BARCELONA ’92 OLYMPICS / DAY 10 : SUMMER GAMES SPOTLIGHT : BRITISH SAY NEIGH TO DOGS AND PONIES

Richard Pound, an International Olympic Committee executive board member from Canada, simply might have been talking horse sense when he said this week that he believes equestrian will be among four sports eliminated from the Summer Olympics before 2000.

Pound said that equestrian is too expensive, claiming that it costs $10-$12 million a day to prepare a three-day event course.

He also said that the sport does not provide a human challenge worthy of the Olympics.

“The best horse can carry a dog with it,” he said.

Particularly insulted were members of Britain’s horsy set, of which the most illustrious member is Pound’s IOC colleague, Princess Anne.

She was not available for comment, but Malcolm Wallace, the British equestrian team’s manager, said that Britain would offer “a most spirited defense” of its sport.

“As it happens,” he added, “I once did put a dog in the saddle for a family photograph, and it fell off.”

The other sports Pound mentioned for exclusion were fencing, modern pentathlon and Greco-Roman wrestling.

This a daily roundup of Olympic-related items from reporters in Barcelona from the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, Baltimore Sun and Hartford Courant, all Times-Mirror newspapers.