesting trivia: this year, one of the horses "refused to run" (i.e. it was
so nervous it was impossible to get it/him/her to stand at the line). Animal
rights activists had a lot to say on that.

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satori99
I think the Mongolian Derby should take the top spot in any list of the
wildest horse races.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_Derby](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_Derby)

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HelloNurse
There's disappointingly little about actual horse racing in the article.

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jaclaz
Sure, but basically the Palio is _everything_ BUT the race.

It is all the before and the after that is much more interesting that the race
itself.

In that the article is very well made.

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qubex
That's an interesting statement actually, firstly because I (and almost
everybody else) tend to agree, and secondly, because if one then segues to
suggest that the horse-racing component be significantly modified or even
removed, those same people recoil in horror and vehemently protect the
centrality of the horse-racing component. This would seem to be somewhat
paradoxical, but I have observed this often.

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HelloNurse
Winning the race is the whole point, everything else is overoptimization and
overcomplication of the horse race, developed in hundreds of years and
hundreds of runs. For instance, what would you celebrate about without racing?

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jaclaz
It is like saying that (say) the Monopoly or Risk game revolve around throwing
a coupe of dices (which is actually what they revolve around).

Still the actual dice throwing is the least interesting part.

