The title of this story say's it all!

And that’s the finding of a new study by the University of Sydney which found that even when standing still, horses displayed extreme anxiety when there was no space between their face and the noseband as commonly seen in show-rings.

The report’s authors are calling on Equine Sports Authorities here and internationally to re-instate the ‘2-finger widths’ space under nose-bands on horses at all levels of competition, especially at the forthcoming Olympics.

Co-author Kate Jenner is concerned that recent surveys of Dressage Events showed close to 50% of all horses competing in Australian Dressage had overly tight nosebands fitted.

There’s now a petition on change.org calling on authorities to return the 2-finger width noseband rule for our equine Olympic athletes, not just for their well-being but also to see the same rule enacted right throughout equine sports.

Here is the petition link: http://chn.ge/2558er5