I’m watching the Olympics, specifically these beautiful obviously well-trained horses. How are these horses transported over such long distances i.e. Japan to France? Air? Ocean? I have to assume the horses could be sensitive to transportation.
I know that prized race horses are flown around the world in specially outfitted planes, and they are treated very well on those flights. I assume that these horses would be flown to Paris, or somewhere near Paris for the Olympics. I would think that after a while they would get used to it. What choice do they have?
The Washington Post had an article on hard to transport items for the Olympics:
They are flown by horse transport companies, then driven in trailers/horse boxes to their final destination. Here’s a 4 minute YouTube video. https://youtu.be/LYa2cMiwYlQ?si=CE_shhfXhNKzwbqp
Yes, flying. There is no alternative. Sometimes, however, the country hosting an equestrian event may have quarantine laws that restrict the import of horses, and that can cause major problems. This was the reason why the equestrian events of the 1956 Olympics had to be moved from Melbourne (where the Games were held) to Stockholm: Australian authorities required a six-month quarantine, which would have been entirely infeasible for the athletes, and refused to waive this for the Olympics.
Do the horses need to be tranquilized?
Rather than a gin and tonic to calm their nerves we have a vet to give them some mild tranquilizers on board and in the vast majority of cases that works very well.
Must cost a small fortune.
Not likely. Most Olympic-level horses are used to air transport – they likely have done this before, either within their own country if a big country like USA, or going to other international equine events. So it’s nothing new to them. They may be given a mild tranquillizer the first time they fly, but that is avoided if possible. (Note that they are going to be in a big competition soon – you don’t want any aftereffects hurting their performance.)
Most countries do have rules requiring quarantine for imported equines, often weeks or months. But it’s common for those rules to be relaxed for Olympic-level equines, because:
- these horses are under almost-constant watch by veterinarians & trainers, so the chance of them carrying some infectious disease is very low.
- they wouldn’t come there if the country didn’t give exemptions to the rules, so these games would go elsewhere.