What is amazing to me is that despite there being studies that have proven striding is impossible to quantify in water-related distances or obstacles, it is still being uses and is seen as an appropriate question.
We KNOW water distances cannot be properly measured. We KNOW horse strides are affected by water. Why is it then okay to ask for a specific distance or stride, or combination, when water is involved?
It’s a real headscratcher to me.
I also agree that the CD criticism is a bit unfair. I’m sure he will walk away from this experience knowing what to change for the next time. Things didn’t go exactly how he expected, as he said with the bank in the Lake. There were probably some unfair portions of the course that should be criticized, but it’s really hard to know without being someone who rides at that level and understands how to ride those things… all of them look crazy to me.
I think the hero worship of Derek Digrazia has gone a bit too far on this board. Yes he is a masterful course designer, and Rolex was a fantastic course this year. However, things can and do go wrong no matter how good the course design is. As has been pointed out multiple times, the jump where Emily was injured was designed to be a galloping question to get the horses in a rhythm. It had a good ground line and should have ridden well for everyone (and for most, it did). Derek Digrazia could have had someone have a bad fall on his course from a mistake on an early fence, as his early questions were quite wide as well, and if you or the horse miss, well there’s no room for error. I have already mentioned on a previous Rolex discussion that James Alliston did have a rotational fall a few years back on Parker on fence 2 or 3. He nearly had one again this year at Rolex. I’m not blaming the rider, but sometimes it’s just luck, or the horse, or the rider, or the shadows, or something uncontrollable, and it’s a 4*…so sometimes there will be falls, and yes, injuries. Hopefully with safety improvements AND better course design, all can be minimized. But with horses and eventing, there is always risk, even with the best of course designers.
I’m actually in complete agreement that everything should be done to reduce the risk - I’m just saying that not all the risk sits with the course designer.
Think about it in medical terms. Yes, you can more or less eliminate prescriptions getting muddled up, you can more or less eliminate people over or under dosing - and with humans you can massively reduce mis-diagnosis.
Translate that to veterinary and you can achieve the same with prescriptions and dosing - but can you ever get to the same level of reduction in mis-diagnosis (I believe you can hugely reduce it, but to the same levels as human to human? I’d argue probably not because you can only look at the mechanical evidence as it is presented, you can’t ask the horse supplementary information.
Frankly, anywhere there are two brains working together you have room for miscommunication. A silly example: The person I know best in the world, who I have kissed thousands of times… I bumped teeth with this morning -and it hurt! 
Yes, we can mitigate that by never kissing again (!), or limiting to pecks on the cheek, or wearing mouth guards… He certainly thought he knew what he was doing, I thought I knew what I was doing, we both had the same objective - but it certainly didn’t go to plan! And to be honest, we have conversations intermittently where we have heard the words the other had to say, but mis-interpreted them and that’s with a fellow human being who is smart and without someone else setting us any objective. I also have moments of miscommunication with my animals, I’m sure we all have - so yes, I believe we can mitigate most risk (and that we should) but I don’t believe we can mitigate all risk. We should celebrate the massive changes there have been and work together, without blame, to make things better with all parties taking responsibility - and that includes the riders, not just the course designer.
You aren’t reading my posts. I was simply trying to keep it to the facts. At least one horse was horribly tired. The others… you seem to think that every time an American horse doesn’t finish it is because the horse is tired. You don’t take anything else into account. From what I PERSONALLY see in the film, there were important causes for each of the other finishes, and they weren’t “because it was tired.” I think you lack a discerning eye when it comes to watching the horses and interpreting what you see, I’ll be blunt about that. You do it regularly on these threads.
Also, I actually haven’t commented on the course at all except in my previous post where I expressed skepticism abou it, so your assumptions about that are just plain wrong.
I also question how much experience you have catching loose horses at shows and events. Nothing you have said is remotely practical or feasible. I’ve caught a LOT of them. I’m good at catching horses, and that horse didn’t look safely stoppable. Jumping out in front of a horse waving your arms is an idiot move and often makes things much worse. having trained, experienced racehorse outriders everywhere is not feasible or probably useful on such undulating terrain. and nothing would be worse that having a bunch of ammy volunteer riders trying to pick up bolting horses – that would likely cause more harm than good.
You are always complaining about the expense of the sport – how is adding paid, pro outriders at every event, spaced to catch a horse “within seconds”, going to keep it real for ammies? Because honestly, there are always falls at every level and if it ought to be done at 4**** level for safety, there is no reason on earth why it should not be mandatory for every event. plus, I see zero indication that would make anything safer.
There were a crapload of near falls at Rolex in the water, supposedly because that table encouraged a big jump in, then horses crawled over that fence in the water in a variety of heart-stopping ways. why no outrage for that? the Head of the Lake was cringeworthy at both events to me. Both CDs made mistakes and we were pretty lucky at Rolex no one rotated over that fence in the water. God knows there were enough hung legs on it.
Part A) well yes, I think that’s the point - that the ‘blame’ isn’t with one person or the other, it’s a shared responsibility. So if you go out there are say ‘it’s all the riders fault’ then yes, people will chime in with ‘no it isn’t’ and vice versa.
B) Stand out ones for me were Ingrid describing it as ‘pure fun’ and that Bobby finished full of running ‘we could have done it all again’, Micki Yung, saying Sam felt as fresh in the last minute has he did at the first.
Hopefully someone here who was watching the BBC edition will remember who the rider was where they started by commenting that the rider was perhaps going too slowly and the horse was not responding confidently and then by the end they were saying how much the horse’s confidence had improved. I really can’t remember who it was and I don’t think there’s any way other than watching the whole thing again of working it out. Maybe Gemma Tattersall? Or even Ros Canter. As I’m skimming through to find it (it’s late here so I’m going to give up finding it today) the commentators are observing that the first 30 riders were clear through the bank with a fence on top and it’s only later in the day there are problems. Again, that probably isn’t attributable to only the course designer but also the riders thinking ‘oh, that ones fine’…
C) I think as someone observed, it’s hard to set a distance exactly from water. Having a fence that can be jumped on one or two strides isn’t such a bad plan… Yes, that means some horses get it wrong - but they’d also have got it wrong if they were forced to one stride, and also for 2 strides there would likely be problems. So yes, he made a distance that few got on one stride, but he also created something that many horses DID get through.
also, just flicking through trying to find the one the commentators were talking about, at 1hr 51 in the second half of the XC coverage, a rider did just jump to the right hand side. Despite the distance, almost ALL the riders chose to keep going the left hand route. Again, ownership needs to be shared. Riders could have chosen options. If you have a short striding horse, great. 2 strides through the left hand route. Long striding horse, then take another route.
A very attractive grey horse had a rotational over the right side (it second guessed and put the two in there, hung both knees). I can see why that didn’t appear more attractive given it was only done a few times and once ended in possibly the scariest fall I saw (but I didn’t see the injured rider of course).
Re: EW’s horse. Has the GJ made any comment as to why the horse wasn’t pulled up?
There was no grey area here. The horse was exhausted. Even EW knew it, going to her whip like that.
The GJ’s job is to stop scenes like that from happening. If the excuse is ‘oh we can’t be everywhere’ – that’s their effing job and they failed to do it. They let our sport down with that incident.
Officials are licensed and their negligent behavior, especially when it impacts safety and horse welfare, should result in some kind of investigation and possibly sanction. Let’s not give them a pass on this. It was ugly, it was far more than just a moment on course, and no horse should have to suffer like that.
That was Paul Tapner on the white horse. That was an ugly fall. the horse got in nicely to the bank and then it just looked like a 1 1/3 stride and he stuttered and put his front end back down and chested it. Paul is an experienced rider. He even won Badminton once… He also, btw, just sat there and did not run off to see to his horse. And while we’re talking about what riders did after their falls there was another rider who fell at the water with the steep slope after the logs. She got up and walked back up the slope leaving her horse standing in the pond.
I don’t think either side of that bank to brush was riding well. It also looked like a few horses got the right stride but then just darted off to the left so there was something that wasn’t right.
And then there was Hale Bob who made it all look easy and fun.
I hear your points and Bewolfs as well. First, Nugget didn’t jump a line, the line was down and he ran through so mistake number one and maybe one that needs to be addressed,
Second, we are not talking about a LL Event where if a rider/horse falls and the horse runs off there is barely a crowd and the grounds are fairly open. Here we are dealing with large crowds with the only separation between horse and large crowd is a line. We are dealing with very very fit horses with a lot of adrenaline in them at a fall and they have the potential (as we saw with another) to actually continue a fence. What are they people doing on horses outside the lines for I can’t believe it is crowd control. If a wild horse can careen through a crowd, then a controlled horse can move through a crowd as the rider screams “LOOSE HORSE” and tries to direct it, if not catch it, away from solid objects and crowds.
What if that was you on a horse, outrider, and a 4* horse is rampaging through the crowd on its way to the stalls and way out of control. Do you just sit there or try to do something to help the horse which might help the crowd.
I’m asking FEI to take note of what happened. I am asking FEI to actually acknowledge the damage that is done when horses fall and run off. A horse ran away, it got seriously injured in part from a crappy course and perhaps no clear instructions on how to handle the situation. They want a spectator sport, but then shrug when a horse run wild and get hurts. One car crash into the crowd and NASCAR built a metal mesh wall to protect spectators. If next time someone gets run over, what do we say…“It’s a risky sport”?
I don’t want spectators in cages, i don’t want wire mesh around a 4* course, but this shit is now visible and what I want is FEI to step up and say…yep, we see a problem here and we will address it. That is called responsible leadership.
I think I know which horse/rider combination your talking about (but I’ll be damned if I can remember the name at the moment!). They commented that the horse had a rough couple of fences and did also make comments that he should pull up (or something along those lines but diplomatically) but the rider chose to press on. As they continued on the course they got better and better it seemed and the horse appeared to more confident.
This is what bothered me the most when watching videos of “fails and falls” at Badminton this year. Riders falling off, sometimes their horse falling as well, and the riders are not paying attention to their horse at all. They look dazed, then pissed, then walk off. Yeah, great horsemanship, that.
Also, LOTS of horses looking totally exhausted. Not just Wallace’s horse (although that was extreme and made me SO mad), but even Astier’s horse, who went “clean” but had very hairy moments, one near fall where the horse’s hind end just gave out. I cannot believe riders keep going when that happens. AARGH! Mad. There should be some kind of control ON COURSE where when something like that happens, riders should be stopped, since apparently they don’t have the good sense to do it themselves.
Sorry. Vent over.
What do you want then, JP60? Banning spectators? Horses to be machines? No one to ever fall off a horse? I don’t see any solutions in your post so you ask for FEI to take notice that you have zero ideas but want them to…what? Address it HOW?
there are no freak accidents. This one is easily explainable. However a feasible and effective risk abatement is not clear to me.
Have you ever had to deal with a loose horse that has mentally checked out and hell bent? It’s a risky bit of business and if you’re in their way, they.will.run.you.down. and yes, I’ve had to make a sudden last minute dive to avoid getting run down/over.
There is a scary horrible video from Spruce Meadows where Tim Grubb’s horse stopped at the Devil’s Dyke and Tim came off. His horse took off in a dead run and fly his way to the out gate. His groom was standing at the gate (I think waving her arms) as he came towards the gate he kinda tried to jump it but jump/plowed through it and her and she went flying.
Not sure why I keep coming back to this except that the images really are very disturbing…IF Elisa had made it through the flags without falling and WITHOUT going to her stick the way she did then maybe she’d get credit for getting it done. IF she had fallen as she did but WITHOUT going to her stick we could have said she was trying to nurse the horse home and it was a mistake she would learn from. However, she went to her stick more than once on an exhausted horse that could not respond and then fell. This is more than a mistake. This says something fundamental about the horsemanship. Can you imagine any of the top riders of any nation doing this? How many times in recent years have we seen any rider go to the whip on the way home with a tired horse? I honestly can’t remember seeing something like that in decades. It was appalling and there is no defense possible.
Lauren and Lynn brought their horses home safe and in the top 20, why would we say anything but ‘good ride!’ It was a tough, as should be expected at Badminton, course with most of the world’s biggest stars competing. Top 20 may not be a medal but if it were a team event and you had Boyd and Phillip to lead the way those might just be the completion scores that would get the team on the podium! And they gave their horses the kind of ride that would lead them to be more likely to complete at the next big event!
God, I love ya.
I’m complaining about the sport being expensive at the lower levels, but thank you for noticing. I don’t give a rats ass for what pros pay today. What they do is a different sport.
I am reading your posts. I watch what you watch (I figure) and what I see is tired horses from the US. I don’t see a US flag in the top ten at Badminton. It was hard to see a US flag in the top 10 at Rolex. I do see retire, elimination, and a finish time that was bested by a kid above one of our accomplished riders. I see EW kicking the hell out of a horse to finish, I see ML doing the same thing and I am a small voice amongst experienced riders that say the same thing.
I have no experience at catching horses. Damn. Ya got me there. How dare I suggest that FEI actually get experienced people on horses that know how to catch wild-eyed horses. Hey, here’s and idea. FEI could hire actual rodeo cowboys to ride outrider and when that one crazy horse takes flight back home at a 4*, why I bet they know how to bring the horse back safe. Oh, it might cost a bit, but then I can only imagine the cost of a lawsuit when a horse runs over a spectator after a horse falls and runs away on a course poorly designed. Please tell me, why are there people riding horses during a 4* in the crowd…photo ops?
Near falls… One horse fell at Rolex, according to my less then discerning eye and as some else pointed out, only 5 clears at rolex, but one horse fall. 19 clear at Badminton but 7 horse falls with two injuries.
I get we differ in view and honestly, I do not want to make this personal for what we are mainly discussing is this minor thing called the welfare of the horse. We are developing horses that cannot compete and part of the issue is they are not fit. Whether it is conditioning, style of riding, they cannot complete. The other part is course design and we have two examples, back to back, where one changed up the positions with minimal impact on the field as a whole, the other was described, by riders on the course, as carnage. Which format for this sport do you choose for I’d not choose carnage myself. I’d also like to see horses that aren’t running towards that last few fences with their heads down or can’t answer a leg anymore. That’s what I’d like to see.
On the personal note (for at times it comes to this), do not insult my intelligence. I’m not dumb, my whole career is observing change and correcting it and while I may not have ridden a 4* course, I can compare one ride to the next. I can see times compared to rides and numbers, results do not lie. The US sucks at the 4* level and the FEI loves drama for drama sells. Drama is profit.
I just don’t get you, JP60. Why didn’t you watch the videos of Hwin, for example? You are happy to let that go. I condemn it outright because I don’t believe it helps a green horse to swim through four oxers in SJ, ever. That is horse welfare at lower levels. I can confidently say I have never done that despite the fact I have a relatively bad eye for distance and ride a lot of green horses. At what point is enough enough at lower levels?
But you are happy to post the horse’s record and say that is fine without even watching it. Whatever she did later, that day it was a really bad decision to continue and the videos are really terrible. It is not what a green horse moving up should look like.
i think we both care a lot about horse welfare. I just don’t get how you conclude some of your virulent demands will get us more in the way of horse welfare.
I think you are plenty smart but lack horse experience. I know little about your equine history but I am pretty smart outside horses too and have been humbled by them many times. Surely in your outside experience you have learned that cause is often multifaceted and not easy to fix in your industry, whatever that is.
the numbers never, ever tell the whole story when it comes to horses. Mark Twain had it right when he said there are “lies, damned lies and statistics.”
Dear Dad,
I understand your reflexive defense as far as your daughter is concerned, however upon reflection I’m sure you would agree that the value of “armchair criticism” depends upon the mind that occupies the “armchair”.
Not everyone who was (to say the least) disappointed by your daughter’s horsemanship at Badminton is ignorant. Most people, (here at least, I know nothing of the facebook or twitter community) were not born yesterday, know whereof they speak, and have every reason to be unhappy when confronted with the sight of an exhausted horse being pushed on.
Many of us are from the U.S. after all and, like it or not, our fellow citizens’ riding does reflect upon us. I don’t think you are doing your daughter any favors by dismissing negative reactions to that ride with such a broad brush.
The FEI, having shown themselves ad nauseum to be spectacularly incapable and/or unwilling to attend to the enforcement of the reason for inflicting themselves on the equestrian community in the first place (aka their “mission statement” The Welfare of the Horse) in this case actually overcame their inertia and offered a negative opinion as well.
Of course you will all move on and learn from the experience. Blaming people for noticing and disliking what they saw won’t be productive in the long run.
JP those rodeo cowboys often have to run rough stock up against the panels to dislodge a hung-up cowboy. Rough stock who are routinely run-up on in the arena to remove their flank cinches. They OFTEN end up having to smash that horse up against a barrier in order to handle them- either pinching them between horses or running them into the wall.
Think on that for a moment. it’s not some track we’re talking about here where the outriders can pick up a loose race horse, either. . It’s ropes and lanes and puppies on leashes and most folks looking at their phones. Not an ideal place to get all Cowboy on it.
On a more cheerful note… I think the Badminton Horse Trials trophy is the most handsome one I’ve ever seen.
Those three horses are just beautiful.
By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. You may also receive promotional emails from The Chronicle of the Horse. You can opt out at any time.
For Customers
Company
Terms of Use
