Just a nit, it is the GJ that determines whether the horse is sound, not the vets. The GJ consults with the vet(s) during the jog, but it is the GJ that makes the decision.
(Living up to my nickname of “little miss literal minded”.)
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Part of it is probably also communication styles. My experience with Gen Z is that they do not give a single solitary fork about trying to be nice/polite online. https://vm.tiktok.com/ZTdbJVxos/ I find it refreshing, but that’s probably because I’ve never been a target of Gen Z, so take that for what it’s worth.
(Honestly tempted to start signing off with “Hasta La Pasta” or “Don’t cross me” at work)
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Sure, but they probably wouldn’t eliminate a horse without consulting the vets. Who have more experience identifying lameness than most of us could even dream.
If we want to critique online messaging, saying “Not sure why the ground jury thought he couldn’t safely jump in this condition.” is quite shocking, to me at least. Even if (g) you think that the GJ is off their collective rocker, you don’t put them on blast on social media. Maybe send some grumpy texts to friends, but it’s a really bad reflection on her to a) not be able to judge that the horse is NQR and b) decide to air your grievances with the officials of your sport online. If I were her, I would not expect to get the benefit of the doubt from any event official going forward.
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Interesting … as an older millennial I find nothing at all refreshing about being rude and condescending to people who didn’t ask for your (general you, not the poster I’m responding to!) opinion. I’m not big on unsolicited advice to begin with, but if you really feel it’s warranted there is no good reason to be a [certain male body part] about it. I always find it says more negatively about them than about whoever they’re criticizing.
I don’t think it is usually wise to make social media posts questioning the judge’s decisions either, but I think it’s kind of obnoxious how “kids these days” think that lacking the ability or desire to be tactful is something to brag about. Also, they should get off my lawn 
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So my stream was working fine and I saw many of her fences, including the first water where the horse hung a leg/twisted & several other jumps where it also hung legs/was jumping poorly/making heavy contact w fences/twisting/running through aids etc so the rest of her round was quite scary and stressful to watch. Usef deleted a lot of the footage of her off the replay so unfortunately we can’t go back and analyze. But the horse should have been pulled up, it was definitely having a bad day. I saw the horse at Maryland 5* and it was jumping in great form based on what was shown on the stream (it had some refusals there but it was jumping safely and not at all like it looked this weekend at Kentucky). So they are obviously capable of the level but it just wasn’t their day and sadly it ended the way it did with an awful accident. I i’m totally empathetic to the fact that it’s hard as riders (especially with inexperience at a level) to make that call in the moment which is why we need the officials to step in when things are going that bad. It sucks working so hard towards something and having to stop, but Emporiums fall at the water was preventable. Those who saw a lot of the round could see it coming from a mile away which is unfortunate.
That’s not to say that cross country isn’t inherently dangerous and that falls won’t happen and we have to take all of the risk out of it, but there is a difference between the consistent risk that any horse has jumping that height versus a deteriorating horse jumping more and more sloppily until it falls. It definitely was not a one time bad jump in the middle of an otherwise beautiful safe lovely round (which can happen to anyone), it was a combination of the horse progressively deteriorating in its form, not being pulled up and then ultimately falling, causing a very traumatic and public accident at the biggest eventing competition in the country. Our officials need to do better.
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Gosh, I just didn’t find either of those to be out of line given the context. This isn’t junior riders who don’t know better here, this is a professional who has been around Kentucky at least a few times and not only can’t tell when her horse is lame and calls out the grand jury, but also posts video proof that the GJ was right as her defense?
We can agree to disagree on the offensiveness of the tone of the post, but agreed that the sentiment from the poster of the snark wasn’t wrong at all…
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I’m a junior Millennial, sometimes called The Oregon Trail generation, who basically grew up alongside the internet. I remember the AOL CDs being a thing when I was in elementary school, lol. So I admire and fear Gen Z at the same time.
I do judge behavior on SM more harshly if someone is trying to present themselves as a professional. If this is how they behave when they have an edit button, I wonder what they’re like when they don’t.
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Except that once you’ve posted a public video with what could be interpreted as at least mild snark at the GJ, you’ve pretty much forfeited the privilege of not getting snark in return.
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I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree, at least if the comment I shared is considered “mild.” I don’t think it’s wrong to point out that he still does look sore and the decision to spin him seems like a good one made with his best interest in mind, but I think it’s better to state it with some degree of tact rather than saying “you’re a idiot” and “I hope you quit riding” … at least if the intent is to get her to reflect on what happened and the horsemanship behind it.
If the intent is to just prove your own superiority to strangers on the internet and you don’t actually care if the person in question tries to be a better horseman or not, in that case “you’re a idiot” is probably a good way to go.
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Oh, I’m not arguing with that.
Just pointing out that anyone with sufficient knowledge of SM to have an Instagram account should have been able to see that coming five strides out.
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Riders need to learn to just STFU about the ground jury’s decision to not let them continue on social media because it never comes off looking good for them…. I feel the same way about people complaining about dressage scores on social media in their recap of the weekend “the score doesn’t reflect what I thought was an amazing test!” Except this is worse because it’s literally for the horse’s welfare and no other reason. People need some media training or something lol.
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Just got back from KY and have skimmed this thread a bit. A few thoughts, with the caveat that I am not an eventer (firmly h/j world, but have dabbled at BN/N.)
We were right next to the park question (literally as close as a spectator could be to the first fence of the direct route) when Doug Payne came off. The horse was visibly shaking. At first we all kind of laughed when the horse started grazing, but immediately everyone went quiet and it was very apparent that the horse was shaking very hard from head to toe. I’ve seen videos and tiktoks talking about how cute/funny the moment was, but the horse was not casually grazing. Doug’s hands were also shaking as he re-bridled the horse. I’m not judging/slamming Doug at all (quite the opposite) and I have no idea if it was adrenaline, shock, exhaustion, whatever in terms of the horse. I sincerely doubt someone of Doug’s caliber had a horse so unfit that it was trembling with exhaustion so early in the course. But for me, it wasn’t a cute/funny moment.
In terms of Emporium, we just saw the horse jump into HOL on the jumbotron and then not get up. They cut away immediately. I was talking to a volunteer during stadium who was at HOL who said the horse hung a leg at the fence and fell, and then its front foot got stuck in its throat latch. But because that all happened under the water, no one was quite sure what was going on for a bit. He said from watching the fall and watching the rider’s face he was convinced the horse had broken a shoulder. He also mentioned that Emporium was so heavily sedated that he didn’t walk on the trailer, he was loaded on his side. So once the horse fell, it did not get up and walk again at the horse park, and therefore they truly did not have any information on condition.
The hold on course was about 40 minutes. They announced maybe an hour later that the horse had been sedated and taken to Hagyard for evaluation. I saw some discussion on here about whether informing people as to what was going on should have been done better. In terms of handling it at the park, I think they did a good job. They let people know the horse was sedated and being evaluated (aka he was still alive) pretty quickly. It sounded like they truly had no other information until the sedation wore off and he could be fully evaluated, and the fb page did update to reflect that. I think the biggest lack of communication was the gap between announcing at the park he was being evaluated and it being posted to the facebook. I could understand the frustration if you watched on the livestream, thought there was a good chance the horse did not make it, and then there wasn’t a post for 6ish hours.
It was my first time going and it was an incredible experience, I definitely want to go back. But wow - what a long, exhausting experience as well (I can’t imagine what its like for the riders!)
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I can’t believe the throat latch didn’t break or the bridle didn’t even come off in that sort of situation! What kind of bionic majikal leather is this? 
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Believe me, we were all wondering what type of bridle it was as well (especially to not break when wet?) The only thing we could think of was that the way/angle the foot was stuck the horse wasn’t able to exert that much force. But no clue.
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The shaking is weird and definitely wasn’t visible on the live replay! I wonder what was going on, since obviously Doug seemed to bounce back as a rider just fine. (And odd to go from shaking and to grazing.)
Re: the social media angle. I’m Gen X and therefore “Speak n’ Spell” old-as-dirt regarding my first memories of computers, and I think that anyone who has been around the block Internet-wise, knows that no good can come out of questioning a ground jury decision regarding a horse’s soundness using a cellphone video. You just have to accept it and bitch to your friends. If people agreed the horse seemed sound the day after, what good would it do?
Even if the horse seemed 100% sound, a video is obviously a selected moment in time (selected by the aggrieved rider), and the ground jury decision can only be made by what they see in front of them. (Just to circle back to the fact that I know my perceptions of what I saw on the livestream might not be what spectators and jump judges saw.)
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I wonder if she was backed off/a wee bit afraid of the crowd. Watching Elisa’s ride, holy cow, the crowd was close!
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Did anyone do the scavenger hunt and did they do a presentation for the winner of the 4 Star horse trailer? I can’t find a press release and don’t remember it being announced on the livestream.
The Scavenger Hunt for everyone in attendance at the 2022 event will take place via the GooseChase mobile app and feature many great prizes, including the grand prize of a two-horse trailer from 4-Star Trailers, the new Official Horse Trailer of the LRK3DE and Kentucky Invitational Grand Prix .
I did the scavenger hunt a bit - they announced the winners during stadium on Sunday but that was it. There were maybe 50 people tied for first, so not sure how they decided the placings (only 3 prizes).
@Djones With the long option to the park question (which Doug didn’t take, but just on this topic) the horses basically had to canter directly at the crowd and then skim the fencing. I was maybe four feet from the ones that took the long option and one absolutely gave me a good long side-eye approaching and going by. I was very much behind the line too - others were basically sitting under it and the jump judge kept having to tell people to keep arms/legs/phones outside of the gallop lanes.
@Impractical_Horsewoman Makes sense it wasn’t visible on the live feed! The horse immediately started grazing, but was shaking the whole time. Definitely weird, and really unfortunate for both horse and rider with how lovely their dressage test was. We guessed around half had issues at that fence. It seemed like for every 1 rider we saw get through it cleanly, there was at least one who had a run out or worse. We did the course walk with Kyle Carter and Buck the day before and they both said they were more worried about the 4* coffin/park question than the 5* coffin and thought it was more challenging. Unsurprisingly, they were right…
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Along with wondering what kind of bridle, I wondered why they didn’t just cut the throat latch? Maybe they did, but that was just my first thought.
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