Amazing Collection of Video of CCI Events from the 90s

[Jealoushe]

I’m not so sure. If you watch the rides at some of the simple skinnies which aren’t even skinnies or big corners which aren’t as difficult as the ones today a lot of them really struggle.

I think riders today just have a way better grasp on how to ride that terrain now so it doesn’t look as messy. I’ve definitely seen terrain questions at Kentucky and Bromont. In the one video they talk about just learning to “Gallop away from the fences”, because they learned to ride that was in the UK the year before. This was early 90s and they were just figuring that out over here in North America lol so I think the fine art of XC riding was still really developing into the late 90s here.

[Thames_Pirate]

Watch the riding at the Rio Games (full XC coverage here: https://www.olympicchannel.com/en/video/detail/equestrian-eventing-cross-country-rio-2016-replays/ ) for comparison.

I was actually watching a clip from Atlanta 1996, and there were very few skinnies–not a single chevron and not even many corners. But there were lots of terrain questions, some seriously big fences, etc. Boldness and accuracy were still required in most places.

One thing I didn’t like from the Rio games and a trend I see a lot is extreme angles. Angled brushes are fine, but when you are essentially jumping sideways at some point it seems almost unfair. I also think in the long run those tend toward sloppy jumping as the horses don’t understand the question until late, then make super valiant efforts to jump and end up leaving a leg. You see it with Lauren Kieffer in the Rio video (3:44:32) as well as several horses over the first water as well as the straight route over fence 6. It just seems like giving horses a chance to see the question rather than springing it on them gives them the best chance of jumping it safely.

I quite liked the ski jump because it was a nice straight line to the first chevron. If you were strung out, they would likely glance off. If you were all over the place, you could pull up, do a convoluted backtrack, and jump out without crossing your tracks. If you were balanced and on your line, it rode nicely. And if you knew it was unlikely to go well, there was an option for the less experienced teams (to be fair, there was an option on a lot of the angled fences that caused problems, but the straight route was hairy for many of them).

I guess my point is that you can have lots of great accuracy questions that a horse can read fairly rather than being left to make tremendous efforts to get out of trouble and risking leaving a leg or twisting over and ejecting the rider.

Watching the Rio riders with the 3 refusal rule made me like it. The riders like Clark would have had a long day–that horse was NOT interested in playing that day–and the rule kept them safe. The ones where the refusals were very much a matter of technicalities of crossing tracks and such were generally allowed to finish and it was sorted out later or were eliminated later on course. So the rule did its job. After watching Gillian Rolton fall on the flat in Atlanta, break her collar bone (IIRC), get on, and fall off again at the big water jump, likely because she was in pain, unable to hold herself in a hairy moment, etc., then get on AGAIN and finish–well, kudos to her for her bravery, but it probably isn’t the safest thing to be jumping around a track like those when one isn’t 100%. Eliminating a fallen rider prevents that. So the new rules are definitely doing their job.

I think we have come a long way in fence design, footing, understanding the role of fitness in both horse and rider, equipment, and of course actual riding. We still have a ways to go, and hopefully we don’t move too far in the other direction–the ability to showjump a complex is great, but there were not as many bold fences as in the older videos–even as recently as Sydney, for example. So we need to find that balance of asking the riders to be bold, but also accurate.

I also thought it was interesting that the horses looked really tired over the last few at Rio–a 10 minute course. More so than they did at Atlanta, which was the old LF and had a similar optimum time. Both events were in hot, humid climates. Anyone have thoughts on that?

[Willesdon]

Eric Winter, in designing the course at Badminton, is trying to bring back some ‘old-fashioned’ bold fences, like a ditch for the first time in many years, and his fences are a lot plainer, lacking the dressing that has become a feature of many courses. He gets plenty of criticism for doing so as well as compliments.

[173north]

@Thames_Pirate

I also thought it was interesting that the horses looked really tired over the last few at Rio–a 10 minute course. More so than they did at Atlanta, which was the old LF and had a similar optimum time. Both events were in hot, humid climates. Anyone have thoughts on that?

I have no data but my guess is a move away from full TBs and horses with high % of blood to more WB types and changes in fitness levels/preparation with dressage being more and more important.

A full TB that’s been conditioned for long-format XC day is a very different creature than a WB or a horse with 50% blood who is possibly NOT as fit as he could be in hopes of a more tractable horse leading to a higher score in the dressage.

I believe there were some riders (Boyd?) who commented after Rio that they thought the horses just weren’t fit enough and the XC was a lot tougher and had more terrain than anticipated. Am I remembering this wrong?

[Mander]

@173north

I believe there were some riders (Boyd?) who commented after Rio that they thought the horses just weren’t fit enough and the XC was a lot tougher and had more terrain than anticipated. Am I remembering this wrong?

For some reason I seem to recall that in addition to the XC being a very tough course (as in, unexpectedly difficult), the humidity was pretty tough on the horses as well.

Also, maybe I’m misremembering, but wasn’t there some controversy sparked by the Rio games about how difficult an olympic course should be? One side wanted the course to be maximum difficulty because it’s the Olympics, after all, and it should be for the best of the best. But the other side argued that there are already competitions for “the best” and making the Olympics too difficult forces nations without strong riding programs like the US and most of Europe to either not compete at all, or alternatively, still compete but at an even higher than usual risk to themselves and their horses, posing an ethical dilemma. Maybe I’m just imagining this though…

[Willesdon]

Most top eventers are seeking horses with a high percentage of blood. Michael Jung’s Sam is nearly full TB but registered as Hann because of where he was born.

[Marigold]

@Willesdon

Michael Jung’s Sam is nearly full TB but registered as Hann because of where he was born.

Sam is 76.17% blood, and carries some of the best TB names of all time in his lineage. Quite something to look at! https://www.horsetelex.com/horses/pedigree/597343/la-biosthetique-sam-fbw

There are horses out of the famous breeding program of Friedrich Butt (which produced horses such as Ingrid Klimke’s Butt’s Abraxxas, Andreas Dibowski’s Butt’s Avedon, etc) that are upwards of 99% blood (both of those horses are 99.8% blood) but are still registered Hanoverian. They cannot be registered Thoroughbred unless they are 100% TB blood (Anglo-Arabs such as Lauren Nicholson’s Vermiculus are also 100% blood but it is 50% TB, 50% Arabian).

ETA: to your point, the goal for most modern eventers is to find something with 80%+ blood. Can be more difficult these days, but that’s the dream!

[173north]

@Mander

Also, maybe I’m misremembering, but wasn’t there some controversy sparked by the Rio games about how difficult an olympic course should be?

I remember this too - I think that was part of the issue on XC day, too. Folks were thinking it would be a soft course to not overface or endanger the riders/horses from nations without big eventing programs, and then it was actually quite tough.

[Thames_Pirate]

Most of the issues were glance offs and not dramatic falls except the one fence where Lauren Kieffer fell. It was also fitted up with frangible tech, but it was a hairy fence. Ogpun Luovo looked hairy but got away with it, Veronica jumped it but left a leg and went down, and only Sam looked good there. I don’t know if it was dangerous per se–not my area of expertise–but it caused problems. I don’t know if that’s an issue of trends in course design (extreme angles) or something else. If you compare it to the Sydney games, for example–a course which I quite liked and where horses and riders were properly challenged, but without all the skinnies–I wonder how it would fare in terms of making the time, refusals, falls, etc.

One thing I did recall from watching Sydney was that the horse in front of Karen O’Connor fell on a straightforward oxer near the end of the course, a fall I would say was caused by exhaustion at the end of what had been a great round up to that point. I don’t know what happened to the horse (Spain’s New Venture), though he did end up getting up. It underscored the importance of fitness work, and watching a few horses at the end of the Rio course made me nervous about that. Shane Rose’s horse flat out quit over a relatively small toad at the end of the course, while there were one or two that made me think they should have been pulled up. Incidentally, the Rio video says it was 21C (about 70 degrees Fahrenheit) with 80% humidity when they started and overcast–warm and muggy, but Atlanta was worse, and as I said, those horses looked fitter at the end, though not every horse was shown.

[Texarkana]

I wouldn’t think this would be an issue in international team competition, but I do think one drawback (amidst all the benefits) of the short format is that riders can get away with a subpar conditioning program.

When XC day was “speed and endurance,” you had to put in a lot of hard hours or you would not get through it

I’m not suggesting that upper level riders don’t condition their horses, but they can get away with some methods that are less than ideal. Like, gallop sets in the arena because you don’t have consistent access to terrain. Flat as a pancake Florida would not be a hub of the eventing world in long format days.

[Thames_Pirate]

@Texarkana

Flat as a pancake Florida would not be a hub of the eventing world in long format days.

Except it was–people wintered in Ocala then, too. Mostly around Reddick, actually. Though most had at least some mild rolling terrain on their winter bases (at least the ones I visited).

Exhausted horses at the end of a course are always dangerous–LF and SF. Maybe that should be more closely monitored. Again, how many at Rio had problems at the end? While that last water was a tough question, it was one that most of those horses had already answered several times on course (steep angled brushes on a forward stride) and would normally be able to handle or riders would not have presented. Some were positively scary over the last fences. But I would say the same about the fall I mentioned in Sydney (horse: New Venture) falling at the second to last, a straightforward table with an inviting slope–it was simply an exhausted horse that had looked good around the course making a mistake it wouldn’t ordinarily make. Riders, too–we’ve seen top riders push their horses around those last fences at the big events too often.

We all know that horses need more scope than they are being asked to provide on course; nobody would take a horse that struggles at 3’3" Training, and this is even more true as one moves up the levels. Those Olympic horses are plenty capable of clearing those big fences with room to spare. That cushion is needed for safety. Most can, in terms of scope, jump 5’ jumper fences handily enough in an arena. But a tired horse jumping a 4’ table at the end of 11 minutes of XC is very different from that same horse schooling 5’ at home. Course designers know it, too. But in the heat of the moment, riders forget it more often than they should.

I would be interested to see subjective analyses of horses and riders early and late around big tracks.

[quietann]

And I saw Ralph Hill’s fall on the Ledyard video… ouch.

[quietann]

Really interesting, and scary, to watch. I have never believed in the “good old days” but do wish eventing still favored wide open XC and good gallops.

Ledyard is a few miles from where my mare is boarded; I’ve heard that it’s OK to hack there, but wouldn’t dare without a guide. I am not sure what’s going on there these days, in any case. (ETA: well duh, as far as I know, Ferial Johnson is still running the place… and Marc is doing driving stuff; one of my friends takes lessons from him!) There are still horses, but I don’t think they have allowed XC schooling in ages. (I moved my mare to Ipswich in 2017, and to say that I am still a “newbie” is putting it mildly.)

My eventing “career” came to a very swift end after a bad fall, but I still love watching and jump judging (but TBH mostly at Groton House’s unrecognized events, which are Elementary and BN. I am crossing my fingers that GH gets going again in 2022, but in any case I’ll be able to hack there starting in May.)

[Guyot]

I started eventing in the late 80s. I also have almost every VHS tape of badminton and burleigh from 1985 on thru 2005. Ginny Leng was my idol along with Lucinda Green.

Although in the US, I had a British coach and we would roll up to events and kill the dressage. I don’t know if that was because she was a BHS and had ridden over seas first or that she just believed in the dressage phase, but we did well and could jump around. At least three of her students that I know of are still upper level eventers today with one at Kentucky this year.

Anyway, back then (damn I feel old) we were literally just 40 years past WW2 and still had many coaches from the military teaching. The emphasis was on getting thru no matter what. We fell, we got on and finished… cracked helmets or not… no vests or just the start of them and not required. You had to get it done. Over or thru was the philosophy because if you didn’t then you died in combat or let your friend die. And that was the culture still in the 80/90.

The idea of bonding with your competitors and being supportive of each other is rooted in the military roots of the sport. It’s what we all love and I dearly miss about no longer eventing; the camaraderie.

During the 90s the change of switching to more a sport driven activity started to take root more and more. Many of the military coaches were retired or gone and safety and course design became a thing. Watch the Mexico Olympics vs a course today…

Anyway, this is my opinion, clearly, however I do believe the changes you see are more rooted in a culture shift away from horses and eventing being a military practice of a get it done idea to a sport where technique is prized.

[Mander]

That’s an interesting take on it.

I’ve heard a lot of people “complain” that riders now are generally great competitors who do well at events (in the general sense, not necessarily eventing), but the focus is so heavy on making it beautiful for competition that riders never really get the chance to get that “just make it across the finish line” experience. To just go out, push the envelope a bit, and just try to get it done even if it’s not pretty.

I’m probably still considered a young rider, but I grew up without a single english trainer, let alone jumping trainer, for 100 miles. I was deep in the heart of AQHA western pleasure country. Despite that fact, I had an OTTB who was game for just about anything and I had access to 3 pairs of 3-foot jumping standards. You better believe teenage-me raised those standards as high as I could (and certainly faster than I ought to have), and when we cleared 3’ and couldn’t set the standards any higher, I bought some straw bales and started stacking them up and even put a pole across the top to raise it just a few more inches. By my best estimates we ended up jumping 3’6’’, give or take. The only reason we didn’t try higher is because I couldn’t figure out a reliable way to raise them any higher just a few inches at a time

Looking back, I do recognize just how reckless and dumb I was (although by some miracle, I never actually did fall off while jumping!), but now that I’m in a “real” H/J program (and also not on my own horse), I do miss being able to go putz around and push the limits just to see what we can do. From the bottom of my heart, I believe the top priority should be to take care of the horses and keeping them (and ourselves) safe, but I’ll also admit that I learned an awful lot by being forced into some sticky spots that most trainers nowadays will actively work to avoid putting you in in the first place.