Having friends who are "very top names in the horse business" doesn't make you a horse person either.
I don't really understand what your problem is with what I said. I voiced an opinion, which is ALL you have done to, no facts proving anything. So in my opinion YOU don't know what you are talking about.
Becky
I think both sides here have a point.
It's a little unfair to condemn all showjumping as very bad for horses' legs . . . that's a bit of an overstatement. Out of condition horses get injured, and sometimes one just has bad luck (vide Barbaro). But a sensible conditioning program and good preventive vet care, shoeing, etc. prevent a lot of injuries, and many show horses have long careers quite sound.
Another overstatement was the idea that show horses are kept confined and not worked sufficiently to avoid injury. Reputable show horse owners and riders DO take excellent care of their horses. They do turn them out (properly protected with UV sheets) and make sure they're in shape for their work.
And most do NOT just discard them if they're past work. Sometimes they're perfectly useful for ponying, hacking, or as a school horse. I was lucky enough to ride a couple of Earl "Red" Fraser's retired show horses back in the day, wow was that amazing. A savvy old show hunter or jumper can teach you a lot!
Of course there are bad owners who treat their horses like inanimate objects, who make them stand in stalls all day long, don't condition them, etc. But we don't judge the entire group by the bad apples. . . we'd all be in trouble if everybody did that.
Woodbutcher's response was a bit strong, but on the other hand if you substitute "racehorse" for "showhorse", the complaint sounded a lot like "all racing is bad, all racehorses are abused, Barbaro should never have been raced" and so forth. We went through all that when Barbaro was hurt, and while there are racehorse owners who don't treat their animals right, Barbaro's owners are not in that category. So it may have been a natural reaction to fly off the handle a little at what seemed like a blanket condemnation of all hunter/jumper owners.
(Don't ask me about rodeo . . . I only worked one summer on a ranch out West!)