I’m not your friend.
Please stop including me in your mean-spirited posts that contribute nothing to the serious discussion here.
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Which is why the safety discussion must be multi-faceted, because the riders who’ve died or suffered serious injuries have not been a uniform group. They have included children all the way up to the world’s top professionals.
I have just seen the video of David O’Connor’s table design resurface on social media. I am so, so, worried that we are going to once again apply a superficial veneer of “safety” by allowing the old guard to dictate what changes must be made - without expertise in the subject of safety. David’s expertise is in training event riders and horses - not engineering, or physics, or safety. He is the FEI Eventing Committee Chairman - a committee that, to the best of my knowledge and research, comprises horse people only.
I note that the FEI risk management page was updated today under the Seminars 2019-2020.
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I totally disagree. Courses even in Jimmy’s time were trappy and technical. Your horses back then and NOW need to think fast on their feet and have initiative. Jimmy NEVER has advocated for the rider to do nothing out on course…or not be able to see a distance. Just to train your horse first…because you are going to miss…hell, even MJ misses! So yes, at the lower levels and on green horses…he wants you riding a balance and leaving the horse alone to make mistakes and learn from them…but he WILL expect you to see what is happening…and totally expect you by the time you and the horse are at Training level+ to start to be on the same page. *(and no matter, you shouldn’t be making massive adjustments 3 strides out…that just distracts the horse). People just hear the first part…and not understand the rest of his training.
What I do think is different today is that people are buying and riding the wrong type of horses or spending too much time training dressage. They care too much about winning…early on. They are buying the dressage winner not the safe xc horse…or trying to make time when they shouldn’t. Yes…to win at the top events, you need to be good at all three phases…but first, you need the miles and experience xc…first without trying to make time and then making time. And when the MERs now are pushing for a more competitive score to move up (45 instead of 50…it is a big difference)…you are stopping those who have the good and safe xc horse from getting the miles at the higher levels…even if they are not competitive.
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Oh dear.
A friend (not a horse person) was involved in helping to build this thing. It was questionable and questions were not welcome.
DOC also set out to fix US High Performance eventing and put out various statements about the Pillars of This and That. I don’t recall specifics, just that ‘accountability’ wasn’t one of his pillars. It didn’t work and he eventually left the post and sought refuge at the FEI.
DOC is typical of what I’ve seen in the sport org world. An ineffective insider who stays inside, circulating through various positions. Perhaps not someone who is employable in the private sector.
Sport orgs tend to cultivate the Ineffective yes men while good people with real experience - who might bring the much-needed cultural change - are driven away.
And now that I think of it, you’ll see ‘new technology’ designed by insiders or friends/relatives of insiders, resulting in the sport adopting inferior (or non-functioning) technology.
Except that usually, it doesn’t have potentially deadly consequences.
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Back to the Jimmy Wofford arsticle - Jack LeGeoff said that riders should not train their horses higher than Med because
the horses should not be told what to do every step of the way - they need to take charge a bit on their own and learn to find the fifth leg instead of having every little thing micromanaged. He was around quite a bit back in my day.
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I guess when you exhaust your, very limited, supply of cogent arguments you turn to politics to rally the mob.
Shows effort, lacks creativity . . . 4.5
Rolling eyes and hitting ignore.
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Just chiming in to agree with your comment about Bentley’s Best. This isn’t about one particular rider, and I happen to love Jess Phoenix and cheer for her always, but when you have top riders pushing top horses outside of their comfort zone, you are seeing a reflection of what is valued. I’m sure we can all name a UL horse with a top rider that scared us. For eventers, the bravery, grit and carry-on-at-all costs attitude is not naturally conducive to a safety first approach. And because horse welfare is paramount here (I feel bad for the riders, but the horses, who are participating without any say in the matter, are truly the victims), safety must be better legislated. If eventing wants to save its @$$, then it had better wake up.
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A sad reminder of the real person involved in this tragedy: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/equestrian-alberta-death-florida-1.5482953.
There’s this:
“It was a bad shock for everybody,” Evan Dahms, co-owner of Sandridge Stables in Strathcona County, told CBC News on Monday.
“She was on the right track to get to her dream of riding for Canada in international events,” he said. “She was almost there but didn’t quite make it. It’s a tragedy.”
Big dreams. Dangerous dreams.
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I didn’t go “digging through videos”. I didn’t have to. These literally are the first ones that come up on a search for Stadium Jumping. Please don’t insult my intelligence that I don’t know what I’m looking at. Many of those horses are not balanced, are dragging their riders around, and are powering through because they have the scope to do it. It gets dangerous when those horses move up without the proper foundation and can no longer rely on pure talent to bail them out. When was the last time you heard of a fox hunter getting killed while hunting or a steeplechase jokey?
Your sport is killing its riders and its horses. Having cross country jumps that fall down is only part of the solution. Is there riders or horses who move up too quickly in the Hunters? Absolutely! They don’t die though as a result.
I also didn’t say ALL Event riders suck in SJ. I stand by my belief though that the problems seen in SJ are exacerbated XC.
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Agree with you and JER, to add also to your comment about the post recently, that YR would like to be going PT/T by end of the season… so not just one level, but two, from entry. Whats the point, whats the rush?
98% of YR’s never continue on after 21, because they no longer have the funding from their parents, and haven’t been taught to work on their own and earn it. We spend so much money on our YR’s who I find just whip around and try to get up to the championship levels, to then never event again when they are no longer considered a YR. I say put the money back into eventing by putting it into the lower levels and sponsorship’s to events, we are losing so much interest, put the money where it is needed to help better the sport.
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You did say “Many event riders can’t string together 8 fences if their life depended on it” and I don’t think that’s genuine either. Many event riders can because their placement[s] in the show depend on it. I think you could understand why eventers are getting their backs up over this statement, because it isn’t helpful and isn’t necessarily true, although I’m sure there’s plenty it applies to.
In the lower levels I think XC is much easier than SJ for most pairs.
SJ is tightly timed and you will get time penalties even at the lowest levels if you go around your SJ course like it’s a hunter round… That and many of the tracks are not set like hunter lines, not the same course, and I’ve found that the distance of the course (which is how the Optimum Time is decided) is not measured on appropriate tracks which means riders need to be cruising between the fences to avoid time penalties.
A recent example being, I coached a PC member at Huntington a few summers ago because her instructor (who was also mine) could not make it. Her horse was, incidentally, my first OTTB, so I knew this partnership well and had been involved with the pair over the last decade. I walked the courses with her and after a very good dressage and awesome XC, she was sitting fourth in a very competitive Novice division. She was first to go in stadium, and her goals were a “civilized” round, as he was known to be a bit speedy… She put in the classiest “hunteresque” round I saw in that entire division, and dropped from fourth to TWELFTH from time penalties - and she was about ten seconds over optimum time. She was riding her corners beautifully, setting up the horse to the fence very well and approaching every line in a balanced cadence, and still lost to people who pulled multiple rails and had refusals.
You just cannot be competitive and slow in eventing anymore. You have to be fast and precise over these levels gradually creeping… Which has made, IMHO, a mountain of problems that has had a trickle-down effect everywhere else in the discipline.
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…whatever you do, don’t mention Michael Jung’s recent performance in Gothenburg.
As a resident of BC, I agree with your post from a couple pages ago. Everything you say is so so true.
The only place in Western Canada that I know of that offers cross country to Intermediate is Chase Creek. They currently host 2 back to back events and 1-2 clinics a year at their facility. So not a lot of opportunity to school Intermediate jumps. Also, it is in the middle of NOWHERE and the feasibility of hauling there to school from Edmonton area is nil.
The sad reality is we lack the facilities to host great clinicians so there is little outside exposure in BC and Alberta.
I am a big Equiratings fan and a couple years ago, Sam and Diarm did a special and one of the things Sam discussed was rider accountability and taking an honest, objective view of your riding. He said something to the effect of, it’s fine to be an amateur eventer and have goals. But if you live 2-3 hours away from good cross country schooling, good coaching, facilities to get your horse fit and you’re juggling work/family, you need to be realistic about your goals and situation. It’s going to be very very difficult to get the saddle time and experience to compete at upper levels and that is TOTALLY FINE and not something to be ashamed of.
I am in that boat. Closest cross country to me is about 3 hours and involves crossing into USA. I also work full time and am expecting a baby. Being very realistic about my situation, if I get my horse to Training, I will be pumped. My coach competed to old 2* star levels in the 90s. She had the benefit of a neighbour who owned a cross country course and hosted events. She also hauled a lot for coaching. She herself would say now that goal would be impossible in our area because there is no opportunity to school cross country.
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All I can think of is Mariah’s song… why you obsessed with me??? Except me is MJ.
You got the hots for him or something? Take a number
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MJ came in 7th, for those wondering: https://www.longinestiming.com/equestrian/2020/gothenburg-horse-show-gothenburg/resultlist_07.html
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Please forgive my ignorance. I’m sure for you eventers this is going to be a very stupid question. But I honestly don’t know the answer so I’m asking.
How is an event judged percentage wise? Meaning…
dressage counts for what %?
CC counts for what %?
SJ counts for what %? Of the Total score.
Is each section 33.3 % of your total score?
Im assuming that cross country is given the biggest percentage? Only because all of the event people I know put so much emphasis on the cross country. The attitude I feel from them is the CC portion is the most important section.
Must’ve been a terrible performance to place 7th :lol:
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Oh the horrors! If we ignore it maybe it will go away.
I’ve thought about this thread all day and the many other threads on this forum about safety. I wonder if the frangible pin technology was originally conceived to make the long format safer and the unintended consequence has been the short format, the harder seemingly more technical questions, level creep and maybe subconsciously relying on the jump falling if a mistake is made too much.
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@Alterforme , it’s cumulative penalty points; I guess the weighting comes in the number of penalties for each ‘mistake’, but my math isn’t good enough to do the computations.
That is, we ALL start the competition at 0 penalty points (pp)
After dressage, our % score is converted to pp., so for example purposes only, one rider may have 20.1 pp, while another rider will have 42.6pp.
X/C penalties and Stadium penalties, plus any time penalties from each of those phases are added to that dressage score to come up with a total score after the 3 phases are complete, with the lowest cumulative score becoming the winner.
X/C jumping penalties are: 20pp for any of first refusal, run out or disobedience, (20+40=)60 for the 2nd, and Elim. for the 3rd at the same obstacle, or 4th overall anywhere else on course. Then there are time penalties assessed, if required, for being too slow, or indeed, too fast- with a possible DR if warranted. These time penalties are 0.4pp/sec too slow. and 0.8pp too fast
Then, in Stadium, any rail knocked down is assessed 4pp, the 1st refusal, runout or disobedience is also scored 4pp, while time penalties are 0.4pp/second.
So, in my example above, say Rider 1 had one refusal on the cross country course and came in 10 seconds over optimum time, his/her X/C score would equal 20pp + (10 x 0.4 = 4) = 24pp for a total after x/c of 20.1 + 24 = 44.1pp. Then, in Stadium, he/she had no rails down, but was 2 seconds slow to add 0.8pp to the score for a final 3-phase score of 44.9pp. Meanwhile, Rider 2 went clear x/c 5 seconds under the optimum time in cross country, and 1 second under the time in stadium and also clear, so his/her final score would be 42.6 + 0 + 0 = 42.6. Rider 2 would therefore place above R1 in the final standings.
I hope I made a bit of sense, and that doesn’t even touch on the ways we can get eliminated!
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