I’m chuckling to myself right now going back to our groaning about the stadium commentators. I’m watching tennis, which I know nothing about, and have no idea whether the commentators do either 
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Don’t forget, USA network has two hours of the jumping final at 8 pm central time tonight. I’m hoping they show the medal ceremony. I’ve found that times are flexible, so tuning in early, is a good idea.
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Send your best with one “get out of jail free” card. It changes the entire strategy around constructing teams, IMO.
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When you make judges grade 65-70 tests in one sitting, it’s not going to be even.
I’m disappointed in the judging consistency too, but again, this is the second year they’ve done this- it might just need to become part of the game (horrors!!). Riding has always been a mental game, I can get on board with a little strategic thought being part of the Olympic competition.
I also don’t think it impacted the medals. It impacted a lot of unimportant placings in the middle that only the riders, their teams, the federations, and super fans (like myself) care about, which is a problem that needs to be addressed.
Those two scores in the teens deserved to be in the teens. The quality deserved what it got in the second half- it’s just that the first half was judged to a different baseline.
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Huh? I assume you mean the chin strap in the cavesson? Too loose? First time I have heard that “too loose” was a problem.
Chin strap on rider’s helmet.
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Thank you.
as far as the judging goes, just think of this:in this test, they had to leg yield at the canter. Isn’t that a move for upper level dressage? These guys mostly did pretty well, but in the old days they would never do movements that complicated. If you look back to the 70s and 80s, you might see some nice dressage, but it has gotten so much more polished.
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Yes. I believe the Olympic rule is that you get a medal if you contribute to the effort. So a pure reserve who never competes doesn’t get a medal. However, in gymnastics for example, gymnasts who compete in the qualifying round but not in the team final (which starts with a clean slate), still get a medal.
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This is misunderstanding what I posted.
I didn’t say I was disappointed.
I didn’t say anything about consistency of scoring at this Olympic competition.
I didn’t say it impacted the medals or the placings.
I didn’t say that anyone didn’t deserve - or did deserve - the score they were awarded by the dressage judges.
I said that the scores dressage judges are awarding, overall, are trending in a particular direction, compared with the past. That’s just an observable statistical fact. It isn’t a value judgment. I don’t have a value judgment.
In the dressage sense, it is more common for judges to aware higher scores in the 80’s, which of course converts to the eventing scores in the teens.
I’m just saying that this statistical trend is affecting the math of the final, total score for the event, compared with events of history, 10 to 20 years ago. We can see that in past results.
That’s a good observation. But a canter leg yield and other more advanced movements – such as the series of lead changes – don’t in and of themselves lead to better scores. The canter leg yield is judged separately, and can be good or bad, just like every other movement.
Eventing dressage has certainly improved over the years. Has it improved by 20 points? Not sure about that.
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I kind of love it?! I feel like the new format makes the team competition more entertaining and also more fair. Eliminating drop scores puts smaller countries on more equal footing with the powerhouses, and then the penalty points reflect what actually goes down during the competition, bad luck and good luck included - under the old scoring format it felt like the team competition came down to who had the deepest bench.
It’s way more fun (and better for the sport globally, which is the point of the Olympics) to have Japan getting a team medal while Germany gets shut out. And they earned it fair and square.
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Sorry tiny thing - it was a canter half-pass!
IIRC this movement was already required in a 4* eventing dressage test, but I’m not sure when it was first added, historically. The particularly difficult part of this test was the steepness of the half-passes.
(It’s been posted before but this is a good video of a demo ride of the test + discussion of how the test writers crammed all the requirements in there while complying with the IOC’s time requirements.)
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And re the remarks that Japanese riders haven’t developed their own horses, rather they purchased (leased) them from European trainers …
That is true of many top U.S. and European eventers these days. I was very interested in Lucinda’s commentary on where the horses had come from … some riders had indeed produced their own horses, sometimes from the family farm, but quite a few get their 5* horses from other producers.
These riders can produce 5* horses, but for many reasons such as time, investment and especially the risk that a given horse doesn’t prove out at 5*, some of them get their 5* horses from other trainers.
Michael Jung himself (Ind. Gold) was on a horse produced by his teammate Julia K. Of course Jung has been an outstanding producer and has won most of his awards on his own horses, but Chipmunk did not come from his pipeline.
Julia K produces her own. Over the years, several horses produced by her have gone on to other UL riders. Including Chipmunk to Michael.
Chris Burton (Ind. Silver) got his horse from UK eventer Ben Hobday, who was already eventing the horse at a high level.
Boyd’s 5* horses tend to come to him fairly well developed, and he finishes them.
I was noticing that the riders who weren’t on nation teams did tend to more often be riding horses that they themselves produced from family farms.
The nation team riders had horses from all sorts of sources. Some from their own or family farms, some from elsewhere.
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The comparison to gymnastics scoring that someone made earlier is really interesting. Elite gymnastics (like what we see in the Olympics) no longer uses the perfect 10 system, but NCAA gymnastics does, and there is regular conversation about judges handing out 10s like candy, or not taking deductions they should. Lots of viewers find that it prevents separation between the really good and the great, and is overall a detriment to the sport being taken seriously at the NCAA level. And at its heart it does seem to be a cultural issue - getting a 9.6 or a 9.7 is now seen as a failure, even if it’s a perfectly reasonable score when all the deductions are taken.
I’m not sure if (eventing) dressage is at the point that NCAA gymnastics has gotten to…but I’m curious to see if and how score inflation is addressed at some point. A genuine 6 or 7 is not the end of the world.
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It does feel like it’s trending that way.
The quality of eventing dressage has improved dramatically in recent years. But it does seem like we award an awful lot of 10s for movements that are very good but not “great.” (especially if you are a big name)
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With regard to the Japanese riders not producing their own horses. If you visit the British Eventing website you can search results by rider ( no need to be a member) with various filters.
Both Alex Hua Tian and Kazumo Tomoto have developed horses from 100cm to advanced.
The comment piqued my curiosity, so I went looking! Obviously doesn’t necessarily follow that they ONLY ride horses they’ve produced from babies, but then that holds true for all riders.
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helmet!
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I will say that I hated the format. It will probably happen, but I hope it doesn’t, that some of these Olympic changes will bleed over the 5*. Olympic format changes IMHO have really damaged eventing.
I’m not talking about 3 riders versus 4. Eventing is not a team sport, so I don’t care about teams. In almost all other sports contested in the Olympics it is the best against the best. With the restrictions put in by the IOC, the Olympics are notch level below the best in the world.
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Thanks. It was not intuitively obvious.
Since dressage is currently consumed by the question of what is abuse, I automatically went to blue tongues and cavessons that are too tight.
I never complain about a loose cavesson!
