thank you for that. I hadn’t seen anyone go thru before. It was helpful.
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She looks well and fully recovered. Yay!
Who is “David”?
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David O’Connor
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Yay! Thank you for that info!
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Thank you.
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Curious if anyone knows if Shadow Man is going to back to Ben Hobday or not. Looks like Ben has been doing a lot of show jumping, so I didn’t know if he is part of the group of UL riders moving over the show jumping. Fidgy is such a cool dude!
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I also don’t think there was as much shadow later in the day. Pretty sure I read something Laura Collett said about knowing the left hand route might be a bit longer but not wanting to take the risk.
ETA: Found it in an EN article - again, this is from Laura Collett -
That lack of sleep came down to “a lot of head scratching, to be honest” about which routes she’d take in some of the key combinations on course. She ultimately opted to go the ever-so-slightly longer route at 16ABCD, where so many horses misread the ditch, which may have added her marginal time penalties, but also kept her and ‘Dan’ well in the hunt when others had faltered.
“I was always very much wanting to jump left off the drop — I just felt like the ditch was a bit of a nothing ditch and there were too many unknown circumstances for how they would read it and jump it — and with only two strides to the triple brush, I just thought that was an unnecessary risk,” she says. “I think we saw that with quite a few of the first ones that went — they didn’t really make a mistake, but they didn’t understand the question. For me, that was always plan A, and I stuck to it and it rode really nicely.”
https://eventingnation.com/a-shake-up-at-the-chateau-the-paris-olympics-cross-country-day-report/
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Liz did too - she talked about it to EN:
“We had discussed maybe going the opposite way, or the left side of that bank. Actually, I had a split second in my brain — because he tripped in the first ditch — I went, ‘No, he’s careful, that’ll tune him up for the next one,’ and he did it perfectly.”
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I came here to ask the same thing!
Ben seems very proud of him and has been in Paris cheering him on.
I love the story! I just wonder where it goes from here.
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You know, I was determined to not like the subbing and penalty rules. But I was at first ambivalent and now sort of enjoying the concept. Sure, it’s not pure eventing, but it’s the Olympics…who cares if it’s a bit of a bastardized version of team events?! It’s different, and I think people can enjoy it still. I don’t mind a little gamesmanship, and there are still rules to keep it from going completely off the rails.
As for the danger of a rider not pulling up an exhausted horse for a 200 point penalty, we fortunately have a ground jury who can (and did here) pull up exhausted horses. Anyone on an injured horse is going to pull up, that goes (or should go) without saying. 200 points fair for that? You didn’t finish the course, so ya, it’s fair. Fair enough—it’s sport, nothing is going to be 100% fair, 100% of the time.
And 20 points for subbing on the last day for a medical reason, I’m ok with that. I don’t think people will try (or tried here) to game it. There’s too much that go wrong with horses for teams to think they can come in, game the system, and take gold. Call me crazy, but I’ve become kind of a fan of the new Olympic system. We can all return to enjoy the old, steady-Eddie nations-cup team rules for 4 years, and have a little wild fun at Olympic time 
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there were 4 japanese riders at the medal ceremony (and 3 GB, 3 FR)
I’m surprised to say it, but I agree. Paris has really sold me on this new format in an Olympics. I don’t think I fully appreciated how big of an advantage the countries with significant depth had with a drop score. Definitely room to tweak some things (as there should be given this is the 2nd time we’ve done this), but I don’t think it’s this abomination it’s being painted by some.
It was exciting to watch and it 100% was the reason we have some different flags in the top half of the final standings. I also think it just makes teams choose their true best three. No “let’s take a gamble on this one in the 4th slot because it’s our best dressage horse.”
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Came back to my hotel to see a (way too short and sadly in French) segment about building the stadium at Versailles
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Ironic that 2 powerhouse teams, GER and AUS, who traditionally medal their team, were both knocked out of team medals by the format that doesn’t have a 4th team rider and a drop score.
But GER and AUS finished in the Individual as Gold and Silver. So the quality is still there, of course.
Under the previous system of 4 team members and a drop score, going on past history, very likely the team results would have been entirely different. Speculation of course, but if GER and AUS could have dropped the rider score that didn’t finish, likely they would have come through as usual from there.
And that would have bumped France and Japan out of the medals.
Interesting that the 3-person team format had such a huge effect on the results.
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Interesting that none of the early horses seamed to read that ditch- even Virgil who’s the most experienced horse in the competition… the lighting definitely compounded things.
I loved this Olympics but I will say being in the second half of the draw was an advantage in both the dressage (scoring) and the cross-country (lighting and information).
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Exactly- and it also makes the historically strong teams (including the U.S.) make a call on their best without using a get-out-of-jail-free-card. You’ve really got to send the best all-around three pairs you have; isn’t that what eventings all about?
That has always been true. Send your best to the Olympics. Nothing has changed about that. That’s how GER & AUS & GBR have racked up all those medals. What is your point?
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Riders having their “best scores” is happening because of score inflation in dressage judging, broadly speaking, across the board. That is actually being addressed in the USDF, by some means or other, that I saw posted on COTH.
Years ago, in the 2000’s, an eventing dressage score in the 20’s was uncommon. A high 20’s here and there happened, but there were very few. Low 30’s was where the leaders were. I haven’t been through past results to verify that, but I think that would be found to be the case.
Now … we have eventing dressage scores in the teens. Compare the dressage scores to the many top events in past history with no dressage score anywhere near that level.
So basically, knocking 5 to 10 points off of dressage scores, and therefore final eventing scores, compared with events of years ago.
Are the tests being performed that much better? Maybe, probably. But is the real reason that dressage overall is undergoing a big bump in score inflation? I think that is the real reason.
Gymnastics is undergoing the same thing. Decades ago, there were no 10’s given. Now, not rare at all. I’ve heard skating is having a similar phenom.
Several sports, including dressage, are rumored to be looking at score inflation in the judging, behind the scenes. The problem is that it is a culture change to re-jigger exactly what makes up a score of 7, or 8, or 9 … and so on.
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I have rarely ever posted here been a long time lurker. But I have to say I was upset to see the French rider say “ my horse was sloppy over the two verticals” in an article. This coming from the same French rider, whose horse looked exhausted towards the end of cross country and maybe should’ve been pulled up and/or the rider yellow carded. I was always taught it is never the horses fault, maybe the horse was too tired
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100% agree. That poor horse was exhausted yesterday and it was like the rider didn’t even notice because he was so caught up in the home crowd cheering.
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