Yup. The point of the sport is that the horse/rider team is stout enough to do all 3 phases. Having players involved that don’t do all 3 is dumb.
That reduces this sport to another sport: dressage and show jumping. Both of which take up plenty of time in the Olympic calendar already.
Should they cut the marathon? That takes land and time, and people are just running, after all…
If you are talking about having a true long format back with roads and tracks, then yes. In the Olympics there is no endurance phase. Endurance was at the heart of eventing.
Go back to the true three phase when you had endurance. The point of dressage was to have horse that was fit enough to do the next day’s endurance phase that could do precise movements. Obviously the endurance phase was about endurance but part D was about showing the horse was brave and bold across XC. Stadium was to show that after the endurance phase the horse still had good enough conditioning to handle jumping. Taking endurance out radically changed the sport. A lot of the horses in this olympic games would not be even seen if there was still a true long format.
Yes, I understand how the sport fundamentally came to be. I also understand that things evolve.
There is no doubt in my mind that if we truly tested endurance as it used to be, we would be shut down in 3 to 4 years. No doubt.
I agree that there is no place in the Olympics for eventing to “test” endurance more than it already is. The result of failing the test is bad pictures at best, injured horses and fodder for banning horse sports at the other end of the spectrum.
The current Olympic format isn’t really addressing the issue, given the astute comments about the incentive to finish xc on a lame horse (a 20 pt substitution can happen on SJ day) versus pulling up (200 pt penalty).
Or they could allow the national team of a tired runner to sub in a different runner at the 15 mile marker, and add 20 seconds to the total time. Or, something like that. /s 
But wait … only if the runner had some sort of fault or error that made it hard to finish. Just so tired !!! 
If the runner did everything fairly well as expected, then no substitute for you! /s
This was definitely a huge change on many levels. It’s interesting that an option to do a long format is back at the lower levels, in some / many horse trials.
While I agree there are compromises being made that alter the sport, if Eventing isn’t in the Olympics we certainly wouldn’t get any of the big money invested into winning medals. The training and knowledge does feed down the levels when Olympians run clinics and teach and train the up and coming riders.
This discussion happened a few months ago on this board and there is actually very little money coming from the NGO’s into the sport due to the Olympics.
Adding that when I seek out trainers to ride with and/or clinicians, I do so based on their reputations and style of teaching, not whether or not they have been to the Olympics. Some of them happen to be Olympians, sure, but certainly not all.
To me, consistently producing horses and riders well is far more important than making it to the Olympics, especially nowadays.
Poke away! Full disclosure, I am not in that camp, although I’m not on the side of “we must leave” either. Let’s say I see both sides of that issue.
I will say, Aachen is by far the best selling point for that format. I watch every year and I really enjoy it. That said, I think there are just too many logistical hurdles associated with xc last in an Olympic format (how long is everyone going to wait around while the lawyers get involved over flag penalties? Will you round up the 40,000 spectators from xc and force them into the arena for the medal ceremony? Are we just going to do the victory gallop on soaking wet tired horses with wraps on? Are you going to do a jog after xc? If not, which I really don’t think is right, that presents some problems for the victory gallop if not everyone is as sprightly as we thought. etc etc)
I think it opens up more opportunity for bad pictures, and takes away the excitement of definitively knowing in the moment whether someone won (that rail came down or it didn’t, and everyone sees it. But flag penalties are debatable, 20s sometimes happen off-broadcast, etc). Cross country is the heart of the sport, but my heart pounds just as fast watching the top 10 jump for their medals. I just don’t see how horses, riders, spectators, officials, or anyone else wins under this switch.
To me, having had a chance to see the rider substitution play out in several different scenarios at this Olympics, substitution turns the sport into a basketball game, soccer/football game, or other sport with player substitution.
But that isn’t eventing. The whole point of eventing is that to finish is to win. That is, finishing all 3 phases, one horse - one rider pair.
The eventing ethic and purpose is more like those of the endurance sports such as marathon, long-distance skiing, pentathlon, and so on. These are sports that combine skill and endurance. Some have separately demonstrated scored/judged skills, and others the skills are built-in to success (such as cross country, or long-distance skiing that relies on technique to be the best of the best).
If the substitutions are to stay, I need someone to point out a new ethic, a new purpose, a new reason for the life of the sport. The “why” needs a new look.
It could be that we are in for a period where the 3-member teams and the ‘substitutions’ are part of the Olympics for a time, and then are later taken out.
Just as we had the long period of time in eventing with the dressage multiplier, which was not there before, and once again is no longer there. So, an asterisk next to a lot of results which would have ranked the finishers differently without it.
It just seems to take a long time to decide that the change is not producing the outcomes that were thought to make it worthwhile.
Totilas comes to mind…
Out of curiosity @OverandOnward, how do you feel about drop scores in other championship formats?
To be crystal clear, this is still true. Substitute horse and riders are not eligible for individual medals, for exactly that reason.
Substitute combinations are only allowed to count for team scores. Teams are only allowed to use one substitute throughout the competition. It is a direct replacement for the drop score, and used in this format because the Olympics will not allow more starters.
You could argue that without a drop score, there is more of an emphasis on “to finish is to win” because no team is getting the gold unless 100% of their team finishes - not so at WEG, where a rider can fall and you can drop their score.
If we were subbing horse and riders in and out for every phase, or if you could replace your entire team over the course of the competition, or if substitutes were somehow competing for individual placings, I would see more of the issue, but as it stands I think it is a creative solution to a unique problem. It is not as if each horse and rider did not have to complete extensive qualifications in full in order to be there in the first place.
That sounds like an assumption, not a fact. How would you know what they do, when they are not competing in the Olympics?
So far, the East Asian riders aren’t marketing themselves as professional trainers/coaches in the West. They are representing to the West as amateurs in the sport, supporters but not working out big public profiles, other than their biggest accomplishments. But they are active in ‘Asian Eventing’ and their experience and knowledge is being spread.
I don’t know much about eventing in Asia, beyond that the FEI shows events in India, and there are FB references to eventing in Thailand and China. What it is like, I don’t know, but I can imagine it is like some of the smaller, more ‘remote’ Areas in the USEA, where most riders are at Training level and below. That is just a guess on my part.
The higher level eventing for Asian riders seems to be in Europe. They have to figure out how to work their lives around European trainers.
The facebook pages focus on their experience of their biggest competitions. They don’t show much of training sessions and clinics. I’m sure that’s just out of habit and their focus in their outreach at this point. The USEA website used to be like that.
This is correct. It will never be like football/basketball/etc. b/c, in those games, substituting players throughout the match is part of the strategy and done at the discretion of the coach/team.
In Olympic eventing, you have one sub and it has to be for a reason outside the discretion of the team. It’s simply not even close to the same situation. Not even close.
I can’t see equestrianism lasting in the Olympics beyond LA, possible Brisbane. The IOC doesn’t like it:
very expensive and complicated to organize and, so the IOC believes, of little interest to the wider Olympic audience. BMX, skateboarding, climbing, all fit in to the vision much better, cheaper, easier to put on mass media. Then all the bad press about animal abuse, complaints about judging decisions… We are seen to be out of step with the modern world.
Does anyone want a nice, plant-based vegan snack? Popcorn is OK without the butter!
The whole point of sport is doing it, on the day.
Qualifying is its own journey and drama. It all stops when the official event begins. All that matters in the official event is how those who qualified perform on the day of the official event. An eventing performance is one horse + one rider, through 3 phases of skills and endurance.
Qualifying to get there doesn’t earn medals. You have to execute the performance, on the day, in the actual competition. It isn’t a beauty contest, it’s a sport performance. That is the whole point.
There is a perception creep of cuteness and look, that is overtaking the Olympic face of the sport.
What is at the root of these changes, the justification(s)? At the root, it’s the Olympic marketing machine, the money machine. That wants to put ‘look’ over everything else, from the number of national teams on the list, to the photos and video clips they will show to a huge public that is browsing over what to look at next.
As the true test of excellence, so many sports are putting more emphasis on their cycle of World events rather than the Olympics, that are on the 4-year cycles that put them between each Olympic year. Notice that many of these cosmetic changes that today’s Olympics is insisting on are not being asked for at World game venues. Other than to prepare athletes for what they face at the Olympics! Otherwise the World game focus is the sport, not the looks.
A lot of what went on in this Paris Olympics show jumping was just clutter. Riders that hadn’t ridden XC or DR and didn’t belong in the ring. Rider that were elim’d on XC, but here they are again. Substitutions that had convoluted and confusing explanations to the viewer.
But, on SJ day, the plus for the Olympics itself was that there was a lot to look at, to show the browsing public, by keeping the order of go filled out, more teams, more riders, for a longer period of time on SJ day – and of course a more condensed period of time on XC day. For marketing purposes grabbing viewer eyes. That seems to me to be the real goal.
And it is not about the principals and purpose of the sport of eventing.
The Olympics overall has been taking some strange turns, perhaps beginning with the Beijing 2008 Olympics (maybe before), with money and marketing become stronger and stronger against overall sport itself. Not just equestrian. It has to do with the who and the purpose of those who drive, and frankly own, big parts of the Olympic machine. And today, the Olympics IS a machine, dedicated to profits for those involved in keeping the Olympics going, each 4-year period. It wasn’t always that way. But today’s Olympics generates billions for those who have a piece of its various parts.
That’s how I see it.
This does not really address my question or the content of my post (quoted above), but it gives me enough to see you are decided in your perspective so I will leave it at that. I don’t feel the same as you about this issue, so will agree to disagree on this one!
My only remark to that is that you seem to want to re-frame the Olympic end of the sport for reasons that I don’t know.
Why are you interested in “creative solutions”, and not in one-horse + one-rider over 3 phases of skills and endurance?
Because this totally contradicts the principal that every horse-rider pair completes every phase. That is the point and purpose of eventing, since its inception as a sport competition.
The point of the 4-member team with the drop score – this is already the creative solution – is that your spare does all of the phases. You don’t know which member is the spare, but that will happen naturally – and every competitor does all 3 phases. It is indeed a clever solution.
As is the case in the 3-member substitution idea, one of the riders is not being counted in the final team score.
But with 4-member / drop-score teams, all competitors that finish, complete all phases. That is the “creative solution”.
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